This study examined the use of story impressions as a prereading writing activity. Students either received story impressions, read a story, then wrote stories using clues; received story impressions and listed predictions about a story; or received no preview activity before story reading. Story impressions produced the highest level of story…

Describes one educator's whole-language approach to elementary school reading. Her class activities focus on books and friends during February to help celebrate Valentine's day. Two student pages offer friendship-oriented student activities. (SM)

Based on the premise that children's natural love for music makes it appropriate to use songs as a motivational vehicle for reading and writing, this paper presents a reading/singing strategy which promotes vocabulary, word recognition, writing, and comprehension skills while providing appreciation of music. The paper briefly discusses the eight…

Research on second language learning has found similarities between the reading strategies of first and second language readers. These findings are being applied by second language instructors and researchers in reading classrooms through a variety of strategy-use activities. Most foreign language reading specialists view reading as interactive…

Current educational writing and reporting suggests a need for making reading a more vital experience for the student. One of the ways being tried in the Rye Public Schools (New York) is an integrated, guided, out-of-class reading program that is keyed to the inquiry curriculum. Starting in the third grade, each inquiry unit has specially selected…

Gloss, or marginal notations in a text, and other similar techniques can be used by reading specialists both as they attempt to develop meaningful content area reading programs and as they review what is already known before attempting to learn new information. For example, several social studies teachers began their gloss activities by…

A study investigated whether comprehension of a text could be enhanced by careful structuring of the lesson elements surrounding it. One group of ten second grade children received a reading lesson as prescribed in a basal series that directed attention to irrelevant content while failing to highlight consistently important story elements. A…

From 1976 through 1979, Shelby County, Tennessee, schools participated in a Right to Read Special Emphasis project. An experimental and a control school were used, in which more than 50% of the pupils read one or more grades below level. The project included the use of reading specialists, a structured reading system (DISTAR), a summer reading…

The student of English as a second language in the French school system is confronted with morpho-syntactic and lexical difficulties when he or she reads texts on the university level. In addition to these difficulties, the method of approaching the text may also prove to be a problem. A method is outlined to help the student achieve an active and…

Materials used in a one-day conference on teaching reading comprehension skills are summarized in this publication. Contents consist of three articles on teaching the comprehension skills, informal reading inventories in science and in geography, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with comprehension questions, a checklist for the evaluation of teaching…

The objective of this project for kindergarten through fifth grade is to interest public and private educational institutions in the systematization of elementary school reading programs. Facets of Systems Directed Reading (SDR) include the use of a differentiated staffing pattern; experienced language arts unit leaders guiding and directing all…

ReQuest is a reciprocal questioning technique in which the teacher serves as a model of questioning behavior for the student. Following a briefing period by the teacher, the activity begins with the student and teacher silently reading the first sentence of a story. Teacher and student exchange questions on a sentence-by-sentence reading of the…

Difficulties inherent in the reading of mathematics at secondary and college levels are discussed. Special emphasis is placed on the reading of arithmetic numerals, literal numbers, operational symbols, and expressions of relationships, as well as the reading of technical vocabularies and specialized meanings of general words. While each…

Describes an adapted form of the "Directed Reading Thinking Activity" which guides students through reading assignments with content materials containing an abundance of factual information and details that need to be remembered. (RL)

Discusses aspects of reading research besides schemata theory and applies them to second language (L2) reading research. A technique is presented to introduce comprehension monitoring to students, and studies use reciprocal teaching and think-aloud procedures and appropriate L2 applications for each. (LMO)