Hammill Institute on Disabilities

The Effects of Three Prereading Activities on Learning Disabled Students' Reading

Comprehension
Author(s): Arlene Sachs
Source: Learning Disability Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Summer, 1983), pp. 248-251
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1510434
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 THE EFFECTS OF THREE PREREADING
ACTIVITIES ON LEARNING DISABLED
STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION
Arlene Sachs

Abstract. This study examined the effects of three prereading activities on learn-
ing disabled children's reading comprehension. Thirty-six children classified as
learning disabled participated. The three prereading activities consisted of (a) a
modified Directed Reading Activity, (b) a modified Concept Analysis Activity, and
(c) a Worksheet Activity (control). To counterbalance for order of prereading ac-
tivities and experimenter, a factorial/modified Latin-Square design was selected.
Barrett's Taxonomy (1976) was used as a guide to develop the reading comprehen-
sion tests. Literal, inferential, evaluative, appreciative, and total test reading com-
prehension constituted the dependent measures. Repeated one-way analysis of
variance and Newman-Keuls procedures were used to analyze the data.
The results, which replicated and substantiated a preliminary study (Sachs,
1981), indicate that evaluative reading comprehension is affected by both a
modified Concept Analysis Activity and a modified Directed Reading Activity com-
pared to the effect of a Worksheet Activity.

Learning disabled children often have difficul-
ty integrating prior knowledge with ongoing in-
formation flow during reading (Reid & Hresko,
1981). As a result, they frequently fail to con-
struct the meaning of a text. Intervention
strategies focusing on external structuringthat fa-
cilitates integration of knowledge before reading
should help children remember what they read.
External prereading instruction usually in-
cludes a variety of preorganizers, i.e., activities
designed to help the reader relate prior
knowledge to incoming information. External
organizersused to assess comprehension and/or
recall with adults and children have consisted of
a short verbal statement given by the teacher
(Smith & Hess, 1969), conceptual statements
relating to the theme of the story (Bransford &
Johnson, 1972), and development of key con-
cepts in Social Studies texts (Peters, 1977).
Directed Reading Activity
and Concept Analysis Activity
Two additional prereading techniques were
examined in the present study: a modified ver-
sion of the Directed Reading Activity (DRA) and
a modified Concept Analysis Activity (CAA).
Typically, the DRA is used in commercial basal
readers as the structured reading activity to
develop concepts, vocabulary, and comprehen-
sion. Although the format is widely used,
research has not validated its effectiveness with
learning disabled children. The DRA includes
components for guided prereading, guided silent
reading and/or oral reading, comprehension,
and followup word recognition or skills practice
(Betts, 1956).
The guided prereading component modified
for this study delineates ways in which the
teacher can arouse children's interest, help
students relate their experiential backgrounds to
the concepts of a story through vocabulary
development, and set a purpose for reading. In
addition, story concepts are presented through
selected vocabulary in context before students
read and discuss the central theme.
ARLENE SACHS, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor,
University of Texas at Dallas.

248 Learning DisabilityQuarterly

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 While the modified Concept Analysis Activity
was not originallydeveloped as a prereading ac-
tivity, it may be implemented as such since it
provides a structured method of developing key
story concepts as well as activating the reader's
prior knowledge and scripts. The CAA develops
the major story concept by explaining it in terms
of examples and nonexamples, which are gener-
ated through a discussion between the teacher
and the child, based on prior knowledge.
Basically, the prereading components of DRA
and the modified CAA are similar by fostering
motivation and interest and providing an oppor-
tunity for children to access prior knowledge and
scripts prior to reading a story. Since learning
disabled children tend to lack motivation and in-
terest (Algozzine & Sutherland, 1977) and have
difficulty integrating prior knowledge with the
ongoing informationflow duringreading (Reid &
Hresko, 1981), prereading activities such as the
DRA and CAA facilitatetheir abilityto construct
the meaning of a story (Sachs, 1981).
In a preliminarystudy Sachs (1981) examined
the effectiveness of the prereading component of
the DRA and CAA compared to a word-
recognition skill worksheet control activity. The
results of this study suggested that the DRA and
CAA enhance evaluative reading comprehen-
sion.' The current study was designed to
replicate and substantiate the findings of the
prior experiment, which was limited by small cell
n's. The comparative effects of the DRA, CAA,
and worksheet control activities were analyzed
by literal, inferential, evaluative, appreciative,
and total test reading comprehension (Barrett's
Taxonomy, 1976). It was hypothesized that both
the modified DRA and modified CAA would
significantly enhance performance on an
evaluative reading comprehension task.
METHODOLOGY
Subjects
Thirty-six school-classified learning disabled
(LD) students ranging in age from 9-0 to 12-9,
X = 10-8, participated in the study. School
records provided full-scale WISC-R intelligence
test scores and PIAT reading comprehension
scores. Intelligence quotients on the WISC-R
ranged between 83-105, X = 99, while PIAT
reading comprehension scores ranged between
the 2nd and 25th percentile, X = 13.
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Procedure
Subjects were randomly divided into three
treatment groups of 12 children each to which
one experimenter was randomly assigned. Each
child was exposed to all three prereading ac-
tivities, stories, tests, and experimenters. Conse-
quently, the n per cell in the analysis remained
36.
Students participated individually in three
45-minute instructionalsessions. The three treat-
ment conditions were similar: (a) after the
specified prereading treatment each child read a
15-page story silently, (b) was instructed to ask
for help in decoding unfamiliar words, and
(c) took an oral 12-item reading comprehension
test.
DRA. Duringthe DRA the examiner activated
the child's interest in the story by requesting
him/her to choose an illustrationwithin the text
that was most interesting. The examiner and the
child then discussed the illustration.For the se'c-
ond DRA step the examiner displayed pictures
related to the content of the story. In turn, these
illustrations encouraged the child to reflect on
past experiences which relate to the narrative.
For example, one of the stories was about an
animal who had a secret hiding place in the
jungle. The examiner displayed pictures of zoo
animals and asked the child about experiences
he/she might have had visiting animals in the
zoo. The thirdstep required the examiner to pre-
sent five vocabulary words (identified by the
authors of the text) in context. The purpose of
this step was to develop concepts through tradi-
tional vocabulary instructionas outlined by Betts
(1956). The child and the examiner read the
sentence containing the key word whereupon
the child made up a sentence which included the
key word. In addition to vocabulary instruction
designed to develop concepts, a 5-minute infor-
mal question-answer session was conducted
focusing on the main theme of the story. For ex-
ample, in connection with a story about a girl
cousin coming over to play with a boy cousin,
the male child was asked how he would feel if his
female cousin came over to play on her day off
from school. The fourth step set the purpose for
reading by requiringthe child to predict what the
story was about based on the title, which the ex-
aminer read out loud.
CAA. The modified CAA was designed to
enhance the child's ability to comprehend the
Volume 6, Summer 1983 249
story's central concept by drawing on his/her
background of experience and prior knowledge.
Using a magic marker, the experimenter wrote
the central concept of the story, e.g., "An in-
dividual often needs a private place which can be
called his own," on a sheet of unruled white
paper to be viewed by the child. The examiner
and the child then generated examples of the
concept which, in turn, were listed with a magic
marker on a white sheet of paper under the
heading "examples." The third CAA step re-
quired child and examiner to develop a list of
nonexamples also to be written on the white
sheet of paper under the heading "Nonex-
amples." The final step required the child to
come up with a definition of the concept based
on the examples and nonexamples listed on the
paper. This definition was written in magic
markeron the sheet underneath "examples"and
"nonexamples."
Worksheet Activity Procedure (WA).The
WA condition required the examiner and the
child to work together on three word-attack
worksheet pages selected from the workbooks of
the basal series used for the study. For example,
vowel sound worksheets were used. The ex-
aminer and the child checked and discussed
each answer on the worksheet.
Materials
Three stories were randomly selected from the
second-grade level Houghton-Mifflin(1979) and
Holt-Rinehart-Winston(1976) commercial basal
readers. The stories were 15' pages long. The
theme of each story dealt with personal/social
issues of interest to children. For example, one
story illustrated the concept of being shy and
afraid to speak in school.
TABLE 1
Phi Reliability Analysis for the Four Subtests
Reading Comprehension Subtests
Literal Comprehension
InferentialComprehension
Evaluative Comprehension
Appreciative Comprehension
250 Learning DisabilityQuarterly
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Reading Comprehension
Test Development
The experimenter administered the reading
comprehension test orally to each child in-
dividually. The items and instructions for ad-
ministering the test were similar for each test
whereas the test content varied depending on
the content of each story. Each test consisted of
12 items evenly divided across four levels of
reading comprehension - literal, inferential,
evaluative, and appreciative. Items were
developed according to the guidelines provided
by Barrett'sTaxonomy of Reading Comprehen-
sion (1976). A panel of expert judges rated the
items to determine content validity.
The reliability of each of the reading com-
prehension levels (treated as subtests) of the
three domain-referenced tests used to measure
reading comprehension were estimated using
GeneralizabilityAnalysis for Single-Facet Design
(Brennan, 1979). This approach to estimating
dependability of domain-referenced tests
employs a random linear model for analyzingthe
variance components of a single-facet (per-
son x times) design. A summary of the results
is provided in Table 1.
Design
The design consisted of a factorial/modified
Latin square counterbalanced for teacher and
order of treatment presentation. The indepen-
dent measures were the three prereading ac-
tivities with three levels: (a) DRA, (b) CAA,
and (c) WA control. The dependent measures
of reading comprehension included five levels:
literal, inferential, evaluative, appreciative, and
total test reading comprehension. This design
provided for control of the influence of ex-
Phi Coefficient
.63
.55
.53
.48
traneous variables. For example, the length of
treatment conditions was consistent for each
subject, and participants were randomly as-
signed to groups.
Experimenters, who were individuallytrained
in each prereading condition, were informed
that the purpose of the study was to assess
reading comprehension and that the implemen-
tation of the prereading activities was crucial to
the experiment.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Repeated one-way analyses of variance were
used to examine the data. Specifically, each
prereading activity was examined by level of
reading comprehension, i.e., literal, inferential,
evaluative, appreciative, and total test. As ex-
pected, the results revealed no significant dif-
ferences among the three prereading activities
on these dimensions. However, a significantdif-
ference (F = 8.091, p < .01) emerged among
the prereading activities on evaluative reading
comprehension. The significant simple effect
was further examined utilizing Newman-Keuls
procedures (Winer, 1962). The modified DRA
(p < .05) and the CAA (p < .01) were found to
have a significant effect on evaluative reading
comprehension in contrast to the worksheet con-
trol activity.
The results of the study substantiate the find-
ings of the preliminary study (Sachs, 1981) in-
dicating that evaluative reading comprehension
is affected by both the prereading DRA and the
CAA. The addition of external prereading ac-
tivities to learning disabled readers' instructional
programs helps to facilitate their reading perfor-
mance on evaluative tasks which require relating
prior knowledge and scripts to written narrative
text.
Thus, the structure of the prereading activity
was found to affect the outcome. That is, "higher
level" reading comprehension, i.e., evaluative
comprehension, was affected by the structuring
of the prereading activity. The learning disabled
subjects in this experiment were able to organize
and integrate their scriptsand priorknowledge to
construct the meaning of the text when actively
engaged in a DRA or a CAA prior to reading. In
summary, the presence of intervention strategies
that provide external structuringprior to reading
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facilitated the subjects' evaluation of the nar-
rative information presented in the text.
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tionalfoundationof learningdisabilities.Journalof
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GeorgePeabodyCollegeforTeachersof Vanderbilt
University,1981.
Smith, R., & Hess, K. The effects of prereading
assistanceon the comprehensionand attitudesof
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sign. New York:McGraw-Hill,
1962.
FOOTNOTES
'Barrett'sTaxonomy of Reading Comprehension was
used as a guide for developing the reading com-
prehensiontest.
The authorwishesto thankDrs. Paul S. Redelheim,
HankGoodstein,VickiRisko,KimReid, and Michael
Colemanfor theirhelp withthismanuscript.
Requestsfor reprintsshould be addressedto: Arlene
Sachs, P.O. Box 688, Richardson,TX 75080.
Volume 6, Summer 1983 251