The Impact of Direct Reading Strategy Instruction on Student Academic Achievement

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2014-07

Department

Program

Masters of Education

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain information or permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Goucher Special Collections & Archives at 410-337-6347 or email archives@goucher.edu.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of teaching select reading strategies on academic achievement of fifth grade students in the area of reading comprehension. For this quasi-experimental study, students in a fifth grade reading class were randomly assigned to a treatment group who received traditional comprehension instruction with additional reading strategy instruction, or assigned to a control group which received the traditional comprehension instruction only. A pre- and post--assessment design was used in this study. The analysis of this study suggested significant improvement in reading performance for students provided with direct instruction in reading. The promising results and other research suggest that direct reading strategy instruction can improve reading comprehension scores in fifth grade students. Implications of the results and future research are discussed within the paper.