Examines the effectiveness of Reading Recovery as compared to a one-on-one skills practice model, group treatment taught by trained Reading Recovery teachers, and a treatment modeled on Reading Recovery provided by teachers trained in a shortened program. Finds that Reading Recovery children performed significantly better than any other treatments…

Investigates the phenomenon of topic shift (sentences initiating a new topic are given additional processing time by skilled readers). Finds adults showed a proportionately greater effect than fifth graders when more difficult expository texts were used but not with easy narratives. Finds that paragraph marking did not influence the processing of…

Discusses the attributes of daily comic strips that make them an ideal media for use in reading and English courses. Presents information and readability analyses of various comic strips readily available to students and teachers. Argues that comic strips can be used effectively to build reading skills and processes. (HB)

Trains good and poor third-grade readers to manipulate the phonological structure of words as a means of facilitating ability to name pictured objects. Finds that both groups benefited from training, even though good readers performed consistently better than poor readers. Suggests that more extensive training may help poor readers use their tacit…

Provides an overview of "ElectroText," a program to develop electronically enhanced versions of short stories for use in middle school language arts programs for at-risk students. Describes the setting and instructional context, the strategies used to gather information about what students did when they read in a hypertext environment,…

Reports results of two experiments on fourth- through seventh-grade below-average readers' sensitivity to Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure (BOSS) in visual word recognition. Suggests that children are sensitive to the BOSS parsing principle and that this could be used in promoting word knowledge. (RS)

Compares community college students who had been trained in identifying the main idea of a text to a no-treatment group and an alternative treatment group. Finds that the experimental group scored higher than control groups on main-idea identification and free recall of main ideas but not on supporting details. Discusses implications for classroom…

Review of over 40 studies of parents hearing their children read showed that parent listening programs modeled on Britain's Haringey project failed to have significant effects on children's reading achievement. Studies in which parents of poor readers were trained in behavioral, pause-prompt-praise, or paired reading approaches showed significant…

Argues that nonfiction is growing in popularity as reading material among adolescents. Provides data and analysis of a study designed to measure the influence of nonfiction on the attitudes, values, and behavior of adolescents. (HB)

Presents overall conclusions from research and case studies of four children who showed indicators of emerging biliteracy and cultural sensitivity in a language arts class where the inherent link between culture and language was evident. Illustrates how the language arts instruction in a bilingual classroom affected children's growth in a second…

Examines the behaviors of children and their teachers across repeated readings of the same text across several Reading Recovery lessons. Finds increased monitoring, error detection, self-correction, and fluency. Finds that teacher interventions decreased and changed in substantive ways. (RS)

Describes the development of a Reading Recovery teacher's understanding and use of effective questioning practices for low-progress first-grade readers. Finds that teachers' awareness of their own interactive behaviors is developed through ongoing, deliberate reflection and discussion with others and that this awareness is related to student…

Discusses the major benefits that emerge for students and teachers when groups of six students discuss a book they are reading without teacher questions to structure and guide their interactions. Shows that books mixing narrative and exposition have the greatest potential to enhance student discussion. (SR)

Examines one "Teachers as Readers" group, in which teachers meet to read and discuss children's literature. Finds that (1) reading can be defined as making meaning from picture book illustrations; (2) collaboration can be defined as listening to students; and (3) readers respond differently to books based on the beliefs and values they…

Examines preservice teachers' definitions of reading at the beginning and end of an introductory methods course in English language arts. Finds that, at the beginning of the course, 85% of the preservice teachers characterized the process of reading as a decoding task, while only 42% maintained that characterization by the end of the course. (RS)