Other attempts have been made to describe secondary reading practice in American schools (Gee and Forester, 1988; Moore and Murphy, 1987; Moore, Readence and Rickelman, 1983; Nelson and Herber, 1982; Witte and Otto, 1981), but no information exists on reading programs and methods at the middle level, specifically grades 6, 7, and 8. The survey reported here sought information about current practices with regard to reading organization and reading instruction in middle level schools in the U.S.
Morgan is a member of the Department of Educational Foundations and Special Programs at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, where he teaches secondary reading courses. Culver is director of the elementary education program at Virginia Wesley an College, also in Norfolk. ■ The concept of "locus of control" is a promising diagnostic tool for the affective domain. It helps teachers understand and predict affective behaviors in the classroom and offers
We students, teachers, and readers in generaltalk a great deal about understanding. Or rather, we talk a great deal about not understandingnot understanding words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, whole texts. And it is part of a teacher's job, no matter the subject, to teach understanding. The reading teacher, of course, has a particularly large share of responsibility here; in fact, s/he has an entire subject devoted to the task of bringing about understanding-comprehension, it is called. Without comprehension, such other reading tasks as reading speed, retention, evaluation, and criticism are absolutely meaningless. This article explores the nature of comprehension and postulates levels of meaning beyond comprehension as commonly perceived.
ing is the application of the systems approach to instruction. Under Title III grants, funded school districts are attempting to devise instructional systems (often called management systems) for reading. Several research and development centers across the nation are working in this area. While a few reading programs based entirely on systems concepts have been published, some basal reading programs are adding components using principles of the systems approach. During the next few years many school districts will be increasingly involved in purchasing and using reading programs based in some degree upon the systems concepts. It is essential to have some kind of guidelines for evaluating these programs. The ultimate criterion would be that students whose teachers use an in-
works with aboriginals, based at Yirrkala, in the Northern Territory. Propst is an ESL specialist with the Department of Education, Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands. ■ Matching cloze tests have been proposed as an alternative means of producing simply constructed yet valid measures of reading comprehension (Baldauf and Propst 1978). Although they appear to be deceptively easy to a native English-speaking adult, observations in the classroom indicate this is not the case for
Differentiating instruction to accommodate all learners in a classroom, including the most able students, requires a resourceful teacher. Teachers may find help in instructional models that guide the development of qualitatively different programs for students of varying abilities. One such aid that shows promise is Renzulli's (1977) Enrichment Triad Model, and it may be worthwhile to experiment with its application to the teaching of reading. Renzulli defines enrichment as
In many cases, this secondary school program is simply a larger version of elementary remedial program. Some distinction is made in deference to older student's interest and taste, but teaching strategies are the same thing all over again. In spite of fact that a major part of reading problem of older students is that they don't comprehend much of what they read, emphasis in most secondary remedial programs is on word identification skills. Furthermore, most secondary remedial readers who need instruction in word identification have
These skills happen to be the same skills that are required for notetaking; yet, in texts on the teaching of reading, notetaking is rarely suggested as an indicator of whether students have acquired the skills of extracting information from written assignments, or as a method of helping students learn them. This article reports an action research study in which eight junior high content area teachers in an inservice course in teaching reading in the content areas carried out some
Johnson, an associate professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley, has written numerous articles on the problems of teaching Black children. ■ Speakers of nonstandard dialects often translate a reading passage into their own dialect during oral reading. Specifically, a speaker of nonstandard dialect changes whole words or parts of words printed in the text from the way they are printed and should be readthe expected response (ER)to how they are spoken (or not spoken) in a nonstandard dialect-the observed response (OR). This change is a translation without a loss in comprehension. This phenomenon, when it occurs during oral reading, is a dialect shift. It is emphasized that a dialect shift occurs whenever
centripetal heterogeneous kinetic propagate terrestrial abyss conduct homogenous latent quantitative trajectory acoustics diffract hybrid narcosis refract tropism amplitude dipole hypothesis oscillation replicate turbidity anaerobic dynamic inhibit ovule salinity variation apogee ellipse interval oxidation superpose vestigial aurora energy invariant pattern synthesis viscosity biennial exothermic joule perennial taxonomy volatile biosphere ze ith lary related to science, is presented, were identified in locally produced This word list was developed to promaterials. From these words a list vide teachers evidence of the recogof 277 scientific terms, which nition of selected science words by could be defined by use of cornstudents in grades 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, mon graded word lists, was seand 12. Though the list was devellected. Definitions were provided oped for use by teachers in the that contained words with diffiBroward County (Florida) Schools, a culty already established as besubsequent study indicates its utility low the seventh grade vocabulary for other populations (Knight and (Rinsland, 1945; Thorndike and Barry, in press). Lorge, 1944). Each word was Initially, some 450 science words tested with a significant sample KNIGHT & BETHUNE: Science Words 505 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:01:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms of students (N = 2,920) in grades 7-12 from the twenty-nine junior and senior high schools in Broward County. The instruments were designed to test the ability of students to substitute meaningful words or phrases for the vocabulary words as they are used in sentences. The definition developed for each word was not designed to test depth of science knowledge but hopefully would provide a measure of the ability of students to read material that contained these words (Bethune, 1969; Knight and Bethune, 1970). In compiling the lists, if 75 percent of the students at a given grade level knew the word, it was included for that grade level. This is an arbitrary percentage. It is felt that, given proper contextual support, students at a given grade level would recognize a larger percentage of words. The words in the list could thus be used successfully in classes at that level. Since the trend was to higher percentages at higher grades any word appearing on the seventh grade list could be considered proper for eighth grade and above. Conversely any word on the eighth grade list but not on the seventh grade list should be clarified for the seventh grade students. Some possible applications for this list are: 1. Teachers may use words that are already in the reading vocabulary of students as they prepare materials for classroom use. They will be able to omit words which are probably not understood by the intended reader thereby making their materials more readable. 2. Teachers may use the list as a guide in estimating the number of new vocabulary words introduced in commercially prepared
Why literature? It could be argued that reading literature should not be contaminated by the demands of instructional objectives. This argument rests on the belief that extensively analyzing a piece of good literature ruins the simple pleasure of reading a well told tale. There may be some merit to this positionit depends on the way the analysis is handled. However, there are also good reasons for using literature to teach critical thinking. First, close examination of
an organized approach to study-type reading tasks. These systems involve a series of steps usually arranged in the form of an acronym or novel title such as OARWET, 0K4R. The forerunner of most study techniques was the SQ3R method, developed by Robinson in 1946. This system set out a number of steps: (S), Question (Q), Read (R), Recite (R), Review (R). The Survey stage which directed the student to look over sub-
with the influx of large numbers of students deficient in reading, remedial reading services are in great demand in community colleges. trend is likely to continue as community colleges develop more liberal admissions policies and seek programs for the disadvantaged. As one admissions director summed up the situation, The question now is how do we meet the needs of students regardless of their record and level of performance? Where do we begin with them and where do we end? In community colleges many students have a history of failure (particularly in academic subjects), view reading as a frustrating experience devoid of pleasure, and have had years of remedial reading instruction but little satisfaction in using a textbook as a source of knowledge. challenge? First of all, to interest the high risk student in helping himself; secondly, to deal effectively with his reading problems; and finally, to help him apply his new skills to other course work before he becomes a casualty. Can this challenge be met through a college reading and study skills course? Yes, if one accepts the fact that the course has a corrective remedial function and if one applies the axiom that The essential part of a corrective program is definiteness.1 Definiteness, for the instructor, is using student performance as a base from which corrective action is contemplated, practiced, and measured. For the student, definiteness is knowing how he is performing at all times, what he can do to improve, how far he can expect to improve, and what specific progress he is making.
I Each year middle school teachers must evaluate and place large numbers of elementary students from their feeder schools into their reading program. Faced with this arduous task, teachers often allow students to enter their programs without a reading evaluation or rely solely on standardized achievement test scores to place the students. Neither of these methods is satisfactory, but as yet there has been no manageable alternative to the use of test scores when placing students in middle school reading groups. This article presents an alternate method of placing large groups of students that is quick yet uses multiple criteria effectively.
Associate professor of reading education at the University of Georgia, Robert Palmatier has an interest in secondary reading and notetaking. J. Michael Bennett is assistant professor of reading at Indian River Community College, Fort Pierce, Florida. ■ Notetaking is an accepted phenomenon of the American college scene. For some time, however, little interest has been given to the specific practices of college students in recording lecture notes. The majority of the research work in notetaking was done in the first four decades of
Why study characterization? Consider some of the goalsboth affective and cognitivefor teaching characterization. One important affective goal is to aid adolescents to understand themselves better. By studying literary characters with problems similar to their own, adolescents may compensate for their perceived failures. They may also identify with characters who possess different qualities or who encounter problems similar to their
The author and her colleague at Hofstra University, David L. Shepherd, recently completed two inservice projects at high schools. Both projects were attempts to establish all-school reading programs, especially through reading instruction in content areas. Various portions of their report and recommendations will sound somewhat familiar and prove helpful simultaneously. ■ A decade ago, Mary Austin and her team of researchers undertook a reading study sponsored by Harvard University and the Carnegie Foundation to find out how colleges and universities in the United States were preparing teachers of reading and to make specific recommendations for improvement. Recommendation number nine was a c urse in basic reading instruction be required of all prospective secondary school teachers. (Austin 1961) This recommendation was based on the recognition that the development of reading skills past the elementary grades is essential for success in the junior and senior high schools and that high school teachers were not prepared to guide their necessary development. Since that momentous report, little has changed in preservice training and not much more in the way of preparation at the graduate level for teachers of subjects other than English. The failure of college and university teacher-training programs not only to provide, but to require a course in basic reading instruction
