The Maryland School Performance Program released six sample tasks to illustrate the types of assessment tasks that would appear on the 1992 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP). Students' responses to these tasks are open-ended; that is, students generate their own responses. A wide range of responses to each task is acceptable.…

Placing reading instruction in a child-centered, language-rich environment, this book provides preservice elementary teachers at the undergraduate and introductory graduate level with a detailed understanding of how to implement a developmental reading program. The book discusses the role of basal readers, and also discusses teaching reading…

A practicum was designed in response to the increasing numbers of at-risk middle school students lacking appropriate academic skills as well as the motivation to learn. A small-group reading intervention program was implemented to help underachieving students increase their success rate on a mastery level. Targeted students were sixth graders, in…

The improvement of reading comprehension skills in a target group of at-risk students in the second grade of a North Florida school was achieved through the implementation strategies of parental involvement and collaborative learning. At-home parent-child literacy interactions increased and parents became active role models in a Parent as Readers…

The workbook, designed for use by adults learning to read, contains a series of brief personal narratives with photo illustrations and related comprehension and extension exercises. The first section's narratives focus on family relationships and description of the personal characteristics of seven individuals. The second section contains stories…

In 1987, Northern Arizona University's Center for Excellence in Education agreed to provide computer assisted reading instruction for juvenile delinquents experiencing academic difficulties. An interactive instructional program was used that incorporates the Principle of the Alphabet Literacy System (PALS) with the IBM InfoWindow system. PALS…

A preliminary study of job-related communications skills in British Columbia sawmills investigated the extent of agreement between reading grade levels of written workplace materials and reading comprehension levels of employees expected to read them. In 1990, 227 employees in 8 sawmills were interviewed with a 52-item structured interview, a…

Interest is a powerful psychological factor in learning. Middle school students need to be involved in both selecting reading materials and choosing the method of appraisal. Approaches used need to encourage, not hinder interest in reading. Some student projects that have been used as evaluation tools are dioramas, pictures, pantomime, oral…

This practicum focused on the use of repeated taped reading instruction with modeling to improve fluency, comprehension, and automatic word recognition in five students (ages 11-13 years) with learning disabilities for a period of 10 weeks. The instruction also involved the teacher giving corrective feedback and having the students answer story…

This paper discusses the use of American Sign Language (ASL) in an English-as-a-Second-Language approach to teaching reading and writing skills to deaf students. The paper poses and answers the following theoretical and practical questions: (1) What is the nature of first language reading? (2) What is the nature of second language reading? (3)…

A 9-day study based on the framing strategy investigated the effects of using frames on low-performing students' (learning disabled or Chapter 1) comprehension of social studies text. Subjects were 14 fifth-graders from a large urban school district who were reading at least one year below grade level. All lessons were designed to involve students…

The project evaluated the effectiveness of using Total Communication (simultaneous use of sign language and speech) with six infants with Down syndrome as a means of fostering communication while verbal skills and articulatory proficiency develop. Each child was seen within the home environment every second week through 24 months of age and once a…

Developed for teachers of grades 4-8, this unit of study is intended to further students' ability to draw conclusions or predict outcomes using inferential comprehension. Student pages are given which correspond to Levels 9 through 13 in the 1976 reading series of Ginn and Company. Information is given to assist the teacher in explaining…

To provide the most effective instruction, materials, and support for beginning readers, teachers need to know if young children are more likely to process from print to meaning-- bottom-up or text-driven processing--or to interpret print to follow meaning--top-down or concept-driven processing. While some studies reveal a correlation between…

Drawn from an annual symposium held at the University of Guam to recognize and encourage scholarly activities of graduate students in the reading education department and to promote continued interdepartmental dialogue on the teaching of reading, the nine papers in this compilation deal with various approaches to reading instruction. Topics…