We compared year-long gains in fluency and comprehension in grades 3-5 in 3 treatment and 4 comparison schools. Treatment schools implemented a comprehensive school reform (CSR) program called Bookworms. The program employed challenging text and emphasized high text volume, aggressive vocabulary and knowledge building, and contextualized strategy…

Common Core Reading Standard 10 not only prescribes the difficulty of texts students should become able to read, but also the difficulty diet of texts schools should ask their students to read across the school year. The use of quantitative text-assessment tools in the implementation of this standard warrants an examination into the validity of…

Reports the results of a study of six major reading series to learn which prefixes are taught and at what grade level. (BR)

Points out the superior efficiency and effectiveness of generative techniques of vocabulary development over nongenerative techniques and gives examples of both types. Generative techniques, for approaching unfamiliar words through knowledge of other words, include use of synonymy and antonymy and of external and internal context clues. (BF)

Reviews representative instructional studies of inference training, reciprocal teaching, and process training. Discusses both the concept of explicit comprehension instruction and potential difficulties in classroom implementation. Raises two important curricular concerns. (NH)

Examines evidence on error rate in classroom tasks. Claims the usual interpretation of a negative relationship between error rate (especially in oral reading errors) and reading achievement as meaning that low error rates lead to reading growth may be mistaken. Suggests oral errors cause tension, which increases attention and instigates deeper…

Grounded in schema and generative theories, this research suggests a theoretical framework and a task-specific procedure for integrating reading and writing. Fourth grade students were given a text-related generative writing task and reading recall test. Results support the notion of using writing as an orienting task prior to reading. (DST)

Presents a brief sketch of the history of American reading texts, describing the educational and cultural conditions that have prompted changes in reading methods and materials and in the textbooks themselves. (Author/NH)

Examines instructional procedures found in the preparation and questioning components of directed reading lessons to assist teachers in evaluating these procedures. Background knowledge and vocabulary development were examined in the preparation component; the story map in the questioning component. (Author/NH)

Reports a study of reading instruction in low-ability basal reading groups. Develops and validates a procedure for effective use of oral reading, which, in contrast to practices recommended by basal reader publishers, focuses on reading comprehension and encourages development of fluent, expressive writing. (Author/NH)

Reports an investigation of 31 elementary school students' strategies in answering reading questions from the Stanford Achievement Tests. Results demonstrated that students do employ specific strategies and suggested that test results can be improved by teaching students to attend to all distractors, refer to the reading passage, answer all…

Defines "reading event," as describing sources of meaning children may draw upon to assist comprehension. Comprehension processes are identified, and a model is proposed for influencing students' selection of meaning sources and comprehension processes. (RH)

Results indicated that children judged "imitative" and "contingent" tended to use primarily new information in resolving contradictory motive information in two stories (i.e., the stories' constructs), while children judged "noncontingent" tended to resolve anomalous information by interpreting the stories in terms of old information (i.e., their…