Michael Vitale

Research consistently shows that vocabulary knowledge is an important component of reading comprehension. Simply put, the more words a child knows, the better able that child is to understand what is being read. This research also indicates that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to know fewer words compared to their more advantaged peers, and thus are at greater risk for reading failure. How to enhance vocabulary knowledge for these at-risk children is a challenge because th...

In this project, researchers planned to study the impact of embedding a knowledge-focused, three-part reading comprehension strategy complemented by oral activities on student ontological knowledge. At the time of the study, research suggested that student comprehension of subject-matter texts in grades 4 through 12 was a significant educational problem. In this study, the researchers aimed to evaluate approaches to help students in grades 3 to 5. They proposed to evaluate classrooms that us...