Though its popularity has waxed and waned, cloze continues to be regarded as an instructional strategy for the fostering of reading comprehension. This article takes the view of cloze as one tactic in support of strategy instruction, rather than a strategy in its own right. In contrast to the formulaic applications of cloze for assessment…

As reading professionals and former middle school teachers, we believe it is essential for teachers to select books thoughtfully, understand the relationship between book selection and student motivation and engagement, and realize the importance of classroom instruction during the reading of literature. Teachers strive to help middle school…

This investigation explored relationships between format of text (electronic or print-based) and reading comprehension of adolescent readers. Also in question were potential influences on comprehension from related measures including academic placement of participants, gender, prior knowledge of the content, and overall reading ability. Influences…

The author examined the techniques of 3 middle school struggling readers to use silence to protect or promote their specific identities as readers in and out of school. J. Gee's (2002) theory of discursive identity framed this article. Results challenge the ways that teachers and researchers typically think of struggling readers. Rather than being…

Concludes that thematic organizers improved middle school students' performance on several measures of literal and inferential comprehension and facilitated more complete recall of text ideas and the ability to elaborate upon implied information. (FL)

Studied reading comprehension demands in a seventh-grade social studies classroom to reveal existing classroom cultures and complexities surrounding expository text comprehension. Found that in the particular classroom, the textbook determined knowledge exploration and had a damaging pedagogical effect on the students' literacy practices.…

Finds that, when middle school students write about relevant personal experiences before reading, they enjoy and comprehend the text more, are more on-task, offer more sophisticated responses to characters, and like the texts more. (SR)

Explains how to ask questions that will help students focus on structure and better understand expository text. Notes that because students must make both internal and external connections to text structure, teachers should ask questions which prompt students to identify the relationships among ideas in a text so that meaningful learning can…

Argues that children need to be taught how to extract, synthesize, organize, and integrate important information from texts into their own knowledge structures and describes some techniques that can be used to activate prior knowledge. (HOD)