Teaching reading strategies and guiding students towards self-regulated reading routines are promising approaches to fostering reading comprehension in students with learning disabilities. The aim of this study was to evaluate in a sample of 73 fifth to eighth graders with learning disabilities (IQ higher than 85 and reading skills below…

Using multi-institution data and a longitudinal, pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the impact of honors programs on student experiences of good practices in undergraduate education as well as cognitive development in the first year of college. We found students in honors programs advantaged in terms of the good practice measures…

Upper-elementary students encounter a sometimes dizzying array of traditional and nontraditional texts both in and outside of the classroom. This practical handbook helps teachers in grades 4-6 harness the instructional potential of fiction, poetry, and plays; informational texts; graphic novels; digital storytelling; Web-based and multimodal…

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) program is exploring a change in Section 3 of the TOEFL test that would replace the vocabulary subpart with additional reading comprehension questions. This study investigated the proposed revision in terms of the length and timing that would be necessary to address concerns of test speededness of…

A study examined how elementary school children spontaneously construct meaning when reading informational text. In particular, the study explored: what kinds of knowledge they draw on and how they use it to help them understand what they read; and how does what they do influence what they recall. Twenty-nine 6th graders from two elementary…

The relationship between embedded support devices (ESDs) and study results was examined to determine whether ESDs have a positive effect on study outcome. Two versions of a learning unit of a governmental law course at the Open University of the Netherlands were constructed. One represented the original text and the other was about 40% shorter as…

Teachers at an elementary school in a working class neighborhood outside Houston, Texas, invited children and their parents to attend 10 Parent-Child Literacy Workshops held on Saturday mornings in spring 1994. Spanish and English speaking parents, together with their children, began each Saturday session by listening to their child read in the…

This book is a collection of classroom activities, exercises, and suggestions for reading instruction, contributed by teachers who have used them in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes. It is organized in three major sections: extensive reading (reading a great deal of comprehensible material); intensive reading (focusing on specific skills…

Offering practical, classroom-based strategies teachers can use to promote literacy development, this book presents many examples of children engaging in discussion activities about narrative and informational text that emphasize collaborating, constructing meaning, and using these different types of texts to arrive at new understandings. Chapters…

This report describes a program for improving reading skills. The targeted population consisted of first and second grade students from urban and rural communities in Northern Illinois. The problem of underachievement in reading was documented by reading inventories, writing samples, and writing prompts. Analysis of probable cause data revealed…

In a study at California State University, Sacramento, the effects of color light and relaxation exercise therapy were investigated with 16 students (ages 23 to 48) with learning disabilities. Therapy consisted of either 20 sessions viewing color light through a Lumatron instrument or 20 sessions listening to relaxation exercise tapes. Diagnostic…

A study examined the use of the accelerated reader (AR) computer program to increase the reading comprehension scores on the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) of sixth-grade students compared to the previous year when they did not use the program. The study reviewed results and methods from previous research regarding use of the AR program. Subjects…

A study examined retelling as a reading comprehension-enhancing technique. Subjects were 26 urban, lower socio-economic fourth graders from New Jersey (Essex County), including 10 girls and 16 boys. A control sample answered questions as a follow-up to reading basal stories; an experimental sample retold the stories as a follow-up. Comparable…

There is a considerable interest at Educational Testing Service (ETS) to include performance-based, natural language constructed-response items on standardized tests. Such items can be developed, but the projected time and costs required to have these items scored by human graders would be prohibitive. In order for ETS to include these types of…

This paper investigates the intentional creation of ambiguity by composers of cryptic crossword puzzles. Taking a research question of "what makes a cryptic clue more difficult to solve than a simple crossword clue," it compares a sample of cryptic and quick crosswords from "The Guardian" and attempts to isolate the linguistic…