Improving Reading Comprehension of Middle and High School Students

This volume focuses on our understanding of the reading comprehension of adolescents in a high stakes academic environment. Leading researchers share their most current research on each issue, covering theory and empirical research from a range of specializations, including various content areas, English language learners, students with disabilities, and reading assessment. Topics discussed include: cognitive models of reading comprehension and how they relate to typical or atypical development of reading comprehension, reading in history classes, comprehension of densely worded and symbolic mathematical texts, understanding causality in science texts, the more rigorous comprehension standards in English language arts classes, balancing the practical and measurement constraints of the assessment of reading comprehension, understanding the needs and challenges of English language learners and students in special education with respect to the various content areas discussed in this book. This book is of interest to researchers in literacy and educational psychology as well as curriculum developers.

Davide Comoretto graduated in Physics in 1988. In 1993 He obtained the PhD in Chemical Sciences and was enrolled as Research Scientist at the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry of the University of Genoa (I) where is now Associated Professor of Industrial Chemistry.

His interest is devoted to the investigation of the optical anisotropy of highly oriented conjugated polymers as well as to the photophysics of polyconjugated materials. He addressed the relations between the nature of photoexcitations and the polymer supramolecular structure.

He is currently working on organic & hybrid photonic crystals such as artificial opals, polymer DBR, and microcavities. His goal is to dope such photonic crystals with photo-active materials or to engineer structural defects in order to modulate the photonic crystal optical response.

He is involved in several national and international research projects and He collaborates with different companies for the technological exploitation of conjugated polymers and photonic crystals in the fields of photovoltaics, sensing and photonics. He is co-author of more than 130 papers published on refereed international journals or books.