The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which first grade subjects retain their reading ability over the summer vacation period. The subjects consisted of 545 first grade children, representing all first graders in nine elementary schools from four northeastern Wisconsin school districts. The subjects were divided into two…

In a partial replication of Samuels' (1972) experiments, 60 first grade pupils were assigned to a letter name group, a letter discrimination group, or a control group to investigate the effect of letter name knowledge on learning to read words. Artificial letters formulated by Gibson, et al. (1962) were used instead of those of Samuels, and…

This study was undertaken in a single school district to determine if variation in reading achievement levels was related to some social factors. The social factors analyzed included student IQ, student socioeconomic status (SES), teacher SES, school SES, and school classroom SES. Data was culled from the personal records of 1,522 students.…

This study investigated the relationship between a reader's attitude toward his instructional climate and his diversity of reading interests. The sample for the study consisted of three classes of fourth grade students chosen from a randomly selected elementary school in Greenwich, Connecticut. All subjects were administered (1) the Affective…

This study is a final evaluation of the Harding, Oklahoma, Right to Read project covering the time period from the summer of 1972 through the summer of 1974. The purposes of the longitudinal study were to describe each phase of the project and to answer two questions: What was the nature of inservice training given to teachers? What classroom…

The purposes of this study were to make comparisons between reading at all grades on the basis of instruction and materials and the Oklahoma City public schools' reading philosophy, and to provide insight as to why the reading grade scores were low, particularly at the fourth grade level. The evaluation process was concerned with surveying the…

This paper gives an overview of the program for the Fifth International Reading Association World Congress on Reading and reviews some of the works and research of educational authorities and how these affect reading. The contents include: "Symposium A," which addresses cognitive functions required for reading, comprehension, and how ability and…

This examination of the processes in reading comprehension is divided into seven categories. "Theoretical Foundations" reviews some of the research conducted by Bruner, Piaget, and Bloom in the areas of cognition or comprehension processes of young children. "Development of a Spiraling Reading Curriculum" examines a spiraling taxonomy of reading…

It was hypothesized that instructing elementary school children to generate meaningful story relationships would increase reading comprehension and retention of low frequency reading materials. It was predicted that generation treatments, which involved various degrees of structural paragraph organization, would produce greater reading…

There are three main reasons why reading research has not had a stronger influence on what goes on in schools. The first reason is the powerful impact of social forces such as the bandwagon effect, the pendulum swing, and the prevailing climate of opinion. These factors determine to an unfortunately large degree whether or not particular research…

The effects of typeface and item options arrangement on comprehension as indicated by multiple-choice test performance were investigated. Copies of the Ability to Interpret Reading Materials in the Social Studies, SRA Iowa Tests of Educational Development, Form X-4 were prepared in four typefaces: elite, pica, proportional, and script. For each…

Research on the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.) is viewed from two aspects--its limitations and how it can be improved. Thus far research has indicated that (1) transition from i.t.a. to traditional orthography is not the problem expected and (2) the children who are taught with i.t.a. read no better or worse than children taught with the…

Two studies were conducted to investigate the use of a technique for providing a grade-level interpretation for cloze readability scores. In the first study, Bormuth's cloze-test criteria were compared with the results of the Fry and Dale-Chall readability formulae. A total of 133 students in grades 4 to 8 were required to read a 250-word passage…

A questionnaire was constructed and evaluated by specialists in the field of reading instruction to gain information regarding the use of the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i/t/a). Elementary teachers and reading specialists in 16 randomly sampled school districts in nine states were questioned. Eight of the systems were in districts generally…

The transfer relationships between three tasks used in the Southwest Regional Laboratory's (SWRL) First-Year Communications Skills Program to help the child recognize the relationship between isolated letter sounds and the same sounds embedded in a word context were investigated. The three tasks were learning isolated letter sounds, learning…