The hard-cover basal textbook continues to dominate teaching and learning in elementary social studies, particularly as a reaction to reduced budgets, the back to basics movement, state-wide testing, and criticism of less traditional teaching practices. Two problem areas encountered by children when using social studies textbooks include lack of…

A study investigated the effects of microcomputers on children's attention to reading tasks and the relationship between previous reading achievement and grade level on such attentional behavior. Fifty-five third and fifth graders read two stories each, one presented on a microcomputer and one presented in print. Television cartoons and rock music…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Examination in English 30 in Alberta, Canada, this reading test (to be administered along with the questions booklet) contains 10 short reading selections taken from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, including the following: "My Magical Metronome" (Lewis Thomas); "Queen Street…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examinations in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this reading test (to be administered along with the questions booklet) contains 10 short reading selections taken from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, including the following: "How to Set a World Record" (William Allen); "Andy…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examinations in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this reading test contains 70 multiple choice test items over the 10 readings in the readings booklet. The questions examine students' skills in (1) understanding meanings, (2) understanding and interpreting the relationships between form and content,…

Intended for students taking the Grade 9 English Language Arts Achievement Test in Alberta, Canada, this reading test (to be administered along with the questions booklet) contains eight short reading selections taken from fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including the following: "Thieving Raffles" (Eric Nicol); "Flight of the…

Intended for students taking the Grade 9 Language Arts Achievement Test in Alberta, Canada, this reading test contains 65 multiple choice test items related to the eight selections in the reading booklet and to a cartoon and four additional reading selections within this booklet. The questions examine the student's skills in (1) understanding…

Predicated on the assumption that many of the problems exhibited by learning disabled children arise from difficulties they have in processing information, the program of research described in this paper was undertaken to (1) identify reading comprehension difficulties that are due to disorders in the reader, and (2) design and test effective…

Focusing on trends in reading achievement during the period from l970 to l984, this report draws from national assessments that involved more than 250,000 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The first chapter (1) provides an overview of the report; (2) summarizes recent achievements documented by the…

This critical review of "Becoming a Nation of Readers" states that the Commission on Reading report contains sensible and practical recommendations, though it is not wholly representative of all the available research on reading and it contains occasional insensitivities to the potential problems within its recommendations. The first…

Reading is a multileveled, interactive, and hypothesis-generating process in which readers construct a meaningful representation of text by using their knowledge of the world and of language. Reviewing research on the reading process, it is clear that context, script (a form of general event representation derived from and applied to social…

The teacher handbook for Progressive Achievement Tests (PATs) in Reading presents an overall description of these survey tests in reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge for school years 3 to 9. There are two alternative forms of each test: (1) the Reading Comprehension tests are designed to measure two major aspects of reading skills…

Investigating the extent to which reading to children and book type affect kindergartners' ability to recall, write about, and read the text that their teacher has just read to them, a study examined the effects that the story reading techniques of six kindergarten teachers had on 52 of their students during three book reading sessions. On three…

Intended for students taking Grade 12 Diploma Examinations in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this reading test contains 70 multiple choice test items related to the 10 selections in an accompanying reading booklet. The questions examine students' skills in (1) understanding meanings; (2) understanding and interpreting the relationships between…

The paper describes the development of the "Test of Thought and Language" (Total) which is intended to allow first grade teachers to determine if students are ready for phonics instruction or if, for some students, the curriculum should first develop language concepts, structures and thinking processes. Background information for the…