Documenti di Didattica
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Sarah Tohill
Introduction
Throughout the world of education, there are the phrases “learning to read” and “reading
to learn”. These phrases signify two different tasks that are equally important, the first being the
foundational task that allows the second to be accomplished. In this, the key word is
comprehension, defined by the National Reading Panel as “intentional thinking during which
meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and the reader” (2000). Once a
student reaches middle school, the common assumption is that he or she has mastered the first
task of learning to read and can therefore be expected to “read to learn” through comprehension
of their textbooks. While this would be true in an ideal world, the sad reality is that many middle
school students lack the reading comprehension skills that are required in their classroom. A
single teacher is only able to do so much, and content area teachers especially do not have the
Purpose
Comprehension has often been defined as one of the foundational skills in reading,
though a better definition would be the goal of reading. All other skills such as fluency and
knowledge of vocabulary open the door for reading comprehension. However, having those
skills alone do not guarantee the reader mastery of reading comprehension. Research shows that
Though comprehension strategies are often taught in elementary schools, middle school and high
school teachers do not often teach these strategies in their classrooms, especially those in content
areas (Ness 2009). Why is it that middle school content area teachers do not teach these vital
skills? And what are some comprehension strategies that they could incorporate into their
classrooms?
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The best method for discovering the attitudes of teachers towards reading comprehension
is through a survey directed at middle school content area teachers. This survey would collect the
information of the teachers such as the time they have been teaching, the classes and grades they
teach, and their certification. The study will enquire how often they teach reading comprehension
strategies, and if they do not teach them often or at all, the teacher will be asked for their reason
for this. They will also be asked what their beliefs of teaching comprehension strategies in
middle school are. Additional research of existing empirical and descriptive studies will provide
My hypothesis is that content area teachers do not teach comprehension strategies due to
a combination of not having the time or the ability. I also hypothesize that while many teachers
will hold that comprehension strategies are important, not all of them may believe that teaching
studies will show effective comprehension strategies that can be incorporated into any
classroom.
Reviews of Literature
strategy. Hagaman and Reid (2008) make use of the RAP paraphrasing method in their
experimental research which sought to discover if using this method would assist struggling
middle school students in reading comprehension. According to the authors, “RAP is a three-step
strategy: Read a paragraph; Ask myself, ‘What was the main idea and two details?’ and Put it
into my own words.” (223) There were only three participants of the study, who were all sixth-
grade females. They were chosen based on scores taken from the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test
– 4 for reading comprehension. These three participants had scored at least a year below their
READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 4
grade level in comprehension and were identified as struggling students by their remedial
reading teachers. These students were given instruction in a one-on-one setting. The instruction
was a combination of RAP and self-regulated strategy development (SRSD), which was used for
the students to implement RAP into their reading strategies. The method itself first was to
establish a baseline of reading comprehension using a combination of retelling and short answers
to questions about the text. This probe was used for all stages of instruction. Once the baseline
was established, instruction began, with the goal of continuing until the student had reached the
criterion level for independent reading. Immediately following the student’s achievement of
independence level, the test was administered four times, then once more after two weeks
without the direct instruction. After analyzing the test results, the researchers concluded that the
The authors of this article provide a wealth of details about the method that they used,
both in its previous role in research and in their own study. Every single step that the researchers
made was extremely well documented and explained, and all the testing data from the students
was given in the body of the article. This gave great credence to the professional aspect of the
article. It was obvious that despite the lack of available test subjects, the authors had taken great
care in their research for this experiment. While there was much information to take in at every
step, the procedure was still easy to follow. One difficulty with this piece of research is in the
group size, though this was not the fault of the researchers. The results themselves are unclear
only in that it is difficult to know whether the results are from the RAP method itself or the
SRSD instruction that was included. Within the results, however, the authors do not address the
drastic drop in scores for the maintenance test, which seem to take away some credence from the
drastic improvement from instruction. Despite this, the thorough research gives enough credence
READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 5
to the experiment for it to not be dismissed, especially in light of the positive results. Future
research in the same area mainly would need to be a larger sample, but also might show the
results of a longer time of instruction, and a longer maintenance period. This article fits perfectly
with the direction I want to go with my own research, as it targets struggling middle school
Every teacher acknowledges the importance of reading comprehension, but not every
Ness (2009) conducted a case study to examine the use of reading comprehension strategies in
middle school and high school, as well as the attitudes of the teachers towards reading
comprehension. Eight teachers participated in the study; four taught in high school social studies
and science, and four taught in middle school social studies and science. The first part of the
study consisted in direct observation of each of the classrooms using a coding method to identify
the strategies used. Within the coding system, Ness distinguished non-comprehension instruction
from comprehension instruction, and also specified within each the content of instruction. The
second part of the study consisted in an hour long open-ended interview, in which the teacher
explained their view on reading comprehension and their priorities in instruction. Ness found that
only 3% of the total 2,400 minutes of instructional time observed was used for comprehension
instruction. Within the time spent on comprehension instruction, only three out of the eight
strategies provided in the coding system were used. In the interviews, teachers explained that
while they felt that reading comprehension is important, they do not believe that it is their
responsibility to teach it, they do not have time to teach it, and they may not know how to teach
it.
READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 6
I found that this study was extremely interesting and easy to follow. The headings and
subheadings were well-laid out, facilitating the understanding of the study. Ness also made good
use of various other studies, increasing the credibility of her work. Overall, the study was well-
written, allowing any reader to easily understand the purpose, methodology, and results. The
only flaw in the study was its size of only eight teachers. While the size does not decrease the
benefits of the study, I agree with the author that it would be beneficial for the study to widen the
size. However, I believe that if this was done, then the interview section of the study would need
to be changed to a survey due to the length of time needed for full interviews. This study aids in
my own research as my own purpose is also to discover the use of comprehension strategies of
strategies for comprehension. Gill (2008) outlines both the factors of reading comprehension and
strategies and activities that teachers can use before, during, and after reading text. Her most
important component of the article is the “Comprehension Matrix” which has the three factors of
reading comprehension – the student, the text, and the situation – along the top, and times when
instruction is given along the sides. Within each box she states the purpose of activities during
that time, directed at each individual factor. Gill uses this and multiple past studies to guide the
reader’s understanding of reading comprehension, then instructs the reader in specific activities
that can be used at each step – pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading – and lists questions
that teachers should ask themselves as they plan for comprehension instruction.
This article was written in an engaging manner, and the organization clearly supported
the content and communicated clearly the various aspects of reading comprehension. I
appreciated the specificity of the activities that the author listed in the article, and the provision
READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 7
of questions to guide the teacher in the planning of instruction. Her inclusion of a chart listing the
various comprehension strategies given by multiple sources was extremely helpful, as it gave the
reader a visual comparison of the various terms used for reading comprehension strategies. Some
examples are “making connections” or “using and creating schema”, “visualizing” or “creating
images”, and “predicting” (Gill 2008). Though this article does not target content area teachers,
its explicit definition and outline of reading comprehension will greatly help my own research.
Methodology
My methods for obtaining the research was a survey that was distributed online. In this
during which meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and the reader” as
defined by the National Reading Panel in 2000. I chose to distribute this survey online since
there are a very limited number of middle school teachers in the area I am located, and I did not
have the means to be able to easily distribute paper copies. Publishing my survey online also
broadened the types of schools the teachers were located and allowed me to better take into
account the number of teachers who would not complete the survey.
The questions I created based on the similar study conducted by Ness (2009). I did not
include questions regarding specific strategies, as I desired to create a survey that would be
simple to complete and to evaluate results. Creating a survey that was simple to complete I
believed would broaden the number of willing participants. However, due to the survey being
distributed through online social media, I was unable to control the type of participants. As a
result, some of the participants had only taught high school rather than specifically middle
school. I do not believe that this had a significant effect on my results, however, as the focus of
FigureI 1chose to utilize Google Survey as my means for the medium of my survey, as this
platform offers easy to use tools for creating surveys, as well as simple means to distribute it.
Google Survey also has the advantage of automatically analyzing the data, providing
Findings
When I closed the results of my survey, I had a total of 13 participants. Due to the nature
of the survey, I had no knowledge of where these teachers were located. My first question
regarded the classes that the teachers taught. I formatted this question in a spread of checkboxes
allowing for the selection of multiple options. As I anticipated receiving teachers who taught in
mixed schools that may have been grades 1-8, or 7-12, I provided options for both elementary
and high school classes. Figure 1 provides the number of teachers who taught each type of class.
The results were mainly evenly spread, with a slightly higher concentration in Technology,
The distribution of the length of teaching career of the participants was also fairly evenly
distributed, as shown in Figure 2, with the most participants having taught between 6 to 10 years.
The educational background of the majority of teachers was either a Bachelors or Masters in
Education, though there were some who had either level degree in their content area. Of the three
participants who wrote in a different degree, one participant had a Ph.D in their content area, one
Figure 2
The next five questions on the survey were in the form of statements, and the answers
were to be given using Likert scale, starting at 1 for “agree strongly” and 5 for “disagree
strongly”. The questions focused on the teacher’s attitudes towards the reading comprehension
their students have, the importance of comprehension strategies in middle school, their school’s
middle school students, and the participant’s benefit of professional development in reading
READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 10
comprehension. The responses generally were affirmative in favor of reading comprehension for
middle school students. The results of the responses for these are in Figures 3 through 7.
Figure 3
Figure 4
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Figure 5
Figure 6
READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 12
Figure 7
The final two questions were perhaps the most significant, as the answers to the previous
questions could be generally predicted due to general expectations of teachers. The last question
asked the participant how often they explicitly taught strategies for reading comprehension. They
were given three options: often, sometimes, or never. The results for this question can be seen in
Figure 9. Those who answered sometimes or never were asked to explain their reason for not
teaching often in the form of a free response short answer. Many of those who answered
responded that there was not enough time, two responded that it was due to their resources or
curriculum, one responded that they only modeled strategies as appropriate, and one responded
Figure 8
Recommendations
Overall, the results from this study were in line with the results of Ness’ study (2009).
Teachers generally believed that comprehension is important for middle school students, and
their students would benefit from learning specific comprehension strategies. The fact that most
of the teachers did not often teach comprehension also agreed with Ness’ study (2009). Due to
the results in the same study, it was also unsurprising that the largest reason for not often
One of the most obvious flaws in my study was the low number of participants. More
participants would have been able to better balance out the few high school teachers who
completed the survey. Another flaw was the structure of the Likert scale. While most of the
participants gave answers that were consistent, there were participants who gave unexpected
answers, such as strongly disagreeing that they would benefit from professional development in
comprehension strategies. It is possible that the participants did believe this, but the previous
READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 14
results led me to believe that there was a flaw in the Likert scale. I realized after seeing these
results that 1 was labeled as strongly agree, though on most Likert scales 1 is labeled as strongly
disagree. Due to this inconsistency, it is a possibility that these participants assumed that the
Likert scale in the survey was consistent with those of other surveys, and thus gave untrue
answers. Another change I would have made would be to include a question on specific
In order to correct this problem in middle school content area classrooms, it is necessary
to find or create comprehension strategies that require little time or effort to implement. Then
these strategies would need to be tested in order to validate their effectiveness as well as
practicability. According to one study, teaching even a single strategy can improve reading
comprehension (Gill 2008). Gill (2009) provides specific examples that can be helpful to any
teacher who wants to teach comprehension, though since her strategy centers around the ability
to provide time for silent reading, a content area teacher would not be able to directly use her
study. However, the Comprehension Matrix itself provides vital direction for teachers to
understand the elements of comprehension: the reader, the text, and the situation. The table that
lists comparing the various strategies from other studies is also helpful, including some such as
connecting, questioning, visualizing, and monitoring. The average content area teacher should be
able to incorporate at least a few at the beginning of the year and continually remind the students
throughout the year. The RAP strategy from the study by Hagaman and Reid could also be
incorporated at least in part by content area teachers. While they would not have the means to
completely implement the strategy, being able to introduce the students to the strategy and
possibly lead them through the process could be enough to cause some change.
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The implications of this study are that while content area teachers recognize the
importance of reading comprehension in middle school, they either do not have the time or the
training to implement these strategies. Using comprehension strategies in all classes assists with
the student’s overall understanding, and even implementing one strategy can make a significant
visualizing, and monitoring have the potential for being incorporated into a content area
classroom, and a school could provide a single strategy or set of strategies such as the RAP
strategy that would be implemented in all classrooms in order to ease the burden on content area
teachers.
References
Gill, S. (2009). The comprehension matrix: A tool for designing comprehension instruction. The
Hagaman, J. L., & Reid, R. (2008). The effects of the paraphrasing strategy on the reading
comprehension of middle school students at risk for failure in reading. Remedial and
Marchessault, J. K., & Larwin, K. H. (2014). The potential impact of structured read-aloud on
https://www1.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/Pages/findings.aspx
Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., & Hale, G. (2010). Framework fuels the need to read: Strategies
Stover, K., O’Rear, A., & Morris, C. (2015). “Meeting the needs of struggling adolescent
Appendix
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