Investigating Two Approaches to Fostering Children's Comprehension of Literature

Abstract

This instructional study investigated the effects of two approaches to fostering elementary students' comprehension of literature. Participants were 54 third-grade students in 2 classrooms in a linguistic and culturally diverse, urban elementary school. Students read two folktales, receiving a Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE) unit with one folktale and a unit we termed a Response-Oriented approach with the other folktale in a counterbalanced fashion. Classes were observed throughout both units and students completed multiple-choice and short-answer tests after reading each story and receiving the unit instruction. Teachers were interviewed after presenting both units. Results on the multiple-choice tests showed that students scored significantly higher when receiving the SRE units and that teachers preferred the SRE unit lessons. However, there were no differences between the two approaches on the short-answer tests, and teachers noted that some of the activities in the Response-Oriented units were very useful. Our conclusions are that both the Response-Oriented units and the SRE units provided strong scaffolding for students' reading, that the two approaches should be thought of as complementary rather than as competing, and that there is a place for both of them in classrooms that seek to build both comprehension and appreciation of literature.