Purpose: This final article covering the topic of the interplay between decoding, comprehension, and content versus structure knowledge describes a set of language initiatives that are focused toward content area learning. Inspired by the work of their colleagues from diverse fields and their own work, the authors offer suggestions to clinicians…

Wilson Reading System[R] is a supplemental reading and writing curriculum designed to promote reading accuracy (decoding) and spelling (encoding) skills for students with word-level deficits. The program is designed to teach phonemic awareness, alphabetic principles (sound-symbol relationship), word study, spelling, sight word instruction,…

The Louisiana Striving Readers evaluation assessed the implementation and effectiveness of the Voyager "Passport Reading Journeys" (PRJ), a widely used supplemental literacy intervention for struggling adolescent readers that reflects the research-based practices recommended by the National Reading Panel (2000) and other more recent…

The authors report 1-year follow-up data from 215 English language learners with reading difficulties who received a supplemental first grade reading intervention in the language of their core reading instruction. The researchers provided no intervention or boosters in second grade. The Spanish study revealed significant differences favoring…

"Reading Mastery," one of several curriculum components that constitute the "Direct Instruction" curriculum from SRA/McGraw-Hill, is designed to provide systematic instruction in reading to students in grades K-6. "Reading Mastery," which can be used as an intervention program for struggling readers, as a supplement…

The first goal of this study was to examine young children's developing narrative comprehension abilities using theory-based, authentic measures of comprehension processes. The second goal was to examine the relations among young children's comprehension abilities and other early reading skills. Children ages 4 and 6 listened to or watched two…

The method of repeated readings may be useful with disabled readers. Many disabled readers decode text in a word-by-word fashion and consequently have difficulty understanding what they read. This failure is often attributed to their inability to focus attention simultaneously on decoding and comprehending the message. (Author/SEW)

This study examined the relationships between the cognitive processes of rapid naming and phonological processing and various literacy skills. Variables measured and used in this analysis were phonological processing, rapid naming, reading comprehension, isolated and nonsense word reading, and spelling. Data were collected from 65 second-to-fifth…

This study examined the influences of reading decoding skills and world knowledge on third graders' comprehension of narrative and expository texts. Children read a narrative text and an expository text. Comprehension of each text was assessed with a free recall prompt, three cued recall prompts, and 12 multiple-choice questions. Tests from the…

We review the Simple View of Reading (SVR) model and examine its nature, applicability and validity. We describe the SVR as an abstract framework for understanding the relationship between global linguistic comprehension and word-reading abilities in reading comprehension (RC). We argue that the SVR is neither a full theory of reading nor a…

In order to be a good reader, your child must be able to do two things at the same time: (1) decode the words on the page and (2) understand what the words mean. Early reading instruction focuses on teaching a child how to read single words. But being good at reading single words is not the only skill your child needs. Once your child has become…

Suggests strategies which include risk-taking, monitoring one's own reading, and self-correction for helping beginning readers gain meaning from the printed word. (MKM)

Addresses the negative effects of poor decoding on reading comprehension and reviews successful remedial strategies used with poor readers. Proposes an extensive exposure to printed discourse as well as phrase and sentence reading used in successful remediation as keys to improving poor readers' comprehension. (RS)

In order to have both fluent reading and good comprehension, the student must be brought beyond accuracy to automaticity in decoding. (JH)

The effects of contextual words upon the identification of test words in sentences were studied with 21 hearing impaired children (seven to 12 years old). Significantly more correct discriminations were made on congruous and neutral sentences than on incongruous sentences indicating that hearing impaired children use contextual cues. (Author/SEW)