Manuel S. Enverga University Foundation Catanauan Inc.

Catanauan, Quezon

Develop Reading Comprehension of Grade 10 student using

Visualization strategy in San Roque National High School.

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirement for the Degree

Bachelor of Secondary Education

Major in English

An undergraduate Student Teacher

Presented to

MELCA D.G CABANGGANGAN

Presented by

ANGELA GALIMA PASATIEMPO

March 2019
 I. Introduction

Reading comprehension is really important to a student to cope up in different subject with

English language. This also help the student to communicate effectively and receive informatio n’s

about technology, sport, economic issues, business and news. And to be able to adopt the informa tio n

as well from written materials such as books, newspaper, magazine, journal, advertisement, article,

blog, and social media.

As today, in San Roque National High School in Catanuan, there are several problems appear in

the field of education. I have noticed that most of the student and the common problem aside from

tardiness and absenteeism of a student is in reading development specifically in reading

comprehension from grade 7 to grade 10, probably in senior high as well.

Graphic Organizer as my strategy is a visual and graphic display that depicts the relations hips

between facts, terms, and or ideas within a learning task. It may come in a different form, each one

best suited to organizing a particular type of information.

Hence, this study focuses on how to develop and improve the reading comprehension of a student

using the strategy of Graphic Organizers use in the teaching and learning of languages studies. The

main goal is to boost comprehension skills, whereas, when they are deployed in the various language

courses, the main aims are to improve students’ reading comprehension skills. The aim of this study

is to summarize what research findings reveal about the effectiveness of Graphic Organizers on

deriving meaning from texts. It relates their use to the facilitation of reading com- prehension skills,

suggests ways of integrating them in reading lessons and touches on the issue of strategy instructio n

in lang- uage learning. Before focusing on research findings, a brief reference is made to the reading

strategies, foun- dations and the types of Graphic Organizers.

 a. Research Questions

1. What is the reading comprehension level of Grade 10 students for the implementation

of visualization strategy?

2. What is the reading comprehension level of Grade 10 students after the use of

visualization strategy?

3. Is there a significant difference on the reading comprehension level of Grade10

student before and after the utilization of visualization strategy?

4. What implication on the teaching of reading can be derived from the study?

II. Brief Review of Related Literature and Studies

According to Hale (2011), there are different reasons why practitioners and researchers need to

assess a child’s reading ability. This is usually done to monitor progress, to detect and diagnose

reading difficulties and to test psychological theories of the cognitive skills that underpin reading

development and disorders. He also added that identified reading as one of the greatest areas that

assessment is needed as reading skills deficits can interfere with skill development across different

academic subject areas, vocational skills and daily living skills. In addition, reading skills have

also been linked to students that are commonly referred for special education services Winn,

Skinner, Oliver, Hale, & Ziegler (2006).

For whatever each purpose, what appears to be important is an accurate assessment of reading

ability. Hence, the present investigation where the objective is to develop and standardize a tool

that could assess the reading ability of Filipino grades 3 and 4 students which is in response to the

need for an empirically validated reading interventions and assessment across all grade levels Hale

et al., (2011).

In the Philippines, the Department of Education has reported several cases of children with

learning difficulties. Its impact is not only limited to poor reading achievement because studies

have shown that poor readers are at significantly greater risk than good readers for developing

attention and behavioral problems. Adams & Snowling (2001); Maughan & Carroll (2006).

Thus, stressing the notion and importance of assessing reading ability or achievement early

in order to identify those children that would need intervention. Aside from using reading tools to

assess reading problems or difficulty, it can also be used to gauge reading achievement or

accomplishments of children. This is of equal importance as reading achievement have been linked

to many research variables. Reading achievement was found to be related to higher levels of self-
esteem among students, reading achievement was also related to extrinsic motivation, and

significant predictors of scholastic achievement. Savolainen, Ahonen, Aro, Tolvanen, &

Holopainen (2008); Meneghetti et al., (2006); Kaniuka (2010); Chiu, Chow, & Mcbride-Chang,

(2007).

Strong reading comprehension skills are critical to students’ success in twenty-first century

classrooms, Ness (2009). The ability of students to comprehend what they have read is truly an

inter-disciplinary skill. In addition to being required to comprehend stories, novels, and poems in

language arts classes, successful students in today’s classrooms must be able to read and

understand math problems to find the correct solution. They need to understand written directions

to successfully complete experiments in science, and they must be able to interpret vast amounts of

information available on the Internet and in textbooks to complete projects in social studies.

Reading comprehension skills are particularly critical for students as they progress in school and

the focus becomes no longer on learning to read, but rather reading to learn, Lapp et al, (2008);

Ness (2009). Given this reality, it is troubling that so many adolescent learners struggle to read.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than two thirds of all 14-

year-old students in the United States of America (USA) read below grade level, and more than six

million students in the USA between the ages of 12 and 18 are struggling readers, Alliance for

Excellent Education (2006).

The USA is not the only industrialized nation concerned about the reading skills of its

youth. For example, the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) reported that

nearly one fifth of 15-yearolds in Germany are reading below grade level expectations PISA

(2009).

Comprehension is the prime goal of reading and comprehension failures can lead to school

failures. Despite the Philippines supposedly high literacy rate of 88.6 %, many Filipinos can barely

read and write, Juan Miguel Cruz (2007), cited in Selangan (2015). He noted; This is true

especially of those living in remote areas as well as the slum areas of the country. Someone once

remarked that we are not a nation of readers; we are a nation of storytellers. Ours is a culture of

oral history passed on by word of mouth not through the written word. According to the results of

the 2003 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey. (par. 5) (FLEMMS) conducted

by the National Statistics Office (NSO), about one in 10 of the population 10 to 64 years old

cannot read and write or basically illiterate. With low-level literacy comes poor reading skill. The

alarming performance of the students in reading and comprehension in ESL necessitates urgent
decisions and actions from all education sectors. Blickenstaff, Hallquist and Kopel (2013) stress

that every teacher dream for students to succeed in all areas of their life through literacy. For them

to be literate they must know how to read and comprehend to be globally competitive. Students

learn reading and comprehension at varying rates. As educators, we are given the challenge to help

them succeed.

Kelly (2019) stated the importance of reading comprehension cannot be understated. Reading

comprehension is one of five elements identified as central to the instruction of reading according

to the National Reading Panel in the late (1990s).Reading comprehension, the report noted, is the

result of many different mental activities by a reader, done automatically and simultaneously, in

order to understand the meaning communicated by a text. These mental activities include, but are

not limited to: Predicting the meaning of a text; Determining the purpose of a text; Activation of

prior knowledge in order to...Connect prior experiences to the text; Identify word and sentence

meanings in order to decode the text; Summarize the text in order to create new meanings;

Visualize the characters, settings, situations in the text; Question the text; Decide what is not

understood in the text; Use strategies to improve understanding of the text; Reflect on the meaning

of a text; Apply understanding of the text as needed.

Reading comprehension is now thought to be a process that is interactive, strategic, and

adaptable for each reader. Reading comprehension is not learned immediately, it is a process that is

learned over time. In other words, reading comprehension takes practice.

Here are ten (10) effective tips and strategies that teachers can share with students to improve

their comprehension of a text.

Generate Questions

A good strategy to teach all readers is that instead of just rushing through a passage or

chapter, is to pause and generate questions. These can either be questions about what has just

happened or what they think might happen in the future. Doing this can help them focus on the

main ideas and increase the student's engagement with the material.

After reading, students can go back and write questions that could be included in a quiz or

test on the material. This will require them to look at the information in a different manner. By
asking questions in this way, students can help the teacher correct misconceptions. This method

also provides immediate feedback.

Read Aloud and Monitor

While some might think of a teacher reading aloud in a secondary classroom as an

elementary practice, there is evidence that reading aloud also benefits middle and high school

students as well. Most importantly, by reading aloud teachers can model good reading behavior.

Reading aloud to students should also include stops to check for understanding. Teachers can

demonstrate their own think-aloud or interactive elements and focus intentionally on the meaning

“within the text,” “about the text,” and “beyond the text” (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006) These

interactive elements can push students for deeper thought around a big idea. Discussions after

reading aloud can support conversations in class that help students make critical connections.

Promote Cooperative Talk

Having students stop periodically to turn and talk in order to discuss what has just been

read can reveal any issues with understanding. Listening to students can inform instruction and

help a teacher to can reinforce what is being taught.

This is a useful strategy that can be used after a read aloud (above) when all students have a

shared experience in listening to a text.

This kind of cooperative learning, where students learn reading strategies reciprocally, is one

of the most powerful instructional tools.

Attention to Text Structure

An excellent strategy that soon becomes second nature is to have struggling students read

through all the headings and subheadings in any chapter that they have been assigned. They can

also look at the pictures and any graphs or charts. This information can help them gain an

overview of what they will be learning as they read the chapter.

The same attention to text structure can be applied in reading literary works that use a story

structure. Students can use the elements in a story's structure (setting, character, plot, etc) as a

means of helping them recall story content.

Take Notes or Annotate Texts

Students should read with paper and pen in hand. They can then take notes of things they

predict or understand. They can write down questions. They can create a vocabulary list of all the

highlighted words in the chapter along with any unfamiliar terms that they need to define. Taking

notes is also helpful in preparing students for later discussions in class.

Annotations in a text, writing in the margins or highlighting, is another powerful way to

record understanding. This strategy is ideal for handouts. Using sticky notes can allow students to

record information from a text without damaging the text. Sticky notes can also be removed and

organized later for responses to a text.

Use Context Clues

Students need to use the hints that an author provides in a text. Students may need to look

at context clues, that is a word or phrase directly before or after a word they may not know.

Context clues may be in the form of: Roots and affixes: origin of the word;

Contrast: recognizing how word is compared or contrasted with another word in the sentence;

Logic: considering the rest of the sentence to understand an unknown word; Definition: using a

provided explanation that follows the word; Example or Illustration: literal or visual representation

of the word; Grammar: determining how the word functions in a sentence to better understand its

meaning.

Use Graphic Organizers

Some students find that graphic organizers like webs and concept maps can greatly enhance

reading comprehension. These allow students to identify areas of focus and main ideas in a

reading. By filling in this information, students can deepen their understanding of the author's

meaning.

By the time students are in grades 7-12, teachers should allow students to decide which

graphic organizer would be most helpful to them in understanding a text. Giving students the

opportunity to generate representations of the material is part of the reading comprehension

process.
Practice PQ4R

This consists of four steps: Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, and Review.

Preview has students scan the material to get an overview. The question means that students

should ask themselves questions as they read. The four R's have students read the

material, reflect on what has just been read, recite the major points to help learn better, and

then return to the material and see if you can answer the questions previously asked. This strategy

works well when coupled with notes and annotations.

Summarizing

As they read, students should be encouraged to stop periodically stop their reading and

summarize what they have just read. In creating a summary, students have to integrate the most

important ideas and generalize from the text information. They need to distill the important ideas

from the unimportant or irrelevant elements. This practice of integrating and generalizing in the

creation of summaries make long passages more understandable.

Monitor Understanding

Some students prefer to annotate, while others are more comfortable summarizing, but

all students must learn how to be aware of how they read. They need to know how fluently and

accurate they are reading a text, but they also need to know how they can determine their own

understanding of the materials. They should decide which strategies are most helpful in making

meaning, and practice those strategies, adjusting the strategies when necessary.

Jasmeet Virk and Heather Wik (May 2011) stated that Graphic Organizers find their origin in

the cognitive theories of learning. Cognitive theories of learning attempt to explain how people

learn on basis of thought processes. There is a presumption amongst cognitive theorists that the

mental processes operate in an organized, predictable fashion. Incorporating use of graphic

organizers during the learning process will enhance the functionality of these processes and

improve memory retention and retrieval.

Constructivism has its roots in the beliefs of cognitive and developmental theorists. It believes

that cognition helps make sense of an individual's subjective experiences and constructs mental
structures of the experiential world. This construct of mental structures grows within the context of

our social and cultural experiences.

Constructivist learning is: Constructed: Learner uses his existing knowledge and the new

information presented to construct new knowledge. This process occurs in social and cultural

context. Active: While the teacher facilitates, the learner creates his own knowledge by interacting

with information. Collaborative: In the learning process a group of learners work together, at their

own level, to examine and create knowledge.

Reflective: Learners reflect on their own learning and the learning process. Problem-Based:

Learners solve problems to learn new concepts. Evolving: Knowledge is not absolute and static. It

evolves as learner examines concepts critically and become aware of his thinking(metacognition).

Studies have found that many constructivist beliefs are realized when learners use graphic

organizers:

1. It allows learners to work actively to construct their understanding (Alshatti et al., 2011)

2. It facilitates visual thinking as it represents what the learner understands (Beissner,

Jonnassen and Grabowski, 1994, as cited by Kang, 2004)

3. It makes thought and organization of thoughts visible and lead to deeper understanding

(Kang, 2004)

4. It helps process and restructure thoughts and information (Kang, 2004)

5. It facilitates elicitation, explanation of a concept (Kang, 2004)

6. It promotes recall and retention through synthesis and analysis (Kang, 2004)

7. It facilates conceptual change (Alshatti et al., 2011)

8. It facilitates metacognition skills (Alshatti et al., 2011)

9. It enhances critical thinking or higher order thinking skills (Brookbank et al., 1999;

DeWispelaere & Kossack, 1996).

10. It improves problem solving skills (Alshatti et al., 2011)

 • English Lesson
INPUT • Pre-Test and Post Test Results; Use of Graphic organizer

• significant difference on the reading comprehension

PROCESS level before and after the utilization Graphic Organizers

• guidlines in using Graphic organizers in Reading

OUTPUT Comprehension

Figure 1. conceptual Paradigm

The research study was based on the Input-Process-Output (IPO) Model. The Inputs of the

study are the English lessons, the use of Graphic Organizers and the pre-test and post test results.

The inputs will be processed through the analysis of the difference Mean Percentage Scores using

statistical tools to determine the effectiveness of Graphic Organizers. The output of the study will

be the formulation of guidelines in using Graphic Organizers for effective learning in English.

Scope and Limitations

This study will aim to improve the reading comprehension of Selected Grade 10 student of San

Roque National High School. The study will be conducted in the mentioned school specifically for

Grade 10 students. The study used experimental tool through pre and posttest.

III. Methodology

This study used the experimental design Calmorin and Calmorin (2007) specifically it used the

One-group Pretest-Posttest design Creswell (2014).

Model of One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design

O¹ Y O²

Pre-test treatment Post-test

The symbol O refers to the observation on the measurement of the dependent variable

which is the level of comprehension performance of the students. The symbol Y represents the
exposure of the group to the treatment which is the Advance Story Map. The measurement of the

dependent variable comes before and after the treatment Y, through the pretest and the post test.

Computing the Student’s Comprehension of the Passage using this formula:

C= No. of correct answers

No. of questions X100= % of comprehension

No. of correct answers: 4 Total no. of questions: 10 4/10 = 40%

Student’s comprehension: 57%

Action Plan

The activity involve in the plan will divided in two stages namely: Pre Test and Post Test

will be used to determine the reading level and improvement or progress of a student in reading

comprehension before and after the adoption of the Graphic Organizer Strategy.

The implementation of the stage, the Graphic Organizer strategy will be adopted to the

selected students following the procedures:

1. Helping student’s structure writing project.

2. Encouraging students to make decisions.

3. Making it easy for students to classify ideas and communicate.

4. Allowing students to examine relationships.

5. Guiding students in demonstrating their thinking process.

6. Helping students increase reading comprehension.

7. Encouraging students to organize essential concepts and ideas.

8. Making it clear how to break apart a story into the main elements (intro, rising action, climax

etc.)

The common problem among students of San Roque National High School is reading

difficulties aside from absenteeism and tardiness of students. I have taught one student in grade 9

who doesn’t know yet the alphabet and so the right sounds of each letter. The reason why he will

not be able to comprehend in whatever he is reading in the class.

I have selected 10 students in each room since I have two sections handled in one day. But

before that, I let the whole class to read and observed those who have difficulties in reading and

how they comprehend on what they are reading.

 Graphic organizers are tools that can be used to visualize and organize information. Because

graphic organizers are often used as prompts for students to fill in the blanks. It displays the

relationships between facts, concepts or ideas. A graphic organizer guides the student’s thinking as

they fill in and build upon a visual map or diagram. They are also informally used as a term to

describe all visual learning strategies such as concept mapping, webbing, mind mapping and more.

This process will be done from March to April 2019. The use of graphic organizer is during

my teaching in regular class. In the Post Test stage, the researcher will administer the post test of

selected students who are in frustration level of reading to see the differences in their performance

and to evaluate the effectiveness of Graphic Organizers in developing reading comprehension on

the 10th grade level. The findings of the research will be documented after analysis and

interpretation are completed. Conclusions and recommendations will be specified based on the

findings.

IV. Results and D discussion

In terms of reading strategy used in this study. The pre-test without the strategy and post-
test with strategy used to determine if the Graphic Organizers as a strategy is effective.

Table 1. The reading comprehension pre-test and post-test profile of Grade 10 learners

Pre-Test Reading Post Test

Students Percentage Percentage Reading Level
Score Level Score
S. 1 4 40% Frustration 7 70% Instructional
S. 2 3 30% Frustration 5 50% Frustration
S. 3 5 50% Frustration 6 60% Instructional
S. 4 4 40% Frustration 8 80% Instructional
S. 5 5 50% Frustration 7 70% Instructional
S. 6 4 40% Frustration 8 80% Instructional
S. 7 3 30% Frustration 7 70% Instructional
S. 8 3 30% Frustration 6 60% Instructional
S. 9 3 30% Frustration 8 80% Instructional
S. 10 3 30% Frustration 7 70% Instructional
V. Recommendations
 VI. List of References

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