Impact of Drawing in Response to Reading on the Reading Comprehension Skills of Fourth Grade Students

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2015-05

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Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine whether the reading comprehension skill of fourth grade students identified as average readers improves when they sketch in response to reading a text before answering comprehension questions compared to simply reading and responding. A quasi-experimental design was used. The participants in this study were 12 fourth grade students from a public elementary school in Anne Arundel County. Of the 12 students, 6 were males and 6 were females. The Comprehensive Quality Rating Tool and the fourth grade Common Core Informational/Explanatory Text Based Rubric were both used to measure the students’ answers to the comprehension questions. The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, a non-parametric test, was used to compare median scores obtained under treatment conditions across 10 writing samples with those obtained under control conditions (same 10 writing samples). Median rubric scores were not significantly different under the two different conditions. The hypothesis that the comprehension of fourth grade students prompted to draw in response to reading nonfiction text will not be different from their comprehension without the prompt was not rejected. Recommendations for future research include using students who are below grade level with below level text, to have students draw throughout reading rather than drawing right before answering a question, to further explore the gender differences in this matter, and to explore different genres of text.