Teaching for theme is one aspect of reading comprehension that is often elusive for both teachers and students. Specifically, teachers are challenged with elevating students' thinking from the plot level to a more abstract level when teaching for theme understanding. Students are challenged with transitioning between the story world and the real…

Automaticity in recognizing the words in a text is fundamental to comprehension. If the number of words readers need to stop and decode exceeds their ability to retain their understanding of a narrative's plot or an expository text's description, their comprehension suffers. The conventional intervention for students who lack the automaticity to…

It is commonly assumed that skills involved in reading poetry, such as decoding and assessing the poem, scanning for details arise in social relations with others, which makes reading social. However, this is social in a weak sense because these new accomplishments result from people working together. Using an alternative theoretical framework…

This article covers the contribution reading and stories (children's literature) have made to reading, its study, its material world, and the implications for teaching and learning to read -particularly with picturebooks -- at the heart of that practice. It first explores the category of children's literature as a possible 'lie', but also its…

"Science of reading" is a term that has been used variously, but its use within research, policy, and the press has tended to share one important commonality: an intensive focus on assessed reading proficiency as the primary goal of reading instruction. Although well intentioned, this focus directs attention toward a problematically…

Ongoing research-practice conversations between teachers and researchers have identified a practical tension faced by teachers of upper primary/early secondary students whose progress has slowed. Teachers report that a researcher-led push to develop more sophisticated readings of complex texts results in less reading mileage, potentially impacting…

The purpose of the present study is to determine if there is a relationship between oral narrative production and the reading comprehension of expository text. The researcher measured both overall and component scores for expository text comprehension and oral narrative production ability of 40 typically-developing fifth grade students. Findings…

Reading comprehension is the goal of reading, and making inferences is vital. Authors usually expect readers to make multiple types of inferences, including anaphoric, background knowledge, predictive, and retrospective. Common core assessments include all of these, yet instructional materials focus mostly on only one type, retrospective. This…

Central coherence is the ability to perceive and connect salient information in a context such as a narrative text. Individuals with autism exhibit a detail-focused cognitive style of processing information that overlooks connections and shows weak central coherence. A six-session instructional intervention to foster coherence processing was…

The increase of graphic novels in libraries and schools and on award lists illustrates one way that children's literature is changing. This article explores the relation between words and illustrations in a popular graphic novel. The multimodal format of graphic novels requires readers to consider the words, graphics, panel sizes, and uses of…

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…

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction on reading skills. The study group consisted of fifth-grade students. The quasi-experimental pretest-posttest comparison group design was used in the present study and a twenty-week study program was carried out. In the experimental intervention process, the…

This study investigated whether presenting a picture before reading can encourage situation-model construction. We compared two conditions (n = 30) which differed in whether a picture of the initial situation described in a narrative text was presented before reading (i.e. pictorial-support condition) or not (i.e. no-picture condition).…

A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form…

Purpose: In this initial article of the clinical forum on reading comprehension, we argue that reading comprehension is not a single ability that can be assessed by one or more general reading measures or taught by a small set of strategies or approaches. Method: We present evidence for a multidimensional view of reading comprehension that…