Face-to-face time with students in the early childhood college setting is at a premium and often flies by before we begin to scratch the surface of active learning. Building a community of learners is one of our main goals as instructors; therefore, we strive to set up active learning environments optimal for all students. This reflection on…

In two experiments, we compared effects of instructions that encourage learners to create referential connections between words and pictures with instructions that distract learners from creating referential connections. In Experiment 1, students read a scientific text under four conditions. In the text-picture condition, students read the…

Concept maps reflect the linkage of concepts or facts within a text. This study was set out to investigate whether concept mapping as a learning strategy would have any scaffolding effect on the reading comprehension and recall of propositions by L2 learners. Out of 60 high school students, 30 in the experimental group were exposed to concept…

In this "prosumer" era in which people seem always to be producing and consuming texts, words matter as much as--or more than--they ever have. Learning how grammar works in the texts they read and write is essential to students' literacy. It is time to reframe English teachers' view to include both writing "and" reading as contexts for grammar…

Self-regulated learning has been described as an adaptive process: students adapt their learning strategies for attaining different learning goals. In order to be adaptive, students must have a clear notion of what the task requirements consist of. Both trace data and questionnaire data indicate that students adapt study strategies in limited ways…

Comprehension strategy instruction has been widely studied in the past 10 years. We now know that students who actively engage and interact with text using particular cognitive strategies are more likely to understand and remember more of what they have read. Students who use these strategies are able to access knowledge that is outside the realm…

Through retelling, students can begin to attach sense and meaning to the sometimes complex concepts they encounter in science texts. Also, the shift from silent thinking to verbal expression causes the brain to consolidate and integrate new ideas. As students share information through retelling, they gain new perspectives on the text as they hear…

In the past five years, at least a half dozen major reports have focused on adolescent literacy and providing adolescents with age-appropriate instruction. What is age-appropriate instruction for middle school students? As recent reports on adolescent literacy, such as those of the Carnegie Corporation and the ACT make clear, age-appropriate…

Research suggests that children's understanding of text can be improved by the explicit teaching of those comprehension strategies that are used implicitly by skilled readers, particularly the use of self-regulating strategies to generate questions about text. This study of the teaching of comprehension in 51 London Key Stage 2 classrooms explores…

Develops an Information Text Reading Activity (ITRA), a conceptual framework for presenting reading lessons that will engage students in reading informational text actively. Notes that the framework provides a basis for selecting and evaluating instructional activities and assists the teacher in moving students toward independence in learning. (RS)

Investigates the effects of structural cueing (color or no color) and decision level (rote or semantic) on students' verbatim retention of technical prose and concludes that the results support the distinctiveness of encoding hypothesis for learning via the microcomputer. (DF)

Reading in the Malaysian primary and secondary school system is largely a master of skill mastery and school textbooks, workbooks and even examinations are a testament to this approach. The teacher of reading is often forced to make the choice of training her learners to read and answer comprehension questions for examination purposes. Reading in…

As measured by responses to a main-idea essay question and by written summaries of two passages, students' ability to abstract the macrostructure of problem/solution text read independently was improved by the use of structure training. (FL)

Designed to explore what is being done to help learning disabled (LD) readers develop comprehension skills, this paper reviews research in teaching reading comprehension to LD students and develops generalizations from the research to guide reading comprehension instruction for such students. The 10 generalizations presented and discussed in the…

Suggests that reading students be taught to write symbolic codes alongside the text to identify new terms, similarities in ideas, cause-effect relationships, important or difficult ideas, etc.; and to use mnemonics to record their responses to the text (e.g., whether they were bored, confused, surprised, or in agreement). (PAA)