Comprehension

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2003/index.html

Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge--of Words and the World (pdf file, 395k)
Scientific Insights into the Fourth-Grade Slump and Stagnant Reading Comprehension
By E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

With a scientific consensus established on how best to teach decoding, we’ve reached the next reading frontier: increasing reading comprehension. Among poor children, low comprehension is ruining their chances for academic success. Among all children, comprehension scores are stagnant. Convincing research tells us that key to bothproblems is to systematically build children’s vocabulary, fluency, and domain knowledge.

By Nell K. Duke, V. Susan Bennett-Armistead, and Ebony M. Roberts

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2003/void.html

Filling the Great Void
Why We Should Bring Nonfiction into the Early-Grade Classroom

Nell K. Duke, V. Susan Bennett-Armistead, and Ebony M. Roberts

Data from several different sources converge on the point that informational text is scarce in primary-grade classrooms. One such source of data is the analyses of the text genres represented in basal reading series. The proportions we found reported in studies within the last two decades ranged
from a high of 33.8 percent factual articles in eight basal reading series for grade 2 (Schmidt, Caul, Byers, & Buchman, 1984) to a low of 12 percent nonfiction in five basal reading series for grade 1 (Hoffman et al., 1994).
In the most recent analysis of which we are aware, Moss and Newton (1998) examined six grade-2 basal reading series, copyright 1995 to 1997. They found a mean of 16 percent of selections that could be classified as informational literature.

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1kwlh.htm

The K-W-L-H teaching technique is a good method to help students activate
prior knowledge. It is a group instruction activity developed by Donna Ogle
(1986) that serves as a model for active thinking during reading. 

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1465/

The Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement
(OERI) asked RAND to examine how OERI might improve the quality and
relevance of the education research it funds. The RAND Reading Study Group
was charged with developing a research agenda to address the most pressing
issues in literacy and the teaching of reading.

http://www.ciera.org/library/archive/2001-02/04OCT99-58-MSarchive.html

Paul van den Broek
University of Minnesota
1. Problems and Objectives

Television occupies a large portion of American children’s time. Starting in preschool, children spend more time watching television than participating in any other activity except sleeping (D. Anderson, Field, P. Collins, Lorch, & Nathan, 1985; Huston, Wright, Rice, Kerkman, & St. Peters, 1987). Children also have extensive experience with television before they are exposed to many socializing agents, such as schools, peers, and religious institutions (Huston, Watkins, & Kunkel, 1989). Given the central role of this medium in most children’s lives, it is important to understand its potential positive and negative effects on a variety of cognitive, academic, social, behavioral, and attitudinal outcomes.

http://muskingum.edu/~cal/database/general/reading.html

Reading comprehension refers to the ability to understand information presented in written form. While this process usually entails understanding textbook assignments, reading comprehension skills also may affect one’s interpretation of directions on exams, labs, and homework assignments and completion of job applications or questionnaires.

The following paragraphs consider several basic topics related to reading comprehension.

* Metacognitive Behaviors of Good and Poor Readers
* Reasons for Lack of Comprehension
* Troubleshooting

http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/readquest/
***
ReadingQuest is designed to provide you with the philosophical bases for
sound comprehension strategy instruction, directions for a range of
comprehension and content reading strategies, and printable handouts and
masters for transparencies. You will be invited to think about how a social
studies skills framework might help you choose the right strategies for your
lessons.