Teachers strive to design instruction that actively engages all students, but a few "back-benchers" often seem to be left out, due to academic struggles, English language skills, personal disinterest, or other factors. Teachers seek to help these students develop into "active and engaged participants" in their classrooms in…

To improve students' reading abilities, an elementary school staff decided to supplement the regular curriculum with a free Internet reading program. To promote student participation in the supplemental program, the media specialist designed the Gumball Reading Program, which included student requirements and rewards. The requirements…

An expense account book report encourages students to be creative and doesn't penalize students with reading and writing disabilities. Pie graphs showing expenditures a character from a book might make reveal divergent thinking skills and with a minimum of words. A reproducible worksheet is included. (MT)

Reading Links were created as ready-to-use reading and writing activities that directly correlate to the Brainlink adventure stories. The activities are related to reading objectives common to many curricula and cover a range of grades and ability levels. The book features a story called "Legacy of Lost Canyon, a Curious Cave Conundrum." Students…

The relationship of minutes of reading instruction to the gains in reading performance for 3,374 elementary school children shows consistent positive findings between large- and small-group classroom instruction and reading gains. Some of the negative results for individualized instruction may be due to school assignment practices. (Author/MLF)

Discusses how reading comprehension can be improved through research-validated instruction. Outlines emerging issues of comprehension instruction, such as the limits of word-recognition instruction, cognitive capacity constraints, and diverse text tasks. Contends that there needs to be experimental validation of comprehensive comprehension…

Creative ways to motivate students to read and report on books include having them retell the stories differently, invent products related to the stories, share snacks like those the characters ate, illustrate action from the story, write imaginary conversations between themselves and the characters, and turn the stories into short skits. (SM)

This feature blends children's literature with in-class cooking ideas to add spice to reading programs at various times of the year. A seasonal list of reading books appropriate for elementary school-age children is coordinated with recipes for dishes that complement the stories. (PP)

A study of 178 fifth grade children reveals that content schemata can be restructured through reading activities and that restructuring is more marked when information is presented through reading and semantic mapping/discussion than when it is presented through reading alone. (SKC)

This booklet was prepared for use as a staff development presentation in response to an official statement by International Reading Association's "Executive Board that literature (and the reading and writing that goes with it) must be the foundation of the language arts curriculum. The purpose of the booklet is to provide alternatives to…

Prepared by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, this volume contains approximately 50 percent of the total number of reading exercises administered during the assessment. Exercises are ordered by release number, which indicates the major theme, exercise within the theme, and the exercise part for multiple-part exercises. In addition,…

Describes how an elementary teacher can plan and manage directed reading, including selecting appropriate children's books, preparing a reading guidesheet for each, and conducting conferences with each student to reinforce reading comprehension and vocabulary development. (SJL)

Discusses problems associated with literature-based reading programs which use children's literature in the same way basal readers are used. Encourages teachers to allow students the freedom of exploring and learning from the book without creating drill and vocabulary lessons from it. (MG)

Describes the use of reading guides as an interactive technique to stimulate comprehension. Provides an example using a popular novel. (MG)

Offers 10 basic guidelines that might help reading teachers who use basal readers to make more effective instructional decisions about what to teach. (MG)