Reading Psychology, 26:387400, 2005

Copyright
C
2005 Taylor & Francis Inc.
ISSN: 0270-2711 print / 1521-0685 online
DOI: 10.1080/02702710500285748
INVESTIGATING TWO APPROACHES TO FOSTERING
CHILDRENS COMPREHENSION OF LITERATURE
LAUREN AIMONETTE LIANG
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
CHERYL A. PETERSON and MICHAEL F. GRAVES
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
This instructional study investigated the effects of two approaches to fostering el-
ementary students comprehension of literature. Participants were 54 third-grade
students in 2 classrooms in a linguistic and culturally diverse, urban elementary
school. Students read two folktales, receiving a Scaffolded Reading Experience
(SRE) unit with one folktale and a unit we termed a Response-Oriented ap-
proach with the other folktale in a counterbalanced fashion. Classes were observed
throughout both units and students completed multiple-choice and short-answer
tests after reading each story and receiving the unit instruction. Teachers were in-
terviewed after presenting both units. Results on the multiple-choice tests showed
that students scored signicantly higher when receiving the SRE units and that
teachers preferred the SRE unit lessons. However, there were no differences between
the two approaches on the short-answer tests, and teachers noted that some of the
activities in the Response-Oriented units were very useful. Our conclusions are
that both the Response-Oriented units and the SRE units provided strong scaf-
folding for students reading, that the two approaches should be thought of as
complementary rather than as competing, and that there is a place for both of
them in classrooms that seek to build both comprehension and appreciation of
literature.
As Tracy and Morrow (2002) point out and as teachers know all
too well, reading comprehension is an enormously complex task
[and] . . . the job of preparing young readers to be successful at
reading comprehension is equally multifaceted (p. 219). In one
of the earlier attempts to deal with this multifaceted job, Tierney
and Cunningham (1984) distinguished between two sorts of com-
prehension instructioninstruction that focus on individual texts
or learning from text and strategy instruction or learning to
Address correspondence to Lauren Aimonette Liang, 1618 East 1300 South, Salt
Lake City, UT 84105, USA. E-mail: lauren.liang@ed.utah.edu
387
388 L. A. Liang et al.
learn fromtext. Somewhat later, Pearson and Fielding (1991) am-
plied on this distinction, noting that the purpose of instruction
in learning from text is to increase students comprehension of
prose whereas the purpose of instructioninlearning tolearnfrom
text is to increase students ability to learn from prose [emphasis
added]. More recently, the report of the RAND Reading Study
Group (Snow, 2002) endorsed this distinction. And more recently
still, one of us (Graves, 2004) suggested that it is fruitful to distin-
guish at least four sorts of comprehension instructionfostering
learning fromtext, teaching comprehensionstrategies, promoting
higher-order thinking, and teaching for understanding.
We believe that all of these sorts of comprehension are impor-
tant and deserve attention from both teachers and researchers.
Here, however, we deal with only one of themlearning from
text. More specically, the researchreported here focuses onanin-
structional framework for learning from text, a framework termed
a Scaffolded Reading Experience (Graves & Graves, 1994, 2003),
one of ve instructional frameworks described in Reading Strategies
and Practices (Tierney & Readence, 2000). At the time of their re-
view, Tierney and Readence noted that, although the Scaffolded
Reading Experience (SRE) is well grounded in theory, they could
locate no research on the framework. Since that time, several
studies have been reported. Additionally, one anecdotal report
published before the Tierney and Readence review seems worth
reporting.
In the anecdotal account, Rothenberg and Watts (1997)
described their experiences in using an SRE to teach Macbeth
to a group of eighth and ninth graders with learning difcul-
ties. In this account, Rothenberg and Watts discuss their moti-
vation for using the SRE with students with learning difculties,
their planning, the SRE itself, and students and their own re-
sponses to the experience, which were very positive. More recently,
Fournier and Graves (2002) conducted a quasi-experimental study
in which 50 seventh grade students read 2 short stories, re-
ceiving an SRE with one story and more typical classroom in-
struction with the other. Results on multiple-choice questions
and an attitude survey showed that students scored signicantly
higher on both stories when receiving an SRE, and that they
answered every attitude question more positively when receiving
an SRE.
Two Approaches to Literature 389
In another report, Cooke (2002) described a quasi-
experimental study in which she investigated a variety of effects
of SREs on 121 seventh grade students reading 4 multicultural
short stories. Results of multiple-choice tests showed that students
scored signicantly higher when receiving SREs on all four stories.
Results of short-answer tests showed that students scored higher
when receiving SREs on all four stories and signicantly higher
on three of the stories. Additionally, the SREs were effective for
both stronger and weaker readers. Finally, results on attitude mea-
sures showed the value of SREs in increasing students involve-
ment and enthusiasm toward reading multicultural stories. In a
third report, Graves and Liang (2002) described the results of a
descriptive study and a quasi-experimental study that gave particu-
lar attention to higher-order thinking. In the descriptive study, 57
high school sophomores used an SRE in reading The Great Gatsby
and received pre- and post-tests. The post-test scores showed sub-
stantial knowledge about the plot and signicant themes, substan-
tial knowledge about higher-order thinking, and students ability
to use higher-order thinking. In the quasi-experimental study, 46
high school seniors read Hamlet, half of them using an SRE and
half of them using a more traditional approach. Results showed
that both groups scored well on traditional itemssummarizing
the plot and identifying themeswhereas students using the SRE
demonstrated superior ability in using the higher-order thinking
skills emphasized in the unit lessons.
Together, these studies provide a good deal of support for the
effectiveness of the SRE framework in facilitating students com-
prehension of text. However, all of the studies were with students
in middle school and junior- and seniorhigh school. The study
reported here investigated the effects of SREs with third graders,
certainly a very different group from the older students who par-
ticipated in the previous studies. In the remainder of this article,
we will rst describe the SRE framework and then describe our
study and its results.
The SRE Framework
As its name implies, the central theoretical concept underlying the
SRE framework is scaffolding, dened by Graves and Graves (2003)
as helping students complete tasks they could not otherwise
390 L. A. Liang et al.
FIGURE 1 Two phases of a Scaffolded Reading Experience.
complete, [and aiding] students by helping them to better com-
plete a task, to complete a task with less stress or in less time, or
to learn more fully than they would have otherwise (p. 30). As
shown in Figure 1, the framework has two phasesa planning
phase and an implementation phase. During the planning phase,
the teacher considers the students who will be doing the reading,
the reading selection, and the purpose or purposes of the read-
ing. Then, based on these three factors, he or she creates a set of
prereading, during-reading, and postreading activities designed
to help this group of students successfully read the selection and
achieve those purposes. The possible components of an SRE are
shown in Table 1. It should be stressed that these are possible com-
ponents. No SRE would contain all of these components. Each
SRE, including the SREs used in the research described here, is
unique and contains only those prereading, during reading, and
postreading activities that will help a particular group of students
achieve their purposes with a particular text.
Two Approaches to Literature 391
TABLE 1 Possible Pre-, During-, and Postreading Activities in an SRE
Prereading Activities During-Reading Activities Postreading Activities
Relating the Reading to Silent Reading Questioning
Students Lives Reading to Students Discussion
Motivating Supported Reading Writing
Activating and Building Oral Reading by Students Drama
Background Modifying the Text Artistic and Nonverbal
Knowledge Activities
Providing Text-Specic Application and Outreach
Knowledge Activities
Preteaching Vocabulary Building Connections
Preteaching Concepts Reteaching
Prequestioning,
Predicting, and
Direction Setting
Suggesting Strategies
Method
Here, we describe the participants in the study, the materials used,
the procedures employed, and the design and analysis used.
Participants
Participants in this study were 54 students in 2 third-grade classes
at an urban elementary school. The students were taught by two
teachers, one whohadtaught for twoyears andone whohadtaught
for one year. The school enrolled a linguistically and culturally
diverse group of students, and reported that 48% percent of the
students received a free or reduced-price lunch. Additionally, 20%
of the schools students had limited English prociency, and 11%
received special education services.
Materials
Materials for this study included two folktale picture books writ-
ten for children, two units with detailed lesson plans for each
folktale, one for the SRE treatment and one for the compari-
son Response-Oriented treatment, and two assessments for each
folktale.
392 L. A. Liang et al.
FOLKTALES
Two childrens folktale picture books were used for the study.
The rst, The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola,
tells the story of how the wildower Indian Paintbrush received
its name. The story revolves around a young American Indian boy
who follows his dream-vision to paint the sunset and in the pro-
cess discovers the Indian Paintbrush ower, a ower that yields
the exact color of dye that he needs for his painting. The second
folktale, Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong, tells a comical story of
a poor Chinese couple who nd a magic pot in their garden. The
couple quickly discovers the pots ability to double anything put
into it can be both a blessing and a curse. Both stories have been
acclaimed for their content and art and are popular picture books
for elementary school use.
LESSON PLANS
Two units containing detailed lesson plans were written for
each of the two folktales. One unit for each folktale described
the SRE treatment and the other unit described the comparison
treatment, which we termed a Response-Oriented treatment. Each
unit was about 30 pages long and included an introduction to the
folktale, a list of objectives, detailed procedures for teaching the
lessons in the unit, and the materials used by the teachers and
students.
Because each of the units reects a particular treatment (SRE
or Response Oriented) and was designed for a particular story (The
Legend of the Indian Paintbrush or Two of Everything), each included
different activities and different materials. The activities used in
one SRE unit and one Response-Oriented unit are described in
the Procedures section.
Representative materials used in the units included vocab-
ulary lesson overheads, text previews (Graves, Prenn, & Cooke,
1985), and story maps (Beck & McKeown, 1981). The vocabulary
lesson overheads consisted of key vocabulary, their denitions, and
context-richsentences using the vocabulary. The text previews con-
sisted of a brief introduction designed to capture students inter-
est, some details from the story, and brief directions for reading
it. The story maps consisted of a set of basic questions that
followed the order of the story, focused on events of central
importance in the story, and required both factual knowledge
Two Approaches to Literature 393
and inferences. The story maps also included extension ques-
tions, questions that required students to step back from the
story and think critically as they considered such matters as the
relationships between the story and other literature they have
read, and relationships between the story and their lives. Elec-
tronic copies of all four of the units are available from the rst
author.
ASSESSMENTS
The assessments used in this study included multiple-choice
quizzes and short-answer quizzes. The multiple-choice assessments
consisted of 10 questions that tested both explicit and implicit
comprehension of the story. The short-answer quizzes consisted of
twoopen-endedquestions focusingonunderstandingtwoessential
aspects of the story. Electronic copies of the assessments are also
available from the rst author.
Procedures
We met with the two teachers involved in the study several months
before the instruction began, and observed in the classrooms over
a period of two weeks to get a feel for normal classroom proce-
dures and student behaviors. Using this information and informa-
tion from the teachers, we wrote one SRE unit and one Response-
Oriented unit for each story. We then held several meetings with
the two teachers to go over the units and answer any questions the
teachers had.
During the rst week of the study, Teacher 1 taught The Leg-
end of the Indian Paintbrush using the SRE unit lessons whereas
Teacher 2 taught this story using the Response-Oriented unit
lessons. The units lasted three days with approximately one hour
of instruction on each of the rst two days and one half hour of
instruction followed by the multiple-choice and the short-answer
assessments on the third day.
During the second week of the study, Teacher 1 taught Two
of Everything using the Response-Oriented unit lessons, whereas
Teacher 2 taught this story using the SRE unit lessons. Again, the
units lasted three days with approximately one hour of instruction
each day, and the assessments were administered on the third and
last day.
394 L. A. Liang et al.
We observed the classes during the two weeks of the study,
keeping detailed eld notes, and we interviewed each teacher the
week following the study.
Although the SRE unit lessons and the Response-Oriented
unit lessons were constructed individually for each of the stories,
the two SRE units and the two Response-Oriented units were quite
similar. In the next section, we describe both types of units for The
Legend of the Indian Paintbrush.
THE SRE UNIT
The SREunit for The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush began with
prereading activities: building background knowledge, preteach-
ing concepts and vocabulary, building text-specic knowledge,
and motivating. The concepts and vocabulary taught included
legend, shaman and Dream-Vision. Students also received
a text preview (Graves, Prenn, & Cooke, 1985) of the story, and
looked at pictures of scenes from the story, two activities that
prompted a discussion of how the main character might be similar
to the students. The teacher then read the story aloud, stopping
periodically to elicit student comments and clear up any confu-
sion. Following the read-aloud, the teacher led a short discus-
sion of the story, and questioned students on key concepts and
events.
On the second day of the SRE unit, the students reread
the story with a partner while completing a story map (Beck &
McKeown, 1981). When all pairs had completed the map, the
teacher went through it with the students and then led a discussion
of the extension questions, which gave students an opportunity to
reect on similarities between their own experiences and those of
the main character.
On the third day of the SRE unit, students participated in a
painting activity in which they, like the main character in the story,
did not have all the colors they needed for their painting. Students
discussed this experience and how it related to the story. Next, stu-
dents summarized the story as a group. They then completed the
multiple-choice and short-answer assessments. When they nished
the assessments, they were given pieces of paper designed to sim-
ulate the leather the main character painted on in the story and
completed the drawings they started earlier in the day, but this
time with all the needed colors available.
Two Approaches to Literature 395
THE RESPONSE-ORIENTED UNIT
The Response-Oriented unit for The Legend of the Indian Paint-
brush began with the teacher reading the story aloud. During
the reading, the teacher stopped twice, to ask students what they
thought so far and to guide a short, open-ended discussion of the
students reactions to the story at that point. After the reading, the
teacher began a longer, student-focused discussion of the story,
letting the students guide the conversation. The teacher next ex-
plained that the story was a folktale that told why the Indian Paint-
brush ower got its name, and asked students to think of other
why stories they might have heard. Finally, the teacher asked stu-
dents to write short why stories of their own, giving them time
beforehand to brainstormideas with a partner, and time afterward
to share their why stories.
On the second day of the Response-Oriented unit, students
rereadthe story withpartners. The teacher thengave thema choice
of three activities: (1) writing a poem or story about how the main
character feels at the end of the story, (2) drawing a picture of a
scene they had a strong feeling about and explaining in writing
why they had a strong feeling about that scene, or (3) creating a
short play about the story with 2 or 3 other students. After a work
period, students shared their drawings, poems, or plays.
On the third day of the Response-Oriented unit, the teacher
led a short discussion about why the main character might have
worked so hard to reach his goals, relating this to the students
lives by asking them to recall times they worked hard to reach
their goals. The teacher also asked students to discuss whether
they would like to have the main character as a friend. Following
this discussion, students completed the multiple-choice and short-
answer assessments.
Design and Analysis
The study employed a 2 treatment (SRE Unit, Response-Oriented
Unit) design with the treatments counterbalanced across both
story (Indian Paintbrush, Two of Everything) and teacher (Teacher 1,
Teacher 2). Dependent measures were the 10-itemmultiple-choice
tests and the 2-item short-answer tests used for each story. The
short-answer questions were independently scored by two of us us-
ing a 4-point rubric. We achieved 90 percent agreement on Indian
396 L. A. Liang et al.
TABLE 2 Means with SRE Lessons and Response-Oriented Lessons on
Multiple-Choice and Short-Answer Tests
Type of Lesson Multiple-Choice Score Short-Answer Score
SRE Lesson 7.89 2.04
Response-Oriented Lesson 6.63 2.02
Paintbrush and 95 percent agreement on Two of Everything. The
multiple-choice scores were corrected for guessing, and boththose
and the short-answer scores were analyzed using one-way analyses
of variance.
Results
Here, we present the quantitative results rst and then the results
of our informal observations and interviews with the teachers. The
mean scores for both the multiple-choice and short-answer tests
are shown in Table 2, and are straightforward. As can be seen, on
the multiple-choice tests, students averaged 79% percent with the
SRE unit and 66% with the Response-Oriented unit. On the short-
answer tests, students averaged 2.04 out of a possible 4.00 with the
SRE unit and 2.02 out of a possible 4.00 on the Response-Oriented
unit. The ANOVAs indicated that these results were signicant,
F (1, 105) = 6.79, p < .01, for the multiple-choice questions but
not signicant, F (1, 105) = .018, p > .05, for the short-answer
questions.
Our observations indicated that on Day 1 of both weeks, stu-
dents in both treatments were attentive and engaged as the teach-
ers read the stories aloud. There was, however, some dgeting
during the prereading activities of the SRE units and some rest-
lessness during the discussion portion of the Response-Oriented
units.
On Day 2 of both weeks, a number of students receiving the
SRE instruction completed the story map without rereading the
story, even though the teachers recommended that they reread
it. In one class, the students were nevertheless industrious and
seemed condent as they completed the map, whereas inthe other
class a number of students only settled down to work after addi-
tional guidance from the teacher. During Day 2 of the Response-
Oriented instruction, in one class the teacher suggested that
Two Approaches to Literature 397
students reread the story with partners, which they did with ob-
vious enjoyment and involvement. In the other class, the students
eagerly jumped into creating plays and drawing pictures and were
very engaged in these activities, but most of them did not reread
the story as the teacher suggested.
On Day 3 of both weeks, the SRE unit lessons seemed to be
particularly well received. Students were very engaged in the dra-
matic activities for the Two of Everything and in drawing on the
buckskin paper for the Indian Paintbrush lesson. During Day 3 of
the Response-Oriented instruction, the teacher of the class where
most students drew pictures spent considerable time on students
sharing their work, and encouraged students to discuss the story.
The teacher of the other class spent less time on the sharing and
did not review the story directly. In all of the classes during both
weeks of instruction, students appeared to take the assessments se-
riously and answer the multiple-choice and short-answer questions
thoughtfully.
Our general conclusion based on our classroom observations
is that the students generally behaved like students do, and that
although both types of units generally went well, some activities
and lessons within the units were better received than others.
As noted, following the two weeks of instruction, we inter-
viewed the teachers about their experiences with using the SRE
and Response-Oriented units. Both teachers preferred the SRE
units over the Response-Oriented units primarily because they felt
the SRE instruction was more thorough. One teacher said she felt
the students got more out of the story with the SRE. It gave them
more background than the other lesson plans and they were bet-
ter prepared for the story . . . they had more of a foundation. Both
teachers also said they would use the SRE units in the future.
When prompted to say more about the SRE instruction, both
teachers named the story map and the vocabulary activities as most
benecial for their students, and both commented particularly on
the story map. One teacher stated that she liked the story map
because it took the students step by step through the story. The
other teacher commented that working with a partner on the story
map was particularly helpful because it was important for them
to hash through the details with their partners.
Althoughthe teachers generally preferredthe SREunits, both
identied several activities in the Response-Oriented units as very
398 L. A. Liang et al.
useful. For example, both expressed pleasant surprise at the stu-
dents performance on the choice activities that occurred during
the Response-Oriented units. One teacher noted the students en-
thusiasm for being allowed to choose what activity they could do,
but felt that some students needed to have more experience doing
the choice activities (creating plays in particular) to make them
more benecial. The other teacher did not have the same con-
cerns. She was especially pleased to see one group of students take
the creation of their play seriously, and she arranged for this group
to perform their play for another class.
Discussion
The results were not exactly what we had expected. We had ex-
pected that children would do better with the SRE units than with
the Response-Oriented units. The results were only somewhat in
keeping with our expectations. Students receiving the SRE units
did better on the multiple-choice test, and teachers generally pre-
ferred the SRE units and thought that the SRE units provided
more of the structure students needed, that the SRE units bet-
ter scaffolded students efforts. However, students receiving the
Response-Oriented units and those receiving the SRE units did
equally well on the short-answer questions. Teachers also endorsed
several of the activities used in the Response-Oriented units and
felt that these activities gave their students an opportunity to en-
gage in some important creative experiences.
In retrospect, these results are not surprising. In planning a
control condition, we had at rst planned to use the units and
lessons for the folktales that were in the students basal readers.
However, when we examined these lessons, we felt that they were
weak and did not serve as adequate controls. We therefore de-
signed the Response-Oriented units to serve as a stronger test of
the SRE units. They certainly did serve as a strong test, producing
the somewhat mixed results we have described.
We now believe that what we created were two types of
units and sets of lessons that provided very strong scaffolding for
students reading. One type of unit, which we called our SRE unit
and created using the cognitive-oriented instructional framework
of a SRE described earlier in this article, was more cognitively
Two Approaches to Literature 399
oriented and focused on fostering the students understanding
of the specic texts. The other type of unit, which we named our
Response-Oriented unit, was indeed response-oriented, but in re-
ality, these units ended up as basically response-oriented SREs.
This was because the time and care taken in crafting these units
actually closely followed the SRE framework model of considering
the students, the text, and the purpose for reading (in this case
with the response-oriented units, fostering students response to
the texts) and then designing effective lessons that would support
these students in reaching this purpose with the specic text.
We feel condent in recommending either form of our units,
the more cognitive-oriented SRE unit or the more response-
oriented unit. We believe that both forms deserve further investi-
gation; not, we want to emphasize, with the goal of showing which
is superior. The two emphases include different activities, serve
different purposes, and are likely to yield different but equally
important results. We believe that additional research will clearly
demonstrate that there is a place for both emphases in a compre-
hensive literature program designed to build both students com-
prehension of literature and their enjoyment and appreciation of
literature.
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