Improving the Reading Comprehension Skills of Poor Readers

Although much has been written about reading comprehension in the last twenty years, theories defining the comprehension process, and strategies on how to teach it still pique the interest of educators. This article addresses the negative effects of poor decoding on reading comprehension, and reviews various strategies that have been used with poor readers to successfully compensate for the problem. It is proposed that the extensive exposure to printed discourse, and the phrase and sentence reading provided students in these successful remediation strategies are keys to improving the comprehension of poor readers

Phonics…Learning to Read and All That Stuff

(Editor\u27s note- Dr. J. Lloyd Eldredge, Coordinator of Elementary Education for the State of Utah, recently presented a week-long conference for the Reading Institute at Western Michigan University. Horizons is pleased to publish the following article by Dr. Eldredge, who is well known for his work with learning cycles.

What’s wrong with evolutionary biology?

There have been periodic claims that evolutionary biology needs urgent reform, and this article tries to account for the volume and persistence of this discontent. It is argued that a few inescapable properties of the field make it prone to criticisms of predictable kinds, whether or not the criticisms have any merit. For example, the variety of living things and the complexity of evolution make it easy to generate data that seem revolutionary (e.g. exceptions to well-established generalizations, or neglected factors in evolution), and lead to disappointment with existing explanatory frameworks (with their high levels of abstraction, and limited predictive power). It is then argued that special discontent stems from misunderstandings and dislike of one well-known but atypical research programme: the study of adaptive function, in the tradition of behavioural ecology. To achieve its goals, this research needs distinct tools, often including imaginary agency, and a partial description of the evolutionary process. This invites mistaken charges of narrowness and oversimplification (which come, not least, from researchers in other subfields), and these chime with anxieties about human agency and overall purpose. The article ends by discussing several ways in which calls to reform evolutionary biology actively hinder progress in the field

Alternativas a la enseñanza tradicional de la lectura

La investigación sobre las estrategias didácticas mas apropiadas para la enseñanza de la lectura no siempre se ocupa de las consecuencias practicas sobre la organización de la clase que implica cada una. En este artículo se comparan estrategias clásicas de enseñanza de la lectura con otras nuevas, con una clara y precisa definición de los métodos a seguir en aquellas que resultan mas eficaces