DRTA Study Guide

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Study Guide: Dougherty Stahl, Katherine A. (2008)’ The Effects of Three Instructional Methods on the Reading Comprehension and Content Acquisition of Novice Readers. Journal of Literacy Research,40:3,359 — 393

Name:___Allison Pendleton_________________________________

Answer the following questions AS you read the article.

1. Describe in broad stokes the reading processes that take place during comprehension of informational text (p. 362, under Construction of Meaning and Concept Development with Informational Texts).

The author says that cognitive strategy instruction and high level social interaction around text are important keys to improving text comprehension and concept development. The author also states that young children rely heavily on background knowledge in their interactions with text.

2. Specify the effect that background knowledge may have on constructing mental representations from informational text. Why should teachers be concerned about activating prior knowledge?

In the article, the author says that there is evidence that young children rely a great deal on background knowledge in their interaction with text. When relating their background knowledge with the text, teachers need to be careful because children maybe relying on inaccurate or irrelevant prior knowledge.

3. What are the three instructional approaches that can be used to help primary-grade students comprehend informational text? Describe their common (p. 365) and distinctive features (p. 363-

Picture Walk (PW)

Ÿ  Leveled text, small paperbacks

Ÿ  The pictures are used to create conversation between the student and teacher, maybe to talk about what the book is going to about

Ÿ  Vocabulary words are also introduced

Ÿ  Recommended to discuss the text after to student has independently read it.

Know Want to Learn- Learn

Ÿ  allows teachers to access prior knowledge of students

Ÿ  The teacher starts a discussion about a text topic and uses a chart or worksheet labeled: know (K), want to learn (W), and, after reading, what they learned (L)

Directed Reading Thinking Activity

Ÿ  The teacher’s job is to select an instructional level text, divide the text into sections that mean something, and begin a discussion of each section of text.

Ÿ  Students are to make predictions, justify them, independently read the text, and verify or review predictions based on evaluations during the teacher-led discussion of each section.

,4. What is the purpose of the experimental study reported?

The purpose of the experimental study report was to find out how the PW, KWL, and DRTA influences developmental reading abilities and content achievement when used with informational text in the primary reading group context.

5. Who were the subjects?

The participants were 31 second-grade students in two demographically similar schools, in the same school district, in a midsize Midwest city.

6. Describe the reading materials used during the intervention.

The text was on informational topics that were familiar to second grade students. The texts addressed topics like spiders, the moon, how water changes form and insects.

7. How long did the experiment last?

The author collected data over 10 weeks, the intervention for each group only lasted 12 days.

8. What were the experimental conditions?

Ÿ  The author conducted all interventions and collected data in each group

Ÿ  Lessons were recorded on audiotape

Ÿ  School A, sessions were held at a table in a hallway

Ÿ  School B, sessions were held at a table in the school’s cafeteria or at a table in a partitioned room.

9. Describe the procedures specific to the Picture Walk, KWL, DRTA, and the Control Group conditions.

Picture Walk

1. Introduced book, walked through the book, talked about the pictures and the text, talked about students prior knowledge and made predictions based on that information.
2. To discuss a page, asked questions about what was happening on the page
3. Introduced vocabulary

KWL

1. Introduced the topic, children wrote what they knew in the K column.
2. Day 2 and 3 children had a personal KWL chart and wrote what they knew.
3. Then children thought of questions of what they wanted to know about the topic.
4. Then, read the book independently and discussed what they had learned and recorded it and also talked about if the book had answered any questions they had.

DRTA

1. Before reading the students made predictions and justified them about the text based on the title, cover, and prior knowledge and table of contents.
2. The students predicted a section of the text then read it to themselves
3. After reading each section their was a brief discussion to summarize the text and make a new prediction

10. What measures were used to determine the relative effectiveness of the treatments? Describe the measures briefly.

VRT- an experiment constructed yes/no task used to estimate vocabulary recognition in a content area and to confirm that groups had similar levels of prior knowledge of the topic.

Maze- The maze task was a multiple-choice cloze modification. It was a timed (three minutes),

group-administered task. The original text read by the students was reprinted after the deletion of 10 content words. The score on the maze task was the number of correct responses.

Free Recall- Individually each child provided a free recall of the day’s text. Students responded to the prompt, Please tell me everything you can remember about the book. Also tell me anything the book made you think of.

Cued Recall- After the free recall, each child was asked to answer three explicit and three implicit questions based on that day’s text.

11. Which treatment(s) were found to be more effective in increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and maze performance (p. 381)?

PW and DRTA

12. Students’ comprehension of the texts was greater under the DRTA condition than KWL and the control conditions. What do you think explains DRTA’s advantage over the KWL condition (p. 382)?  I think the DRTA had an advantage over the KWL because the author divided the book into sections and each section was discussed a great deal. The children were also allowed to  make judgments on stuff they were discussing.

13. It was found that the treatments did not differ in the quality and quantity of students’ retellings (p. 384). In other words, students were not differentially affected by the treatments in the way they integrated textual information with prior knowledge. What does this finding mean in terms of the different emphases employed by experience-based (KWL) vs. text-based (DRTA) treatments? That prior knowledge didn’t affect how they discussed and learned new information. They were able to discuss and learn new things without being affected by stuff they already knew.

Answer the following question AFTER you read the article.

14. In light of the findings from this study, what conclusions can you draw about the role of teacher support in children’s construction of mental representations from informational text?

Teacher support is very important in children’s construction of mental representations from informational text. Teachers introduce text and ask questions that open up more questions and discussions of text. This helps the students to understand the information.