Summary of the Findings
The students in the focus group showed continual growth in comprehension when using the strategies of clarification, question generation, summarization and prediction. Students overall demonstrated the usefulness of each strategy and how the strategies became important to use when interacting with narrative and expository text. Although each student was at a different ability level of learning, there was growth reported for each type of learner within each of the four strategies.
Clarification and question generation were the two strategies that were the most difficult to master for the students in my class, which reflected considerably within the focus group. The process of clarification is extremely slow and difficult for students at a literal level to achieve without constant modeling and guidance at the beginning stages. Question generation was difficult to master as well, especially with narrative text. The students overall, including the focus group, demonstrated that it was difficult to take the important elements of the plot line and turn them into quality review questions. After five months of practicing, students have demonstrated better-quality questions, although continual work is necessary before the students will internalize this strategy and apply it on a higher plane of thinking.
It is necessary to point out that those students who became more adept at the clarification process, especially the understanding of the author's use of language, became more confident with the other strategies as well. Question generation showed improvement only when the students were able to master the art of clarification, since these two strategies reflect heavily upon each other.
A majority of the students, which is reflected in the focus group, showed an initial basic grasp of the strategies of summarization and prediction, which indicated to me that these strategies were evident in their prior elementary education. However, over the course of five months, students showed a fine-tuning of each strategy, with better consistency on what is important to summarize and better insight through prediction to where the author was taking the story and supporting this hypothesis with strong evidence.
A Summary of the Focus Group - Observations and Written Samples
| Kelly | Joanne | Chris | Melissa | Don | Josh |
Kelly is a student who came in with proficient comprehension skills. Kelly has always done well in school and is an active reader in her spare time. Upon examination of Kelly's baseline, it is quite evident that she already showed clear understanding of each strategy and already implemented them on a regular basis when encountering text. Kelly showed initial signs before the intervention of being a natural leader within a cooperative group, although she showed signs of hesitancy when initiating conversation.
Throughout the intervention Kelly's natural competency grew stronger and fine-tuned. Kelly became more articulate in her writing samples, to a small degree, and created better thought-provoking questions as the strategies were practiced. Kelly became a role-model in all of her discussion groups, and tended to not shy away from the spotlight. Many of the students (especially Josh) benefited from her guidance and appreciated her ability to clarify information, which showed her proficiency to infer where others were not able to.
Kelly showed the application of the strategies within her quizzes on comprehension in narrative text (which was always within the top scores of the team) and when she worked on nonfiction material. Kelly showed considerable comprehension of nonfiction multiple choice style questions, from the beginning of the year and kept those scores consistent as the year progressed.
Like Kelly, Joanne came in with a proficient background in comprehension. Joanne demonstrated early in the school year her ability to utilize the strategies that were needed when encountering text. Upon observation, though, it was evident that Joanne needed to identify what strategies she was applying and to decide when to use them appropriately. Her baseline indicates that she had a strong background with summarization and prediction, but needed a little guidance with clarification and question generation.
Throughout the intervention Joanne became a better clarifier, and showed signs of being more proficient with question generation. Like Kelly, she has been a guiding force within discussion groups and has helped guide her group through tricky reading material. Joanne has shown improvement, albeit small, throughout the observations with prediction and summarization. She has shown that she understands the author's direction of the plot line and usually predicts where that plot is going. Her summaries are slightly sharper and she eliminates the material that is unimportant to spotlight, more so than the beginning of the year.
Joanne also demonstrates consistency as she applies these strategies to comprehension quizzes in narrative text and nonfiction multiple choice style questions. Joanne continues to show clear comprehension of text, be it narrative or expository.
Chris started the school year with an organization problem, which was observed in his early writing samples within his baseline. It was evident early on that Chris had the appropriate comprehension strategies for this grade level, but was sporadic with his thoughts which sometimes influenced how he interpreted the text being read.
After being taught the intervention Chris started to get a little more in depth with the clarification process. He was able to become more inferential in his thought process. Originally, he picked out only vocabulary words to clarify. Recently, he has shown a more insightful look into the author's voice and use of phrasing. Chris is also starting to show a better understanding of how to create reflective questions. Although Chris did not complete one of his final summaries, he does demonstrate the knack of picking out some of the essential details from the readings. Prediction has been his strongest asset; he shows good insight into where the plot line is heading within narrative text.
Chris has shown some growth through his quizzes on comprehension in narrative text; however, the results have been inconsistent since the strategies have been introduced. Chris has shown vast improvement in expository text in examination of his scores from on nonfiction multiple choice style questions since the beginning of the intervention until recently.
Melissa comes from a predominantly Spanish-speaking family and is fluent herself in the language. She has shown since the beginning of the year a firm grasp of the English language but would demonstrate at times a limitation with certain vocabulary and was quite literal when reading text. She showed inconsistency in comprehension at the beginning of the year, and seemed to have trouble with certain types of writing styles, especially when inferring from text.
After being taught the intervention Melissa showed an increase in her abilities to utilize the strategies within the reciprocal teaching method. Throughout the five months I observed Melissa becoming more vocal in her cooperative groups, when before she remained slightly passive. She is enthusiastic in her writing and demonstrates a positive grasp of when to apply the strategies. Although she is still working on the clarification process, which in turn still affects the process of inference, she is more metacognitive about what is unclear to her, when before she would pass over important elements in her text without a thought to it. The process of questioning, which builds off of clarification, has improved and she shows great joy when creating a question she feels is "reflective" of an important aspect of the story.
Melissa has shown consistent growth within her comprehension quizzes. I must note that Melissa is the only one from the study who chose the complex mystery of The Westing Game. The material read took a lot of concentration and application of the strategies, and I am very pleased with her results on the quizzes. She has demonstrated the application of the strategies in her nonfiction work in reflection of her nonfiction multiple choice style questions. Her overall results indicate that she is more comprehensive of her work and takes a greater pride in her work samples.
Don is a very shy student who since the beginning of the year demonstrated a desire to not interact with other students in cooperative group work. Don is a special needs student and tends to feel embarrassed to share his thoughts vocally, especially with his peers. At the beginning of the year he showed a lack of understanding with clarifying as he read text, and in his baseline would only identify vocabulary words as what was unclear, never the author's phrasing or how the plot line was unfolding. His questions were extremely literal, with little reflection of what was important to the plot line. He showed a basic understanding of prediction but rarely supported his thoughts and showed knowledge in summarizing, although was very brief with his examples.
Don showed the greatest growth while learning the reciprocal teaching method throughout the five month intervention span. I have watched Don blossom into a productive member in his cooperative group, sharing ideas and thoughts where once he would have shied away. He is very vocal now at indicating sections of the text that need clarifying (although he does not jot it down in his graphic organizers, it is mostly off the top of his head) and tries hard at creating reflective questions on the chapters being read. He has progressed nicely with summarizing, even though he did not complete one in the final results. He is much sharper on his key details at this point than at the beginning of the year. His prediction skills have been the biggest improvement. He demonstrates a knowledge of where the plot line is going and supports his thoughts with concise details, where before he did not.
Don has done a wonderful job on his comprehensive quizzes; he has shown consistency throughout the intervention on his results, which demonstrates his success with the reciprocal teaching method. He has also shown his transfer of these strategies on his nonfiction multiple choice style questions, which are more inferential than literal and shows his growth in this area as well. Through observations I have seen Don demonstrate metacognition of the strategies, not only in narrative text but expository as well.
Josh is a special needs student who has had a lot of difficulty with comprehension throughout his schooling. Josh is a person who needs to work slowly and not be rushed with his work products. Josh tends to sit back and let others take over and is happier drawing than participating in class discussions. At the beginning of the year Josh demonstrated that he had great difficulty with clarifying information in text. Like many students this age, Josh is extremely literal and has not been able to grasp the ability to infer text. His ability to create reflective questions was difficult; the questions tended to be literal and unimportant to the story plot. He showed some signs of being able to predict where a story was headed, but could not support his reasons when asked to explain. He showed some knowledge of summary but was not concise in the key details he spotlighted.
After the intervention was introduced Josh showed some positive feedback that the strategies were helpful in his comprehension. His ability to infer increased slightly, especially with the help of Kelly. He was in her cooperative group since they both chose the same novel to read, The Giver. Josh showed more enthusiasm with his comprehension and was able to vocalize the need to use this strategy as a necessary component for understanding plot line. Although he still focuses more on vocabulary to clarify, he demonstrates at brief glimpses an insight into the author's use of phrasing and story development. His type of questions have reflected more on importance to story, although they are still very literal in design. He has also been able to explain his reasons for predictions, where before it was more difficult to do.
Josh has shown that the strategies have improved his comprehension in his comprehensive quizzes. His grades are compatible to Chris and Melissa where before they would have been much lower. He has, however, not demonstrated that the strategies have become metacognitive at this stage yet, especially when reflecting on his nonfiction multiple choice style questions. His overall results are far below the other members of the focus group and show little sign of improvement. One observation I have made is that Josh has rushed through these questions, especially since they were done outside of the classroom setting. This indicates to me that Josh, while being monitored, is able to demonstrate the appropriate use of the strategies but left on his own will choose not to utilize them when they are needed.
A Summary of Self - Evaluations
The students in the focus group evaluated their thoughts and feelings about how the four strategies benefited their comprehension. An overwhelming response came back through these evaluations. Most of them reported not to have utilized the strategies of clarification and question generation before this year, and sometimes utilizing summary and prediction before the intervention. A majority of the results from the evaluation questions showed that the students did feel the four strategies were important to use when encountering text and that these strategies should be applicable to any text outside of the classroom, not just used in reading class. Students also reported that they felt they were much better at using the strategies and that they were helpful to their reading comprehension. For the average rating score for the focus group, click here.