A study examined the results and effectiveness of a pilot Reading Recovery program in New Hampshire. Fifteen New Hampshire school districts, including 29 different schools, participated in the first year of the program (school year 1990-91). A total of 223 first-grade children identified as being at risk of reading failure were served. Of these,…

A study examined the results and effectiveness of the third year of the Reading Recovery program in New Hampshire. With the 50 Reading Recovery teachers from previous classes, 32 teachers in the new class, and 3 teacher leaders, a total of 85 teachers taught Reading Recovery during the 1992-93 school year. A total of 422 first-grade children…

A descriptive study examined the relationships between what young children learned about written language in the home and their parents' levels of literacy ability and their uses of print in their lives. Twenty-four children, aged 4-6, in 20 families of low socioeconomic status were observed during their waking hours in their homes and communities…

Two combined second and third grade classrooms were observed throughout the five weeks of a summer school program to determine what "reading instruction" was in the contextual reality of classroom life. Observers viewed approximately 20 hours of reading instruction per week. In addition, they interviewed the classroom teachers informally as the…

This curriculum guide offers suggestions for reading improvement for grades K-12. Following an introduction and statement of philosophy, a section on the theoretical and research basis of the program outlines recommendations from the National Academy of Education's Commission on Education and Public Policy's "Becoming a Nation of…

Reading journals can help college readers successfully meet the demands of complex and sophisticated texts when students use them as a strategy for making meaning rather than simply extracting information. There are three primary reasons for using reading journals at the college level: (1) writing is a way of discovering when students are free to…

Focusing on the relationship between learning oral language and learning about written language, this book discusses the emergent literacy (EL) of children growing up in a Western, print-oriented society, as well as findings of research conducted during the past 15 years on how children make sense of the way in which literacy works in their…

A study investigated the literacy development of bilingual children as they interacted in the social context of their preschool classrooms. Subjects were 12 native Spanish speaking preschoolers in a headstart classroom. It was hypothesized that what bilingual children bring to the classroom in terms of experience, values, language, culture, and…

A preliminary study investigated whether regular periods of sustained silent reading (SSR) would positively affect verified silent reading comprehension scores for eighth grade students. The hypothesis tested was that students allowed 15 minutes of recreational reading (reading self selected material for enjoyment) five times a week for three…

A substantial body of reading research indicates that poor readers would become much more successful if teachers pretended that they were actually good readers. First, research suggests that teachers should provide poor readers with more silent and less oral reading time, thereby furnishing them with more reading experience that emphasizes meaning…

This collection is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The six titles deal with the following topics: (1) a comparison of mastery and nonmastery learning approaches to teaching reading comprehension to Title I students in second through sixth grade, (2) induced mental imagery and the comprehension…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: (1) influences on beliefs about reading and learning to read and instructional behavior of student teachers, (2) teachers' decisions about basal reading lessons, (3) a study of effective…

Focusing on family interaction, this book discusses a study designed to develop systematic ways of looking at reading and writing as activities that have consequences in and are affected by family life. Topics of the seven chapters are as follows: the six families involved in the research, conservation and change in the transmission of family…

A study evaluated the effectiveness of a series of print materials and interactive computer-guided study programs designed to lead undergraduate students to apply basic textbook reading and concept mapping strategies to the study of science and social science textbooks. Following field testing with 25 learning skills students, 50 freshman biology…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The six titles deal with the following topics: (1) the role of adversative connectives in helping good and poor readers to integrate textual information; (2) trends in written products of general writing, basic writing, and basic…