The development of a reading comprehension strategy program for elementary students entitled 'Learning How' Module 1 - Summarizing

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to develop a reading comprehension strategy program integrated with the elementary social studies content. I chose to do this for four reasons (a) research has shown that students can learn strategies (b) strategies are best taught explicitly within a content area (c) teachers do not have the time to develop such programs and, (d) strategy instruction does improve comprehension. -- Research shows that good readers use the following four strategies - summarizing, clarifying, questioning, and predicting (Jones et al., 1987). It is also noted in research that it is better to teach one strategy at a time (Pressley et al., 1987, 1989). The comprehension strategy of summarizing has been shown as the most important strategy of the four (Jones et al., 1987). -- Therefore, I have chosen to develop the unit using the summarizing strategy. The social studies content will be based on outcomes from Strand 1 of the new Atlantic Social Studies Elementary Curriculum.