Investigation of the effect of establishing purposes for reading upon reading comprehension showed that neither specific nor general reading directions appeared to affect performance and that purpose-setting directions served to discriminate between intentional and incidental information only for above-grade-level readers.

A study investigated whether comprehension of a text could be enhanced by careful structuring of the lesson elements surrounding it. One group of ten second grade children received a reading lesson as prescribed in a basal series that directed attention to irrelevant content while failing to highlight consistently important story elements. A…

Comprehension levels necessary to the acquisition and retention of facts, concepts, and rules and the facilitating effects of the use of orienting directions and postadjunct questions were investigated in a study involving 105 sixth-grade students. Four treatment groups each received a version of a six-page fictional passage, differing in the use…

Discusses a study that explored the effect of a guided reading strategy on the short- and long-term comprehension of disadvantaged students in a seventh-grade geography class. (DD)

An investigation was conducted to ascertain the effects of the structured overview on both the short-term and long-term comprehension of average and below average readers. The subjects were 143 college students classified as average or below average readers and randomly assigned to either a structured overview (65) or a control group (78). Both…

The increased interest in reading comprehension by researchers in fields other than reading education is noted in this paper. In addition, the concerns of the new researchers in reading are described, some of the terms they are using are explained, and the implications of their findings for reading instruction are explored. The interests of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the study of organizers, directed reading activity (DRA) and SQ3R, on the immediate and delayed recall of social studies materials. Eighty-four seventh-grade students from an intermediate school participated in this study. The results of the study indicated that the DRA technique was an…

Investigates the amount of time teachers devote to directed reading activities and reading skills instruction; the amount of time devoted to components of each approach; and which instructional strategies are used in each approach and with what frequency. Finds that the majority of time allocated for reading lessons is devoted to reading skills…

In this study, two different approaches to the teaching of reading were designed and presented over an eight-week period, then evaluated according to student scores on three standardized tests. After a pretest, nine first-grade classes were randomly assigned to one of three groups: literature, concept development, or control. In the literature…

A study evaluated the effectiveness of various models constructed to account for how children read and comprehended a story presented in a directed reading lesson. A commercial directed reading lesson was revised to introduce information related to the story and to help the children form a "map" of the central story content. Data were…

Investigates the effectiveness of a direct instruction model for teaching children to comprehend anaphoric relationships. The results provide further support for the efficacy of a direct instructional model for teaching children reading comprehension skills. (HOD)

The traditional practice of having students read or respond to questions in turn is questioned. Research suggests that teacher effectiveness improves when teachers clearly explain the task at hand before children respond. (PP)

Sixty-six grade six students were subjects in a study to evaluate the effectiveness of a direct instruction paradigm for teaching children the reading comprehension skill of main idea identification. Both experimental groups (strategy and basal) and the control group received eight lessons of 30 minutes each. All instruction occurred over a…

The effects of prereading techniques, specifically "advance organizers" and "structured overview" were studied by comparing retention and comprehension of reading material in high school students with and without prereading treatment. An advance organizer is a brief passage giving a general and inclusive introduction to material to be read. A…

The effects of vocabulary instruction on word knowledge and reading comprehension were investigated. Average students learned some word synonyms under all conditions except a noninstructional control condition. However, learning disabled students acquired fewer meanings across all conditions and seemed to require more direct instruction in order…