Research: Comprehension Strategies Study
In a study in two high schools (Woodruff, Deshler, & Schumaker, in prep.), students entering the ninth grade who earned reading comprehension scores that were two or more grade levels below the 9th-grade level participated. Twenty-seven students in the experimental school participated in a one-hour reading class daily for one semester where they were taught four reading comprehension strategies, including the Paraphrasing Strategy (Schumaker, Denton, & Deshler, 1984), the Self-Questioning Strategy (Schumaker, Deshler, Nolan, & Alley, 1994), the Visual Imagery Strategy (Schumaker, Deshler, & Zemitzch, 1993), and the LINCS Vocabulary Strategy (Ellis, 1992). There were 12-15 students in each class. Twenty-seven students in the comparison school, who were matched with the students in the experimental school according to age, ethnicity, gender, and reading comprehension scores, received traditional reading instruction.
The results in Figure 1
indicated that, on average, the experimental students earned comprehension scores at the 5.8 grade level
on the pretest and at the 6.8 grade level on the posttest as measured by the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test
(MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 2003). The comparison students, on average, earned comprehension scores at the
6.3 grade level on the pretest and at the 5.8 grade level on the posttest. An ANCOVA revealed that the
comprehension posttest scores of the two groups on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test were found to be statistically
different, F(1,51)=9.42, p=.003, 
2 =.156. This
is considered to be a large effect size according to Cohen's descriptions (1988).
This reading comprehension strategies course has been taught at the same high school for several years. Figure 2 shows the data for a cohort of 59 students who participated in the course during their ninth-grade year. The figure shows the results from when they took the state minimal competency test in reading during their 7th- and 11th-grade years. When they were 7th graders, only one of the 59 students earned a score in the passing range on the test. When they were 11th graders, 35 students earned passing scores. In addition, of the 19 students who earned scores in the basic range, 16 of them were within 10 points of the passing criterion (a passing score is 330 in the state, and all 16 students earned scores above 320).
Figure 3 shows the results of the Comprehension Strategies Course across six semesters for all students taking the course. During each semester, all students made average gains ranging from .9 to 2.0 grade levels in reading comprehension. Figure 4 shows the results for "test responders" during the first five semesters on Figure 3. These were students who showed some gains in performance from pretest to posttest. (In other words, students who scored lower on the posttest than on the pretest were eliminated from the data displayed in Figure 4.) These results show mean gains ranging from 2.2 to 2.5 grade levels that were realized in one semester of instruction.
References
Woodruff, Deshler, & Schumaker, in prep.
Schumaker, Denton, & Deshler, 1984
Schumaker, Deshler, Nolan, & Alley, 1994
Schumaker, Deshler, & Zemitzch, 1993
Ellis, 1992
MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 2003
Cohen (1988)
