Reading comprehension is the goal of reading, and making inferences is vital. Authors usually expect readers to make multiple types of inferences, including anaphoric, background knowledge, predictive, and retrospective. Common core assessments include all of these, yet instructional materials focus mostly on only one type, retrospective. This…

This article investigates how affluent students made sense of social justice issues that were embedded in mathematics learning activities. I present 2 case studies of such activities at the intermediate and secondary levels in 2 different schools. The analysis draws on video records and classroom artifacts and applies the theoretical framework of…

It is easy for intermediate students to get the wrong ideas about the purpose of reading. Educators pay so much attention to decoding and fluency in the early years that children sometimes come to believe that flawless and rapid word recognition is the point. As texts get more demanding or unfamiliar, some of the "good readers" in classes begin to…

Argues that vocabulary is best taught by helping students experience the meaning of words. Offers research background and four teaching methods to use with intermediate grade students. (FL)

To evaluate different strategies for improving students' comprehension skills, particularly their inference ability, 42 fifth grade students identified as good or average readers were placed into one of three groups for an eight-week instructional period. Students in one group, the Content and Structure group, received systematic attention, story…

A study was conducted to identify the contributions of both prior knowledge and prereading vocabulary instruction to passage comprehension. In addition, semantic mapping and semantic feature analysis--instructional strategies that build upon students' prior knowledge--were compared with a modified basal approach for effectiveness as prereading…

Concludes that sixth-grade students taught with methods that used a structured overview to activate background knowledge, the cloze procedure to develop an inferential thinking strategy, and a self-monitoring checklist to maintain the strategy increased their inferential comprehension skills as measured by both immediate and delayed transfer…

The effects of a visual advance organizer on a biology concept learning task among fifth graders (n=48) was investigated. After exposure to the advance organizer, three levels of learning outcomes-knowledge, comprehension, and application-were evaluated. Findings of the study are discussed in terms of the assimilation theory, aptitude-treatment…

A study examined (1) relationships between background knowledge and reading passage comprehension, (2) the reliability of a passage-specific background knowledge measure used as the knowledge criterion, (3) the effect of a prereading language and concept organizer activity on available background knowledge, and (4) the effect of that prereading…

A study investigated the effectiveness of using thematic organizers to increase the reading comprehension of poor readers. The thematic organizer was used to expand the readers' prior knowledge by defining the implied thematic concept and presenting relevant examples of that concept. Twenty-four fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students who had been…

Grade-5 teachers, who were nominated by their supervisors as effective in educating their students to be readers and writers, responded to questionnaires about their practice. The 33 teachers claimed commitments to: (1) extensive reading at the heart of their reading instruction; (2) diverse instructional activities (e.g., whole-group instruction,…

A study investigated the effects of direct instruction in the process of revision on students' knowledge of the revision process, their ability to make revisions on paper, and the quality of their writing. Subjects, 30 sixth grade students, were divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received instruction in the…

In most elementary schools in the United States, students get their first systematic introduction to history as a discipline and to chronological treatment of U.S. history as subject matter in fifth-grade U.S. history courses. To develop information about the knowledge and misconceptions concerning U.S. history that fifth-grade teachers can expect…

The effectiveness of three instructional approaches was investigated in a study of how best to facilitate vocabulary acquisition. The three approaches were (1) the cognitive approach, a method employing dictionary worksheets and patterned after the most commonly used method of teaching vocabulary; (2) the affective approach, which urged students…

Use of metacognitive strategies, creative problem solving, and creative thinking techniques in intermediate grade writing instruction can promote students' thinking and creativity. Metacognitive strategies can help students attack the writing task in an orderly fashion. Answering specific questions for descriptive, expository, narrative, or…