Running Head: READING COMPREHENSION IN CONTENT AREAS 1

Reading Comprehension in Content Areas in Middle School

Sarah Tohill

Franciscan University of Steubenville

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Introduction

Throughout the world of education, there are the phrases “learning to read” and “reading

to learn”. These phrases signify two different tasks that are equally important, the first being the

foundational task that allows the second to be accomplished. In this, the key word is

comprehension, defined by the National Reading Panel as “intentional thinking during which

meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and the reader” (2000). Once a

student reaches middle school, the common assumption is that he or she has mastered the first

task of learning to read and can therefore be expected to “read to learn” through comprehension

of their textbooks. While this would be true in an ideal world, the sad reality is that many middle

school students lack the reading comprehension skills that are required in their classroom. A

single teacher is only able to do so much, and content area teachers especially do not have the

time or training to teach reading comprehension strategies (Ness 2009).

Purpose

Comprehension has often been defined as one of the foundational skills in reading,

though a better definition would be the goal of reading. All other skills such as fluency and

knowledge of vocabulary open the door for reading comprehension. However, having those

skills alone do not guarantee the reader mastery of reading comprehension. Research shows that

explicit teaching of comprehension strategies is vital for mastery of reading comprehension.

Though comprehension strategies are often taught in elementary schools, middle school and high

school teachers do not often teach these strategies in their classrooms, especially those in content

areas (Ness 2009). Why is it that middle school content area teachers do not teach these vital

skills? And what are some comprehension strategies that they could incorporate into their

classrooms?
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The best method for discovering the attitudes of teachers towards reading comprehension

is through a survey directed at middle school content area teachers. This survey would collect the

information of the teachers such as the time they have been teaching, the classes and grades they

teach, and their certification. The study will enquire how often they teach reading comprehension

strategies, and if they do not teach them often or at all, the teacher will be asked for their reason

for this. They will also be asked what their beliefs of teaching comprehension strategies in

middle school are. Additional research of existing empirical and descriptive studies will provide

information on strategies that could be incorporated by content area teachers.

My hypothesis is that content area teachers do not teach comprehension strategies due to

a combination of not having the time or the ability. I also hypothesize that while many teachers

will hold that comprehension strategies are important, not all of them may believe that teaching

specific comprehension strategies in content areas is important. Finally, I hypothesize that

studies will show effective comprehension strategies that can be incorporated into any

classroom.

Reviews of Literature

One common method of teaching reading comprehension is teaching a paraphrasing

strategy. Hagaman and Reid (2008) make use of the RAP paraphrasing method in their

experimental research which sought to discover if using this method would assist struggling

middle school students in reading comprehension. According to the authors, “RAP is a three-step

strategy: Read a paragraph; Ask myself, ‘What was the main idea and two details?’ and Put it

into my own words.” (223) There were only three participants of the study, who were all sixth-

grade females. They were chosen based on scores taken from the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test

– 4 for reading comprehension. These three participants had scored at least a year below their
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grade level in comprehension and were identified as struggling students by their remedial

reading teachers. These students were given instruction in a one-on-one setting. The instruction

was a combination of RAP and self-regulated strategy development (SRSD), which was used for

the students to implement RAP into their reading strategies. The method itself first was to

establish a baseline of reading comprehension using a combination of retelling and short answers

to questions about the text. This probe was used for all stages of instruction. Once the baseline

was established, instruction began, with the goal of continuing until the student had reached the

criterion level for independent reading. Immediately following the student’s achievement of

independence level, the test was administered four times, then once more after two weeks

without the direct instruction. After analyzing the test results, the researchers concluded that the

RAP method of paraphrasing can assist students with reading comprehension.

The authors of this article provide a wealth of details about the method that they used,

both in its previous role in research and in their own study. Every single step that the researchers

made was extremely well documented and explained, and all the testing data from the students

was given in the body of the article. This gave great credence to the professional aspect of the

article. It was obvious that despite the lack of available test subjects, the authors had taken great

care in their research for this experiment. While there was much information to take in at every

step, the procedure was still easy to follow. One difficulty with this piece of research is in the

group size, though this was not the fault of the researchers. The results themselves are unclear

only in that it is difficult to know whether the results are from the RAP method itself or the

SRSD instruction that was included. Within the results, however, the authors do not address the

drastic drop in scores for the maintenance test, which seem to take away some credence from the

drastic improvement from instruction. Despite this, the thorough research gives enough credence
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to the experiment for it to not be dismissed, especially in light of the positive results. Future

research in the same area mainly would need to be a larger sample, but also might show the

results of a longer time of instruction, and a longer maintenance period. This article fits perfectly

with the direction I want to go with my own research, as it targets struggling middle school

readers, and gives incredible detail to a specific method.

Every teacher acknowledges the importance of reading comprehension, but not every

teacher includes explicit instruction of reading comprehension strategies in overall instruction.

Ness (2009) conducted a case study to examine the use of reading comprehension strategies in

middle school and high school, as well as the attitudes of the teachers towards reading

comprehension. Eight teachers participated in the study; four taught in high school social studies

and science, and four taught in middle school social studies and science. The first part of the

study consisted in direct observation of each of the classrooms using a coding method to identify

the strategies used. Within the coding system, Ness distinguished non-comprehension instruction

from comprehension instruction, and also specified within each the content of instruction. The

second part of the study consisted in an hour long open-ended interview, in which the teacher

explained their view on reading comprehension and their priorities in instruction. Ness found that

only 3% of the total 2,400 minutes of instructional time observed was used for comprehension

instruction. Within the time spent on comprehension instruction, only three out of the eight

strategies provided in the coding system were used. In the interviews, teachers explained that

while they felt that reading comprehension is important, they do not believe that it is their

responsibility to teach it, they do not have time to teach it, and they may not know how to teach

it.
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I found that this study was extremely interesting and easy to follow. The headings and

subheadings were well-laid out, facilitating the understanding of the study. Ness also made good

use of various other studies, increasing the credibility of her work. Overall, the study was well-

written, allowing any reader to easily understand the purpose, methodology, and results. The

only flaw in the study was its size of only eight teachers. While the size does not decrease the

benefits of the study, I agree with the author that it would be beneficial for the study to widen the

size. However, I believe that if this was done, then the interview section of the study would need

to be changed to a survey due to the length of time needed for full interviews. This study aids in

my own research as my own purpose is also to discover the use of comprehension strategies of

content area teachers.

One of the most important aspects of teaching reading comprehension is teaching

strategies for comprehension. Gill (2008) outlines both the factors of reading comprehension and

strategies and activities that teachers can use before, during, and after reading text. Her most

important component of the article is the “Comprehension Matrix” which has the three factors of

reading comprehension – the student, the text, and the situation – along the top, and times when

instruction is given along the sides. Within each box she states the purpose of activities during

that time, directed at each individual factor. Gill uses this and multiple past studies to guide the

reader’s understanding of reading comprehension, then instructs the reader in specific activities

that can be used at each step – pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading – and lists questions

that teachers should ask themselves as they plan for comprehension instruction.

This article was written in an engaging manner, and the organization clearly supported

the content and communicated clearly the various aspects of reading comprehension. I

appreciated the specificity of the activities that the author listed in the article, and the provision
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of questions to guide the teacher in the planning of instruction. Her inclusion of a chart listing the

various comprehension strategies given by multiple sources was extremely helpful, as it gave the

reader a visual comparison of the various terms used for reading comprehension strategies. Some

examples are “making connections” or “using and creating schema”, “visualizing” or “creating

images”, and “predicting” (Gill 2008). Though this article does not target content area teachers,

its explicit definition and outline of reading comprehension will greatly help my own research.

Methodology

My methods for obtaining the research was a survey that was distributed online. In this

survey, I gave an introduction which defined reading comprehension as “intentional thinking

during which meaning is constructed through interactions between the text and the reader” as

defined by the National Reading Panel in 2000. I chose to distribute this survey online since

there are a very limited number of middle school teachers in the area I am located, and I did not

have the means to be able to easily distribute paper copies. Publishing my survey online also

broadened the types of schools the teachers were located and allowed me to better take into

account the number of teachers who would not complete the survey.

The questions I created based on the similar study conducted by Ness (2009). I did not

include questions regarding specific strategies, as I desired to create a survey that would be

simple to complete and to evaluate results. Creating a survey that was simple to complete I

believed would broaden the number of willing participants. However, due to the survey being

distributed through online social media, I was unable to control the type of participants. As a

result, some of the participants had only taught high school rather than specifically middle

school. I do not believe that this had a significant effect on my results, however, as the focus of

my study is as applicable to high school as middle school.

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FigureI 1chose to utilize Google Survey as my means for the medium of my survey, as this

platform offers easy to use tools for creating surveys, as well as simple means to distribute it.

Google Survey also has the advantage of automatically analyzing the data, providing

automatically [processed] graphs as well as the raw individual results.

Findings

When I closed the results of my survey, I had a total of 13 participants. Due to the nature

of the survey, I had no knowledge of where these teachers were located. My first question

regarded the classes that the teachers taught. I formatted this question in a spread of checkboxes

allowing for the selection of multiple options. As I anticipated receiving teachers who taught in

mixed schools that may have been grades 1-8, or 7-12, I provided options for both elementary

and high school classes. Figure 1 provides the number of teachers who taught each type of class.

The results were mainly evenly spread, with a slightly higher concentration in Technology,

Language Arts and Literature, and Social Studies.

The distribution of the length of teaching career of the participants was also fairly evenly

distributed, as shown in Figure 2, with the most participants having taught between 6 to 10 years.

The educational background of the majority of teachers was either a Bachelors or Masters in

Education, though there were some who had either level degree in their content area. Of the three

participants who wrote in a different degree, one participant had a Ph.D in their content area, one

had an Ed.D in Digital Innovation, and one was a Specialist in Leadership.

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Figure 2

The next five questions on the survey were in the form of statements, and the answers

were to be given using Likert scale, starting at 1 for “agree strongly” and 5 for “disagree

strongly”. The questions focused on the teacher’s attitudes towards the reading comprehension

their students have, the importance of comprehension strategies in middle school, their school’s

attitude towards comprehension in content areas, the benefit of teaching comprehension to

middle school students, and the participant’s benefit of professional development in reading
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comprehension. The responses generally were affirmative in favor of reading comprehension for

middle school students. The results of the responses for these are in Figures 3 through 7.

Figure 3

Figure 4
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Figure 5

Figure 6
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Figure 7

The final two questions were perhaps the most significant, as the answers to the previous

questions could be generally predicted due to general expectations of teachers. The last question

asked the participant how often they explicitly taught strategies for reading comprehension. They

were given three options: often, sometimes, or never. The results for this question can be seen in

Figure 9. Those who answered sometimes or never were asked to explain their reason for not

teaching often in the form of a free response short answer. Many of those who answered

responded that there was not enough time, two responded that it was due to their resources or

curriculum, one responded that they only modeled strategies as appropriate, and one responded

that it was due to a lack of training.

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Figure 8

Recommendations

Overall, the results from this study were in line with the results of Ness’ study (2009).

Teachers generally believed that comprehension is important for middle school students, and

their students would benefit from learning specific comprehension strategies. The fact that most

of the teachers did not often teach comprehension also agreed with Ness’ study (2009). Due to

the results in the same study, it was also unsurprising that the largest reason for not often

teaching comprehension strategies was a lack of time.

One of the most obvious flaws in my study was the low number of participants. More

participants would have been able to better balance out the few high school teachers who

completed the survey. Another flaw was the structure of the Likert scale. While most of the

participants gave answers that were consistent, there were participants who gave unexpected

answers, such as strongly disagreeing that they would benefit from professional development in

comprehension strategies. It is possible that the participants did believe this, but the previous
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results led me to believe that there was a flaw in the Likert scale. I realized after seeing these

results that 1 was labeled as strongly agree, though on most Likert scales 1 is labeled as strongly

disagree. Due to this inconsistency, it is a possibility that these participants assumed that the

Likert scale in the survey was consistent with those of other surveys, and thus gave untrue

answers. Another change I would have made would be to include a question on specific

strategies that the participants already utilize.

In order to correct this problem in middle school content area classrooms, it is necessary

to find or create comprehension strategies that require little time or effort to implement. Then

these strategies would need to be tested in order to validate their effectiveness as well as

practicability. According to one study, teaching even a single strategy can improve reading

comprehension (Gill 2008). Gill (2009) provides specific examples that can be helpful to any

teacher who wants to teach comprehension, though since her strategy centers around the ability

to provide time for silent reading, a content area teacher would not be able to directly use her

study. However, the Comprehension Matrix itself provides vital direction for teachers to

understand the elements of comprehension: the reader, the text, and the situation. The table that

lists comparing the various strategies from other studies is also helpful, including some such as

connecting, questioning, visualizing, and monitoring. The average content area teacher should be

able to incorporate at least a few at the beginning of the year and continually remind the students

throughout the year. The RAP strategy from the study by Hagaman and Reid could also be

incorporated at least in part by content area teachers. While they would not have the means to

completely implement the strategy, being able to introduce the students to the strategy and

possibly lead them through the process could be enough to cause some change.
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The implications of this study are that while content area teachers recognize the

importance of reading comprehension in middle school, they either do not have the time or the

training to implement these strategies. Using comprehension strategies in all classes assists with

the student’s overall understanding, and even implementing one strategy can make a significant

positive change in the student’s comprehension. General strategies such as questioning,

visualizing, and monitoring have the potential for being incorporated into a content area

classroom, and a school could provide a single strategy or set of strategies such as the RAP

strategy that would be implemented in all classrooms in order to ease the burden on content area

teachers.

References

Gill, S. (2009). The comprehension matrix: A tool for designing comprehension instruction. The

Reading Teacher, 62(2), 106-113.

Hagaman, J. L., & Reid, R. (2008). The effects of the paraphrasing strategy on the reading

comprehension of middle school students at risk for failure in reading. Remedial and

Special Education, 29(4), 222-234.

Marchessault, J. K., & Larwin, K. H. (2014). The potential impact of structured read-aloud on

middle school achievement, International Journal of Evaluation and Research in

Education, 3(8), 187-196.

Ness, M. (2009) Reading comprehension strategies in secondary content area classrooms:

Teacher use of and attitudes toward reading comprehension instruction. Reading

Horizons, 49(2), 143-166.

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Report of the National Reading Panel. (2000). Retrieved from

https://www1.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/Pages/findings.aspx

Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., & Hale, G. (2010). Framework fuels the need to read: Strategies

boost literacy of students in content area classes. JSD, 31(5), 38-42.

Stover, K., O’Rear, A., & Morris, C. (2015). “Meeting the needs of struggling adolescent

readers. Texas Journal of Literary Education, 3(2), 60-68.

Appendix
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