ABSTRACT
A great deal of instruction in science occurs through reading. Even in science classes where hands-on activities, experiments, or problem-based learning approaches are becoming more popular, background information critical for integrating the activity experiences into disciplinary understanding is often presented via text. Although the genre of most instructional text, especially in science, is expository, elementary reading experiences are generally in the narrative genre, with students usually honing their basic reading skills on story-like texts. However, some time around middle school, students start to receive expository texts and are expected to learn from them (Sweet & Snow, 2003). Not surprisingly, students often have difficulty with this task. Even undergraduate students can be remarkably poor at comprehending the information presented in expository text, and have been shown to be especially inept at judging their own level of comprehension, reflecting an inability to engage in accurate monitoring (Wiley, Griffin, & Thiede, 2005). The downstream effects of poor monitoring accuracy are that readers who are studying on their own will fail to engage in re-reading of poorly learned materials, and will fail to comprehend the texts they read.
