Teaching Reading Comprehension in the Middle Grades

Abstract

This chapter aims to reading comprehension instruction during the middle elementary years, specifically grades three through eight. It focuses on existing instructional approaches and programs designed to improve comprehension. All programs contain a variety of activities that purport to enhance comprehension. Such variety makes it difficult to identify with confidence which aspects of comprehension instruction are important, that is, which are functionally related to changes in comprehension instruction upon which programs may vary, and which are at least plausibly related to program effectiveness. The most prevalent approach to teaching reading comprehension is through basal readers. The frequent adoption of basal series is due in part to commercial publishers' success in creating a teaching tool that is unrivaled for convenience. The manuals that accompany basal readers are explicit about the skills that their programs teach. As mentioned earlier, there is some controversy surrounding the number and nature of reading comprehension subskills.

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