In my continued work with students, both in assessments and in tutorials, I see challenges in the abilities of middle school and high school students to understand their textbook materials. Working with students who have been given writing argumentative response assignments, specifically, frequent CSE (Claim, Support, Explain) paragraphs, I have begun to wonder what preparation…

Kendeau, et all, in the most recent Learning Disabilities Research & Practice journal discusses reading comprehension problems from the perspective of cognitive functioning in three areas: inferences formation, executive function (working memory and inhibition), and attention allocation to the task. I found this article very interesting in that their views mirror the problems I see…

The recent issue of The Reading Teacher introduced a new tool in the Teaching Tip column. Sarah Ferris has developed the Revoicing Technique, a repetition procedure in which teachers reflect back to students their classroom talk. After a student has presented ideas within the class discussion, the teacher repeats “back all or part of what…

Most of my current students are focused on strengthening basic word recognition and passage fluency. While comprehension skill building is important, less emphasis is placed on meaning in our work. A recent study (Hollenbeck, 2013) focused on a new teaching technique for use in working with students struggling with learning disabilities. She contended that the…

I am always looking for the magic key that will give my students the needed boost in recalling information in their coursework. I just ran across an article in my current “reading research file housecleaning” project that provided a good reminder of the value of strategic use of learning tools such as testing and reviewing,…

Unlike articles on text complexity issues that perplex secondary readers, this article addresses the need to look more closely at the nature of primary-level text complexity. As a diagnostician who studies children’s reading abilities, this article presented an overview of critical comprehension features that are often overlooked at this level. This summer I worked with…