Five social studies programs at the fourth and sixth grade levels were examined to determine how much and what kind of reading comprehension instruction was provided in both the students' and teachers' editions of the texts. Programs studied were those published by Follett; Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; Laidlaw; Macmillan; and Scott, Foresman.…

To determine if subject matter taught or years of teaching experience after taking methods courses influenced teacher attitudes toward teaching reading in the content areas, questionnaires were completed by 105 middle, junior, and senior high school teachers who had completed methods classes in content area reading. Results of four subscales on…

This study examines how third and fourth grade children work with a representative sample of test items designed to measure reading comprehension. The developmental and ethnocultural problems that children experience (whether they are rooted in the passage, the tasks, or the entire item) are discussed. From a passage-based perspective, the items…

The Follow Through Project at New York City's P.S. 137 has demonstrated that even students from highly disadvantaged areas can match the academic accomplishments of their middle class peers. Begun in 1968, the project involved 12 classrooms at the kindergarten through grade 3 levels and used a direct instruction model featuring (1) a consistent…

To determine how the difficulty of print materials affected elementary school students' sight copying accuracy and productivity and to explain correlate variance related to copying, 149 students in grades four, six, and eight were assigned materials to copy for three minutes. All subjects copied passages at grade level and at two grades above and…

Students in college developmental reading classes were given a questionnaire about the experiences they had had in reading during their elementary and high school years. They were asked questions about (1) the materials they used in former reading classes, (2) books or stories they had found particulary memorable, (3) the effectiveness of…

Uniting two areas of current interest in educational research, a project tested the effectiveness of computer software in observing the process of comprehension monitoring. Passages with embedded comprehension obstacles were presented to two groups of fifth grade students. Identical in content to those of the controls, the experimental subjects'…

Contemporary children must deal with many family problems that children 20 years ago never had to face, including divorce, parental separation, death, working mothers, and economic status. To determine how well current basal reading series reflect the changing American family, the stories of four basal reading series for grades four, five, and six…

A six-phase management effectiveness strategy that can be employed by secondary classroom reading teachers to facilitate and improve the learning of students whose reading skill needs are severely deficient, is outlined in this document. The first phase, the inventory, requires teachers to list and group all reading materials available. In phase…

Variables and conditions that influence the learning of computer-presented expository text were investigated in this study, in which on-screen underlining was used as a learning aid to increase "mindful" processing of information. The effects of three intervening variables--amount of invested mental effort (AIME), learning style, and…

A study was conducted to shed light on the influence which children's developmental stage in learning to read and the reading instruction they receive have on first-graders' reading concepts. The study provided descriptive information to answer the following questions: (1) Do children from literature-based and skill-based instructional settings…

This study examined the effectiveness of a program with three basic features--high interest plays, oral reading, and high readability level--designed to aid middle school students scoring two or more years below grade level in reading comprehension. Subjects, 13 boys and two girls enrolled in a basic English class in a suburban middle school…

Drawing on an array of research on the nature and development of reading proficiency, this book argues that educators need not remain trapped in the phonics versus teaching-for-meaning dilemma and offers instructional alternatives. The book proposes that phonics can work together with the whole language approach to reading and provides an…

This report gives updated information on two literacy programs sponsored by the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The report is in two sections. The first section briefly summarizes findings from studies around the United States of "Writing to Read," (WTR), the K-1 reading/writing program developed by John Henry Martin.…

In the 1970s and 1980s the white Australian author Patricia Wrightson's cross-cultural fantasies concerning the conflict of White characters with Aboriginal folk spirits struck a chord with many adolescent and adult readers who judged these novels to be outstandingly successful. A classroom-based study examined the responses of a class of seventh…