TITLE The Effect of Advance Organizers Upon Meaningful Reception Learnina and Retention of Social Studies

The effects of prereading techniques, specifically "advance organizers " and "structured overview " were studied by comparing retention and comprehension of reading material in high school students with and without prereading treatment. An advance organizer is a brief passage giving a general and inclusive introduction to material to be read. A structured overview consists of student-teacher interaction dealing with terms and concepts related to the material to be read. The subjects were 157 students in social studies classes in a rural Virginia high school. Subjects were tested on reading ability and classified in four reading ability groups. Subjects were then divided into three treatment groups: one group received the advance organizer, one a structured overview, and the control group received no prereading treatment. were given a 3,000-word passage on labor unions (an unfL ic), an