A 2-year study designed to develop ways to improve both the quantity and the quality of the comprehension instruction offered by elementary school teachers involved 9 teachers in the first year and 11 teachers in the second. In each year of the study, the same research procedures were followed, with researchers observing the teachers, then working…

Children's understanding of fables and the degree to which knowledge used by the child to understand first language input is also used to understand second language input were studied. In addition, the way that such a relationship changes as the second language is acquired was examined. Students in Spanish-English bilingual programs in…

A study investigated reconstructive recall for linguistic style. It was hypothesized that (1) features of linguistic style would be more difficult to recall than underlying content, (2) reconstructive errors would include stylistic forms recalled as standard forms when subjects lacked productive control of a particular feature of a style, and (3)…

A guide to assist teachers of Polish language arts as the first language of students in the Chicago public schools' transitional bilingual education program follows objectives parallel to those set out for English language instruction, to preserve the integrity of the Polish language. Lessons are presented as suggestions for teaching toward the…

A guide to assist teachers of Vietnamese language arts as the first language of students in the Chicago public schools' transitional bilingual education program follows objectives parallel to those set out for English language instruction, to provide education reflecting the students' cultural and linguistics skills. Lessons are presented as…

"Newsday" has developed a "Science Education Series Program" to help teachers use the newspaper effectively and with a minimum of preparation time to move content limits from the textbook to the current frontiers of research. The program consists of worksheets that advance content goals and other worksheets that advance…

A study investigated the reading comprehension processes of gifted readers, specifically their use of comprehension strategies and their metacognitive awareness. Grade level differences in strategy use and metacognitive awareness were also examined. A standardized reading test and a metacognition questionnaire were administered to 100 gifted…

A study investigated the thinking processes of 14 Anglophone students of French performing challenging reading and summarizing tasks in their first and second languages. Individuals proved to use equivalent higher-order problem-solving strategies while writing and reading in both languages. Strategies varied with the individuals' levels of…

This paper describes Fulton's (1984) developmental teaching program and the research that supports its use. It identifies the instructional procedures that seem to contribute to the program's success, and details these procedures so that teachers can adopt them for immediate use in their classrooms. An overview of the program discusses…

Supported by a rationale for activities in the language arts/English curriculum, this paper demonstrates methods of introducing students to current approaches to oral interpretation of literature. The paper argues that through planning, rehearsing, and reflecting on oral interpretations of literature, readers become increasingly aware of…

A study examined the ways in which college readers interact with literary texts. The method of interviews and think-along protocols, in which a text was read aloud by the subject while he simultaneously verbalized his thoughts, was used to compare the reading processes of eight college freshman to those of eight masters students in literature who…

The development and use of item shells in the construction of a series of standardized tests of reading comprehension at the elementary school level are described. An item shell is an item that is devoid of specific content, but contains key words and a distinctive syntactic structure. The specific content of the item shell varies depending on the…

To help elementary school teachers decide whether writing is beneficial to their students' comprehension, and if it is, which activities are the most effective, a study examined research which dealt with whether the writing performed by elementary school students helps them to comprehend better their own and others' written works. Included are 33…

To determine whether high school students can be trained to use maps more effectively, a study examined linkage of feature and event information, the role of individual differences, and the roles of reading ability and preference for dealing with visual information. Subjects were 31 16- to 17-year-old high school students. Experimental and control…

The difference between acquiring knowledge of a word's meaning and knowing a word well enough for it to aid in the comprehension of a text is investigated by reviewing the most recent findings in the field of vocabulary acquisition. The assumption that vocabulary items are learned through context when the meaning of unknown words can be gleaned…