Michelle Marie McClellan and Dr. Kendra M. Hall, Teacher Education

Teaching students to read is one of the most important aspects taught in an elementary classroom and often is one of the harder concepts to teach. Teachers use many different strategies when they teach students to read. One method of teaching the students is to teach comprehension strategies, which tends to be one of the more complex methods. Many teachers often struggle with this aspect of teaching as they try to find the most efficient way to teach their students. For the project, it was proposed that we use expository texts and text structure to see how well the students could comprehend using these methods.

Expository text is non-fiction text. Expository text is one way to help teach students comprehension using text structure. This method is not often used in the classroom due to its difficulty. The purpose of this study was to determine how well students would be able to comprehend expository texts using text structures and what kind of information the students could derive from it.

As the project was begun, students were given several pre-assessments. The first was a general assessment, the Gates-MacGinitie, which was a standardized reading assessment. This helped us to covariate our information to see what levels the class is at. The second assessment was created by my mentor and myself. We created an assessment that had many aspects of our research in it. It was to help us determine where the students were prior to the instruction. As the assessments were administered, we learned that the students did not know a great deal about the text structure that we were going to be using. It helped to create a stronger basis for our instruction.

Once our assessments were completed, we were able to start with the instruction. To complete the project six- second grade classrooms, with a total of seventy-two students, in suburban Utah were asked to participate. To give the instruction, we asked the teachers if we could offer the instruction during their guided reading groups. Guided reading involves dividing the students into small groups based on ability to read. The reading level determines how often the teacher meets with the groups. We then divided the classes into three groups of two teachers to complete the research. One group was our control group. These two classes were given instruction to continue using the material they had been using all year. These classes showed how much difference the instruction made. Another group was called the content group. This group was given expository texts about animals to use with the students. These teachers were given lessons that allowed the students to learn about the animals, however they did not teach text structure. The purpose of this was to see how much the students would be able to gain without being taught text structure. The final group was the instructional group. This group was given expository text about the same animals and text structures to use with the students. A plan was given to the teachers of what to teach and how to use the text structures with the students.
Once each teacher had their instruction plan and began teaching, we came and observed the students. The students really enjoyed learning about all of the different animals, and were engaged in the work they were doing. Once the lessons were completed we created and administered a post-assessment to gather information about what the students learned. At this point we were able to start gathering the data that was obtained.

Throughout the entire experience we felt like we were successful as we were able to obtain information about how text structure helps students to comprehend expository text better. Our hypothesis was that the students would learn more by using text structures. We felt that if they learned clue words (words that tell how two things are being compared) and how to write comparison sentences they would not only be able to use the information that they had learned with our study, but they would be able to use it with other texts they read.

In the beginning of the research we were struggling to get started. Many volunteers were unable to come help and the work was slow. It was also difficult to get the teachers who were participating excited. We were also struggling with being able to complete our project before statewide testing was to begin for the school. This was frustrating, as we knew that we needed to be able to get this research done before the school year was up. However, we were able to get more volunteers to allow the research to move forward. We had to make some adjustments so that all of the research would be done before testing began, and that enabled us to accomplish the goals that we needed to accomplish. Also, we had to adjust when our post-assessments were administered due to testing. Even with these adjustments, we were able to move forward with a successful program.

As we gathered the information, we were able to see a difference in the different groups. The students in the control group classes were able to compare how different animals were similar; however comparing how animals were different was harder for this class. They also had a difficult time identifying the clue words and what other words to look for. It helped to support our hypothesis that students would benefit from the instruction. Our content group gave us a good amount of information as we saw that using expository text alone helped the students learn about different animals and have the information to compare. These students worked on comparing different animals without the use of text structure and although some of the classes were able to make the connection without specifically being taught it, the majority of our students did not know the best way to make comparisons. The instructional group gave us the best information to support our hypothesis. These classes in our post-assessment tended to understand and answer correctly the questions we posed. They were able to show understanding of how to use the text structure to compare two different animals, and they were able to identify how to use clue words and then use them correctly. Overall, these results showed us that text structure did help these students to learn better about the animals because they were able to look for similarities and differences and create sentences that showed their understanding.

This project was rewarding to work on and enabled me to have a great experience. I have learned a great deal about working with research and how to accomplish it. I will be attending a reading conference to participate in a research poster session to show the work that was done. I will use my experiences to help extend my knowledge on how to teach comprehension to my students.