Two studies explored the nature of fourth- and fifth-grade students' abilities to synthesize information from multiple sources of text. The studies examined the ways in which elementary students approached a synthesis activity that involved reading two well-organized and related nonfiction articles, and then drawing upon that information as they…

Intended for high school literature teachers, this book reviews research in educational psychology and reading comprehension, and outlines classroom activities for direct instruction and practice of interpretive strategies. The book cites studies which reveal that if teachers distrust students' ability to interpret literature effectively, they may…

This book summarizes approximately 600 reports of reading research identified between July 1, 1989 and June 30, 1990. The research studies in the book are categorized into six areas: (1) summaries of reading research; (2) teacher preparation and practice; (3) sociology of reading; (4) physiology and psychology of reading; (5) the teaching of…

The lack of systematic instruction in understanding and answering questions prompted the development of a taxonomy of 300 American history questions sampled from four current and commonly used intermediate grade level history textbooks. Each category of the classification includes a description of the information the question type provides the…

A contract deliverable on the NIE Communication Skills Project, this report consists of three separate documents describing the instructional implications of the analytic and empirical work carried out for the "Classroom Instruction in Reading Comprehension" part of the project: (1) Guidelines for Phrasal Segmentation; (2) Parsing Tasks…

Facts and activities related to weather and meteorology are presented in this unit. Separate sections cover the following topics: (1) the water cycle; (2) clouds; (3) the Beaufort Scale for rating the speed and force of wind; (4) the barometer; (5) weather prediction; (6) fall weather in Iowa (sleet, frost, and fog); (7) winter weather in Iowa…

Much of what has developed in the testing of reading harkens back to the days of the "Cult of Efficiency" movement in education that can be largely attributed to Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor spent most of his productive years studying time and motion in an attempt to streamline industrial production so that people could work as…

Suggested activities for integrating language concepts and comprehension skills into elementary school geography instruction are presented. The activities focus on concept formation through semantic mapping and making analogies, and on comprehension through recalling, generalizing, interpreting, and making inferences. Semantic maps indicate spoke…

A 2-year program entitled "Essential Skills for College Bound Students" conducted in a Mississippi high school is described in this paper. The introductory section describes the course of study in essential skills as designed to help average-ability students who plan to attend college increase their proficiencies in oral and printed material,…

Designed to improve reading comprehension and other complex verbal functions, fertile instruction in word skill focuses on improving accuracy of word knowledge, increasing fluency of access to meanings in memory, and enriching semantic network connections among related concepts. It is particularly appropriate for teaching the high frequency words…

Recent studies refuting the effectiveness of advance organizers in preparing students to comprehend text material have not met the conditions necessary for advance organizers to succeed. According to the assimilation theory, which holds that people learn by chaining what is known to what is to be learned, the following conditions must be met for…

To test the assumption that questions measuring literal comprehension and those measuring inferential comprehension are equally valid indices for both oral and silent reading tests at all skill levels, questions from the Analytic Reading Inventory were classified as either literal or inferential. Subjects, 94 children in grades two to five, read…

While it is widely recognized that comprehension monitoring is an important reading comprehension ability, effective methods for teaching readers to recognize and overcome various comprehension obstacles have not yet been conclusively identified. To determine if microcomputers could be used to teach students to overcome such obstacles, 41 fourth…

A study investigated the ability of fifth grade above and below average readers to use mental imagery in reading familiar and unfamiliar text. The subjects, 80 fifth grade students reading either above or below grade level, were placed into either an experimental or a control group. All subjects individually read one familiar and one unfamiliar…

A study examined the effects of a year-long inservice program to help experienced teachers in one elementary school appreciate and use recent research in reading comprehension. All teachers at an urban K-6 elementary school in a midwestern city attended the weekly inservice sessions which focused on the importance and role of background knowledge…