Reading Research By: Olivia Schwamberger

My Practice OAA scores

Struggles on Study Island  Main Idea and Supporting Details  Analyze Setting  Characters

Example work  Here is the link to an example of my work before the experiment  ome-a-vast-and-powerful-empire ome-a-vast-and-powerful-empire

Before Research  I was not a very confident reader before the experiments I did. I felt that summarizing, fix-up strategies and other ways to help reading were useless. I had a hard time understanding Informational, Technical and Persuasive Text. I never improved on that topic. I rate my confidence level out of 10 I would give myself a 6 1/2.

During Research  During Crispin I started summarizing the chapter we were going to be tested on for the test to see if it helped me personally. My quiz grade did slightly increase and I felt that I understood the reading better. I also started using the fix- up strategy of taking notes when I read stuff.

After Research  Now I summarize all most all the readings we have after I read them because I know that it will improve my comprehension of the reading. This has worked out well so far. Also I take notes when reading. I pull out important details and the main idea when I take the notes. In almost all my journals I took notes and I really understood the reading after that. I learned that taking notes and summarizing really works for me during this unit. I would rate my confidence now about an 8 1/2 now.

My Question  Does summarizing a passage after you read it improve your comprehension of the reading?

Why this question?  I hate to summarize and I’m not very good at doing it. So I was interested to see if summarizing had any effect on comprehension of readings. If it proved true I would try to summarize passages in my head after reading to improve my comprehension. If proven false then I would continue to not summarize.

My Hypothesis  Summarizing does improve your comprehension of the reading because it gets your brain thinking about the text.

First Test  For my first test I tested a boy that didn’t summarize. My problem was I let him look at the text when he was taking the test and he got a hundred percent. I did it again with a girl this time and she also got a hundred percent. Then I saw the flaw and changed it so that when you took the test you were not allowed to look back at the test.

Procedures (second test) 1. First I gathered 1 boy and 1 girl randomly from Mrs. Kelly’s room. 2. Then I handed each of them a short reading selection about what a person hears and comparing it to his old home. 3. When they were finished reading I gave them both a piece of paper and told them to summarize the passage on the piece of paper with the reading next to them. 4. When they were finished summarizing I gave them the test and told them to right the test answers on the same paper as the summary with out the test. 5. Then I got 1 boy and 1 girl randomly from Mrs. Kelly’s room. 6. I handed them the same selection as the other students. 7. After they were finished I took away the passage and gave them the test. 8. After they were finished with the test I graded the tests and analyze the data.

Variables  Manipulated Variable- Whether the student summarized or not.  Response Variable- Test grade and time it took.  Controlled Variables- The test, the reading passage and they weren’t allowed to look at text during test.

Summarizing Experiment Results

Question Answers

Notes on Experiment Students Student that summarized- Average 11/14  Student 1 (girl)- 10/14  Her summary quality was weak and rushed through the summary.  Didn’t rush test- took about 3 min.  Student 2 (boy)- 12/14  Spent time on the summary and good quality  Didn’t rush test- took about 3min.

Notes on Experiment Students Students that didn’t Summarize- Average 6/14  Student 1(girl)- 8/14  Took time on test- about 3 min.  Student 2 (boy)- 4/14  Took time on test- about 4 min.

Pictures of test taking students

Results The people that summarized got better scores than the people that didn’t summarize. Also the quality of the summary effected the quiz grade. The people that didn’t summarize never got a score above 60%, both of them failed. Summarizing Average~ 78.5% or 11/14 Non-Summarizing Average~ 42.8% or 6/14

Recommendations I would recommend that all students summarize passages after they read the passage because it will improve your comprehension of the reading according to my test. Summarizing really makes your brain think about the text and comprehend it better.

THE END!!!