Argues that metacognitive development should remain--or become--an aspect of instruction that aims to enhance students' reading comprehension. (HOD)

Describes the Semantic Analysis to Writing (SAW) framework in which students engage in a modified semantic features analysis of thematic words in a story, identify specific story events that relate to the definition they are constructing, and organize the material for a written response by ranking the supporting evidence. (RS)

Reports the results of a study showing that natural reading experiences allow readers to construct schemata that can be used to comprehend other discourse. (AEA)

States that comprehension of expository text and the ability to summarize are factors in students' success with such material. Describes a model that induces students to use existing schemata to create new and necessary expectations while providing a technique for explicitly teaching the components of effective summaries. (JK)

Explores research on the efficacy of previewing before reading to build background knowledge. Offers guidelines for presenting a preview to students. (HTH)

Describes a brainstorming/conceptualization activity suitable for adult, secondary, and college levels which serves as a preliminary exercise to test students' prior knowledge and to activate a schema for deeper immersion into a text. Describes how students use the activities to construct a sentence which defines the purpose of their textbook. (RS)

Shows how "concept of definition" (CD) instruction (instruction which organizes conceptual information into categories, properties, and illustrations) can be applied to content area reading. Presents several lessons and activities which develop strategies for combining new text information with prior knowledge and for self-monitoring…

Describes a college reading program designed to increase interest in recreational reading. Students write expressive responses to individually selected articles and discuss them in small groups thus transforming reading from a private to a social act. (SRT)

Gives teachers guidelines for preparing gloss notations focused to help readers develop specific reading skills and strategies. (AEA)

Discusses specific strategies that introduce the text and its concepts before the actual text reading. (AEA)

Describes a schema-awareness activity (used with sixth graders and college students) that provides teachers with a model of how students can use their past experiences and their ability to infer and predict when reading. Notes that the activity convinces students that they bring to the reading act much more than they encounter on the printed page.…

Contains suggestions from two contributors, the first discussing the importance of distinguishing opinion from fact and the second suggesting 12 activities parents can initiate to improve teenagers' reading skills, such as helping them develop resumes or autobiographies and reviewing important business forms together. (DF)

Describes six strategies for teaching vocabulary: exclusion brainstorming, knowledge rating, connect two, semantic feature analysis and semantic gradients, concept ladder, and predict-o-gram. (HOD)

Argues that when students in Third World nations use foreign materials and encounter a culture-concept gap, their teachers need coping mechanisms that help build up the students' store of background knowledge. (FL)

Discusses how most study skills are not appropriate for reading social studies textbooks. Asserts that sophisticated readers of social studies textbooks use a nation schema to organize the information. Finally, provides specific instructions on how to use a nation schema to teach social studies. (SRT)