Explicit teaching of paraphrasing strategies in a whole class setting to students in upper primary school, will improve students’ comprehension when reading factual texts

As students reach the upper levels of primary school, there is a greater demand for them to demonstrate effective comprehension strategies to access successfully factual and nonfiction texts as part of their studies in various subject areas and to develop an independence in readiness for secondary schooling. This research project was designed to teach mixed ability students in an upper primary level, specific paraphrasing strategies to assist them to improve their comprehension of factual texts. Two all-girl Year 5 classes were selected, one as a teaching group and the other as a control group. When the 2006 Year 4 cohort were divided into two groups preparatory to being placed into the two Year 5 classes, careful consideration was given to ensuring that each group was of mixed abilities. In 2007, several new students entered into these classes. As the new students are not pretested before entering into the school, some variation in their expected ability is usually found in the first few weeks, following the assessment undertaken as part of the whole school assessment regime. This can account for the two classes having a slightly different academic composition. The teaching group was involved in eight sequential lessons during which the participants were given explicit instruction in identifying and using synonyms and paraphrasing strategies, particularly based on the John Munro Comprehension – Paraphrasing (Literacy Intervention Strategies, Course Notes, 2006). Paraphrasing and Torch tests were administered both before and after the study occurred. These were designed to test the ability of students in both groups to paraphrase, as well as their comprehension levels. As the teaching was targeted at a whole class of mixed ability, it was expected that all students would benefit from the instruction and demonstrate improvement in their comprehension. Certainly, most students in both teaching and control groups showed an improvement in their comprehension but the teaching group, more specifically, showed an improvement in their paraphrasing ability. It appeared that the greatest improvement shown by individual students in the teaching group was that student who had the greatest learning needs. Consequently, it would appear from this study, that the particular paraphrasing strategy taught had most effect for the least proficient learner. Introduction Students in the upper primary levels are expected to read large amounts of factual and non-fiction texts across many subject areas with increasing independence. Although most students may be competent decoders by this stage of their schooling, it cannot be assumed that all students will be able to gain accurate literal comprehension, let alone inferential meaning from texts. Research has shown that explicit teaching of comprehension strategies to learning disabled students within small groups produces a marked improvement in their ability to gain meaning from factual texts. However, it is often not only the learning disabled who have difficulties in comprehension, but also those students who decode a variety of texts well. Paraphrasing has been cited by many researchers as a very effective reading comprehension strategy. Students can clarify their understanding of text by the use of paraphrasing. Paraphrasing, when taught explicitly assists mixed ability groups of students through reading, writing, listening and speaking. It has been recognized that added difficulties are encountered by students when they are dealing with comprehension of content in particular subject areas such as science. This problem was recognized by Best, Rowe, Ozuru and McNamara (2005). They indicated that comprehension depended on ability to make inferences (Kintsch, 1988) which assisted the reader to generate “missing” information. Domain specific knowledge and vocabulary were important but not an essential aspect in making sense of the text as readers who had good reading strategies including ability to draw backward causal inferences were able to overcome unfamiliar content (Noordman et al., 1992). In building good reading strategies, Best, Rowe, Ozuru and McNamara stated that paraphrasing was an important technique for readers to use when processing texts. They believe that difficulty when paraphrasing identifies readers who have a comprehension problem. As paraphrasing demands that surface characteristics of the sentence are replaced with similar content words and grammatical structures, then active paraphrasing externalizes the reader’s understanding and assists them to monitor their comprehension. When discussing the varied types of information texts involving word problems which upper primary students need to access, such as in mathematics, Gallagher Landi (2001) indicates that these present particular difficulties for most students but especially the learning disabled student. Of the four-step problem strategy they put forward as being useful for students, paraphrasing (underlining the important information and putting the problem in one’s own words) is the first step. Gallagher Landi outlines how students are asked to interpret word problems which might have several steps to solve, which may state the information both directly and indirectly and which might contain extraneous information (Parmar et al., 1996). Students make sense of the problem and identify critical pieces of information when they restate the problem in their own words. Katims and Harris (1997) also believe that explicitly teaching paraphrasing can significantly increase the reading comprehension of students with and without learning disabilities. They propound using a three-step model of instruction with the acronym RAP. This stands for: Read a paragraph, Ask yourself question about the main idea and details, and Put the main ideas and details into your own words using complete sentences. By encapsulating the strategies into a neat acronym, Katims and Harris also believe that students will be able to recall easily and self direct the effective use of the strategy. As with many of the studies mentioned, Katims and Harris reinforced the strategies taught each lesson. These included: • Cue: Teacher rehearses students in each of the RAP steps as well as modeling the method. • Do: Students read, implement strategy and then answer questions. • Review: Teacher scores questions and directs feedback. The findings from the instructional intervention study by Katims and Harris, supported the fact that students, with and without learning disabilities, enhance their reading comprehension when taught the RAP strategies in a general classroom, with significant increase in abilities in the teaching group when compared to the control group. Katims and Harris’ study investigated the effectiveness of comprehension strategy in mixed ability, multi level reading classes for middle school students. The study was conducted in these mixed ability classrooms without differentiation in terms of instructional intensity. In this regard the current study under consideration in this paper used the same class makeup, that is, mixed ability, multi level readers, for both the teaching group and the control group. Fisk and Hurst (2003) make clear that paraphrasing is not simply copying words straight from the text changing a few words, but it should assist students identify the main idea, find supporting details and identify the author’s voice. They note that paraphrasing for comprehension, which involves expressing main ideas and supporting evidence in the students’ own words, is particularly beneficial for students in upper primary and middle school to deal with the diverse types of texts, including fiction and nonfiction. Parker, Hasbrouk and Denton (2002) also identify the benefits in explicit instruction in paraphrasing techniques. Their approach is to build from one sentence paraphrasing until the reader can paraphrase a whole paragraph. They cite Nelson and Smith (1992) whose strategy for students to unpack independently the main idea and important information from content areas for assignment, depends strongly on paraphrasing. Within the context of Catholic primary schools, in which this study has been conducted, reading within the classroom is generally undertaken within a flexible framework which scaffolds the reading experience (Graves & Graves, 2003). During the post-reading of the text, students are encouraged to paraphrase identifying the main idea. As this study undertakes, within the context of a scaffolded literacy program, explicit teaching of a reading comprehension strategy which has proven to be effective, then it would be expected that the students involved in the teaching group would improve their comprehension of factual texts at the end of the teaching period.