Applies an aesthetic instrument to first-grade students' pictorial/oral and written responses to determine if significant aesthetic growth was demonstrated in responses collected over a three-month period. Compares students' written growth to growth demonstrated in pictorial/oral responses. Finds that pictorial and oral responses can serve as…

Assesses the effectiveness of whole language instruction over the course of a school year. Finds that middle and low progressing experimental subjects and experimental males at each of three ability levels attained significantly higher mean scores on a cloze test than did their counterparts in the control group (who used basals). (RS)

Describes a teacher's first efforts to implement Reading Workshop in her classroom. Reports the study she conducted that convinced her that Reading Workshop successfully improves reading comprehension and counters students' negative attitudes toward reading. (RS)

Describes the complex and sometimes conflicting components involved in reading assessment issues and proposes a solution that involves linkages among assessment audiences and approaches. Concludes with remarks about how school districts might pull together all the pieces and solve the assessment puzzle for themselves. (PRA)

Discusses three significant developments in comprehension theory (integration of information, prior knowledge, and prose organization) together with how certain innovative testing strategies can be used to match theory with format. Finds that six of the tests commonly used by special educators assess either a single dimension of reading…

The Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement is a norm-referenced, individually administered measure of the school achievement of students in grades 1-12, focusing on the areas of reading decoding, reading comprehension, mathematics application, mathematics computation, and spelling. The test's administration, summation of data, standardization,…

The Multilevel Academic Survey Test is intended for students in grades 3-8 and older students who perform inadequately on K-8 reading and math content. It determines which students need special services and determines appropriate instruction according to specific curriculum objectives. This paper describes administration, data summation,…

Investigated the effects of four writing experiences, grade, and reading level on elementary students' narrative writing. For 14 days, students wrote in response to 4 stimuli. Poststudy writing samples indicated students wrote in response to a common but different writing prompt. There were main effects for grade and reading level. (SM)

Compares results of a modified whole language approach (incorporating daily 15-minute total class phonics instruction) with those obtained from a popular basal approach. Finds that students in the whole language classes made greater gains in phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and total reading achievement than students in the basal…

Results of this study supported the belief that whole language strategies and routines used in first grade classrooms will yield scores on traditional reading standardized achievement tests that are comparable or superior to those resulting from the use of basal reader programs. (Author/IAH)

Investigates the phenomenon of topic shift (sentences initiating a new topic are given additional processing time by skilled readers). Finds adults showed a proportionately greater effect than fifth graders when more difficult expository texts were used but not with easy narratives. Finds that paragraph marking did not influence the processing of…

Compared the grade level difficulty obtained from seven readability formulas to student reading levels from two national standardized tests to determine which formulas best determined the readability of computer-based text. Found that the Flesch-Kincaid, FOG, and ARI formulas provided the best estimate of reading grade level of computer-based text…

Trains good and poor third-grade readers to manipulate the phonological structure of words as a means of facilitating ability to name pictured objects. Finds that both groups benefited from training, even though good readers performed consistently better than poor readers. Suggests that more extensive training may help poor readers use their tacit…

Reports results of two experiments on fourth- through seventh-grade below-average readers' sensitivity to Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure (BOSS) in visual word recognition. Suggests that children are sensitive to the BOSS parsing principle and that this could be used in promoting word knowledge. (RS)

Eighty-one kindergarten children at risk for reading disabilities were assigned to either code-emphasis or meaning-emphasis instruction for first and second grades. Children who received code instruction subsequently scored higher than the other group on reading and spelling measures. Critical instructional program elements are discussed.…