Core reading programs provide the curriculum and guide the instruction for many classroom teachers. The purpose of this study was to conduct a curriculum analysis of comprehension instruction in the five most widely used core reading programs. The recommended comprehension instruction in grades 3, 4, and 5 was examined to answer four questions:…

Reports from research and the larger educational community demonstrate that too many students have limited ability to comprehend texts. The research reported here involved a two-year study in which standardized comprehension instruction for representations of two major approaches was designed and implemented. The effectiveness of the two…

There is little debate among researchers, policymakers, and educational stakeholders that reading achievement among African American students is an important issue (Strickland, 1994). While several scholars have contributed greatly to the research literature on matters pertaining to African American students and reading, additional research is…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the nature of reading comprehension processes while reading on the Internet. Eleven sixth-grade students with the highest combination of standardized reading scores, reading report card grades, and Internet reading experiences were selected from a population of 150 sixth graders in three…

Analyzes think-aloud protocols generated during reading to locate sources referred to when students made links reaching beyond what they read. Finds proportion of links to sources located within the text decreased and proportion of links outside the context increased over time. Notes students who increased use of sources located outside the task…

Analyzes word recognition instruction in four first-grade classrooms. Finds that: differential instruction may be helpful in first grade; children who enter first grade with low literacy benefit from early and heavy exposure to phonics; and a structured phonics curriculum that includes both onsets and rimes and sounding and blending phonemes…

Investigates the strategic literacy knowledge, abilities, and potential of five Latino/a subjects (three were bilingual). Employs qualitative research methods and cognitive strategy lessons. Finds that students, with instructional support, implemented the focal strategies emphasized during the experiment and engaged in extended discourse which…

Investigates young children's literacy activity within play settings designed to reflect authentic literacy contexts in children's real-world environment. Finds that, in the course of play activities, children demonstrated declarative knowledge about literacy (e.g. names of literacy objects), procedural knowledge, and strategic knowledge. Suggests…

Investigates 11- and 12-year-old open-concept school students' reading and writing engagements as they conducted a research investigation related to World War II. Finds that students who viewed research as a process of transforming information were more likely to demonstrate a range of strategies that allowed them to traverse their topics from…

Examines group and individual differences arising from strategy instruction. Finds support for strategy instruction for at-risk students. Finds also that students' motivation can influence their use of the instruction they receive. Raises critical questions regarding the role of motivation in strategy instruction and use. (RS)

Examines how bilingualism and biliteracy affect metacognition. Finds three strategies unique to successful Latina/o readers: (1) they actively transferred information across languages; (2) they translated from one language to another but most often from Spanish to English; and (3) they openly accessed cognate vocabulary when they read. (RS)

Describes changes in literacy engagement during Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI), a new approach to teaching reading, writing, and science that emphasizes real-world science observations, student self-direction, strategy instruction, collaborative learning, self-expression, and coherence of literacy learning experiences. Finds that…

Examines the effects of providing subjects with prior information about the organization of expository passages. Concludes that a structural organizer with outline grid and that notetaking alone both reliably and markedly facilitated comprehension and recall, and that a structural organizer without outline grid reliably facilitated comprehension…

A study investigated the singular and combined effectiveness of phrasing and repeated readings (practice) on the recall of idea units and narrative categories of fifth grade good and poor readers, concluding that practice rather than phrasing proved to have the most facilitating effect on poor readers' recall of idea units but not narrative…

Investigates the effect of vocabulary-based and generative-reciprocal inference procedure (GRIP) training on third grade readers' comprehension. Reports that the GRIP group outperformed control and basal inference groups on various inferential transfer tasks, indicating that strategies which help students attend to text clues aid in making…