In order to investigate elementary school students' understanding of historical time, this study conducted open-ended interviews with 58 children in kindergarten through sixth grade. The students were asked to place nine illustrations from various periods of American history in chronological order and to talk about the reasoning behind the order…

Designed to provide specific instructional suggestions for integrating basic reading and writing instruction in the elementary school, the lesson ideas presented in this booklet are applicable across grade levels and can be used with any basic reading and language arts textbook series. The 30 ideas cover a variety of areas, including the…

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses that the ability to draw inferences from a text about an unstated agent is based on the quality of information available to the reader, and that the quality of the information is itself based on the unique nature of cues embedded in the text and on the relevance of prior knowledge held by the…

This 3-year project examined the processes and strategies employed by English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and native-English-speaking students when learning from academic texts. A conceptual model guided the analysis of talk aloud protocols elicited from students as they answered questions from textbook materials used in an introductory…

A study investigated the influence of key factors (general comprehension ability, prior knowledge of passage topic, interest in passage topic, and locus of control) on training at-risk college students in the use of graphic organizers as a cognitive learning strategy. Subjects, 60 college freshmen required to take a developmental reading/study…

One recommendation of the 1989 California Strategic Plan for Adult Education is the use of EduCard. EduCard, the Adult Education Access Card, is a means of giving learners access to information about educational opportunities and providing administrators with machine-readable information on learners' prior education and traiing. Three models are:…

Designed to explore what is being done to help learning disabled (LD) readers develop comprehension skills, this paper reviews research in teaching reading comprehension to LD students and develops generalizations from the research to guide reading comprehension instruction for such students. The 10 generalizations presented and discussed in the…

The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant evidence concerning the relationship between knowledge and its effect on learning, with an end to answering the questions: (1) How important is knowledge to learning? and (2) How does the relative importance of knowledge change with development? The paper is divided into three main sections:…

Two descriptive pilot studies employed a multi-group and pre- and post-design to analyze the relationship between students' exposure to computers and reductions in their computer anxiety scores and the relationship between the amount of computer exposure to computer anxiety scores. In the first study, standardized measures of computer anxiety and…

Intended for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in reading methods, as well as by classroom teachers, this book brings together teaching strategies and materials suggested by recent developments in the study of reading comprehension. Each of the eight chapters includes the background and rationale for the practices described. The first…

A study investigated the degree to which first language ability was associated with successful English-as-a-second-language acquisition in 33 outstanding Indonesian teachers. It examined the applicability of theories of common underlying proficiency in the storage of two languages and the development of cognitive academic language proficiency. The…

In reviewing current literature on the importance of examples in the process of teaching learning, this report takes into particular consideration textbook approaches that emphasize the role of examples for comprehension and motivation. Utilizing a constructive theory of prose comprehension, it then attempts to specify the function of examples in…

Jackdaws are collections of interesting artifacts that provide information about a particular subject, period, or idea, and build background and interest in works of literature for children. Jackdaws are easy to construct: practically anything that is related in some fairly direct way to a piece of literature and that can aid a student's…

Two studies examined how the factors of content-relevant knowledge and text organization influence students' abilities to study and to remember text information. The first experiment examined the effect of prior content knowledge on students' ability to identify important information in the text. Forty 7th- and forty 11th-grade students, experts…

A study was conducted to determine the benefits of an approach to teaching inferential skills that combined an explicit attempt to sensitize children to why and how one should draw inferences to prior knowledge with substantial practice in drawing such inferences during story discussions. Subjects were 20 good and 20 poor fourth grade readers who…