As a non formal education students, PKBM (a Non-Formal Community Learning Center) Medaso Kolaka students tend to encounter some difficulties in reading such as low motivation, infrequent tutors (non-formal education teachers) coming, inappropriate teaching materials, etc. This research aimed to investigate the effects of picture story books on the…

As teachers and leaders move forward in implementing the Common Core State Standards within classrooms across 46 states, it is essential to consider the question of what knowledge is included in the English Language Arts Standards, and what knowledge is not present. The authors of the Common Core delineate an increasingly complex body of knowledge…

The use of teaching practices that involve intertextual relationship discovery in today's elementary classrooms is increasingly essential to the success of young learners of reading. Teachers must constantly strive to expand their perspective of how to incorporate the dialogue included in prior knowledge assessment. Teachers must also consider how…

Describes "character maps," an activity that draws upon the reader's prior knowledge of people to understand a book's characters. Includes a brief list of additional activities and extensions to reinforce comprehension through characterization. (RS)

Addresses the problem of finding a quick, easy, and effective way to teach necessary background knowledge for new topics so teachers can build the specific schema children will need to comprehend the text they read. Describes a mural lesson as an organized way for teachers to talk about and use pictures to provide students with information that…

Examines relationship between reported imagery and comprehension of main ideas in exposition. Finds that constrained imagery was positively associated with the comprehension of main ideas and followed a similar pattern of growth, and nonconstrained imagery was associated with comprehension failure. Suggests imagery and comprehension were related…

Describes a procedure called Generating Reciprocal Inferences Procedure (GRIP), which teaches inferential comprehension using direct or explicit instruction, a generative process, and reciprocal questioning. (RS)

Provides suggestions for activating prior knowledge, getting children to be aware when their comprehension is lagging, and tying it all together at the end. (FL)

Discusses the results of a study that examined the relationship between comprehension ability and prior knowledge in children's recall of structurally equivalent text. (AEA)

Presents a modification of the traditional Anticipation Guide format (a reading comprehension strategy) that includes a prereading "I'm Not Sure" response option and helps students to differentiate the purpose for reading. (SR)

Presents a model of reading comprehension development from a cognitive perspective. Employs structural equation analytical methods to evaluate within- and cross-grade relations among theoretically relevant variables. Finds phonemic knowledge drives comprehension for grades two and three; background knowledge has its greatest effect in grades three…

Investigates how metaphor influences a reader's ability to recall information about new concepts, assimilate new concepts into existing conceptual structures, and accommodate new concepts by creating new conceptual structures. Offers support for metaphor as an instructional device for formal reasoners. Suggests that metaphor may interfere with…

Examines background knowledge and strategy knowledge from a broad view to better understand how they contribute to elementary-age students' reading comprehension of both narrative and expository texts. Indicates that background knowledge specific to the content of the text being read begins to diminish in importance at about grade 4, when strategy…

A study investigated the contributions of phonemic knowledge, prior knowledge, and listening comprehension to the reading comprehension of elementary age children. Three theoretical perspectives were followed aiming to specify developmental characteristics of these variables to reading comprehension: (1) contributions of prior knowledge should…

Discusses five ways to determine the amount and quality of prior knowledge children bring to a topic: (1) free recall tasks, (2) word association tasks, (3) structured questions, (4) recognition tasks, and (5) unstructured discussion. (FL)