The domino effect of illiteracy can be halted if students are given opportunity early in life to develop a positive attitude toward reading. Research supports the notion that reading interests lead to knowledge, which leads, in turn, to increased comprehension. Motivational ideas include using trade books and literature as collateral material in…

Presented is a guide for teaching activities produced as a result of a Learning in Science Project investigation which showed that children often have quite different meanings for the words "animal,""plant," and "living" than do scientists. Included are: (1) focus of instruction at different educational levels; (2) a…

The concept of a chemical reaction (as opposed to physical mixing, dissolution, or change of state) is developed in this five-part unit. In addition, the ideas that chemical reactions involve the formation of new substances and that mass is conserved in a chemical reaction are stressed. Part 1 discusses unit objectives and considers teachers'…

The major focus of this unit is on changes where substances do not, from the scientific viewpoint, actually change into other substances. For example, substances may expand or contract upon heating or change form (such as ice to water). Part 1 provides a 12-item instrument to enable teachers to check their own ideas about this topic and to clarify…

The Learning in Science Project (Primary)--LISP(P)--was designed to examine problems and difficulties in primary science and to explore ways of overcoming these problems. Early research led to a proposal that children's questions and explanations could form the basis of an alternative teaching approach. However, several issues were raised which…

In an effort to implement a program of reciprocal teaching dialogues, 6 first-grade teachers orally presented third-grade biology lessons to a group of 6 students, most of whom were identified as at risk for academic difficulty. Teachers aimed to teach students ways to approach learning from text and increase students' understanding of biological…

A study examined the reading experiences of students receiving remedial reading or resource room instruction in order to identify the similarities and differences in remedial reading instruction. Subjects, 78 students enrolled in remedial or resource room programs in six different elementary school districts in upstate New York, had their reading…

Representing a first attempt by English teachers in Scotland to address a professional mandate that they teach and assess the modes of talking and listening, this booklet outlines both the scope and the details of an oral/aural syllabus. The eight chapters in the booklet cover the following areas: (1) the oral syllabus--principles and approaches;…

Papers delivered at the second American Reading Forum are collected in this yearbook. While all of the essays focus on the theme of reading in the disciplines, many of them respond to a preceding essay. The essays and reactions cover a variety of topics, including the following: (1) a qualitative analysis of reading instruction in low level…

Many adult poor readers do not organize what they read in a way that best facilitates good comprehension. To help students overcome this problem, the Adult Day and Evening School in Oakland, California, organized a reading laboratory for their mostly low-income, educationally disadvantaged students with a diverse range of needs. Instruction in the…

These proceedings of the 1976 Georgetown Round Table are divided into four sections that deal with: (1) synchronic and diachronic aspects of semantics; (2) semantics and linguistics; (3) semantics and other disciplines; and (4) semantics and teaching methods. More specifically the papers treat: the semantic interpretation of anaphoric expressions;…

Adult English as a second language (ESL) students must develop listening comprehension skill for two reasons: they need it for survival purposes immediately and it is the first step toward acquisition of English. These two needs reflect the distinction between listening for comprehension and listening for acquisition; they must be accounted for in…

A study was conducted to determine whether students who mapped prior and post knowledge of a basal reading lesson would achieve higher scores on a comprehension test and write better summaries of those stories than would students who received traditional basal reading instruction. Subjects, 30 fifth grade students, participated in either a…

This issue contains the following articles: "Progressive Decontrol through Deletion," by Robert C. Weissberg; "The Scrutable Chinese," by Jason B. Alter; "Gadgets: Some Non-Verbal Tools for Teaching Pronunciation," by Judy Gilbert; "ELI and English Skills in JFS Library-Media Complex," by Curtis Fawson; and "Aural Comprehension: Mini Lessons in…

This paper discusses the problem of providing language practice for foreign language students that is meaningful and communicative as well as structured sufficiently to give practice toward functional command of basic grammatical components. A brief review of the communicative status of drills is presented, along with a technique designed to bring…