DRTA Study Guide

Study Guide: Dougherty Stahl, Katherine A. (2008)’ The Effects of Three Instructional Methods on the Reading Comprehension and Content Acquisition of Novice Readers. Journal of Literacy Research,40:3,359 — 393

 

Name:  Stacy Oxford

Answer the following questions AS you read the article.

1. Describe in broad stokes the reading processes that take place during comprehension of informational text (p. 362, under Construction of Meaning and Concept Development with Informational Texts).

Both explicit cognitive strategy instruction and high level social interaction around text are very important to improving text comprehension and concept development.  Background knowledge is also very important when children interact with text.  Mediation that prompts children to activate relevant background information is important as well.  However teachers must be on the lookout for children who may be relying on inaccurate or irrelevant prior knowledge. 

 2. Specify the effect that background knowledge may have on constructing mental representations from informational text. Why should teachers be concerned about activating prior knowledge?

Background knowledge helps children make connections with the text, however teachers should be concerned if the background knowledge children are relying on is inaccurate or doesn’t relate to the text they are discussing. 

3. What are the three instructional approaches that can be used to help primary-grade students comprehend informational text? Describe their common (p. 365) and distinctive features (p. 363-5).

(1) Picture Walk, (2) Know-Want to Learn-Learn, (3) Directed Reading-Thinking Activity.  Common features include an emphasis on reader engagement and social mediation, activation of relevant prior knowledge, and anticipation or purposeful prediction of what information might be likely to be included in text.  Distinctive features- Picture Walk (PW): An activity commonly used with leveled text where teachers and students preview each page or few pages of a new book before reading. The teachers and students have conversations about the pictures as they are previewing them.   Know-Want to Learn-Learn (KWL:  This activity allows teachers to access the prior knowledge of students and to help students develop their own purposes for reading expository text.  A KWL activity is used to generate a discussion about a text topic and a KWL chart is used to record student’s statements about what they know(K), want to learn(W), and after reading, what they learned(L).  Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA): This is an instructional framework that views reading as a problem solving process best accomplished in a social context.  Teacher’s role:  select an instructional level text, divide the text into meaningful sections, and facilitate discussion of each section of the text.  Student’s role:  to establish their own purposes for reading, generating predictions, justifying those predictions, independently reading the text, and verifying or revising predictions based on evaluations of information in the text during teacher led discussion of each section.

4. What is the purpose of the experimental study reported?

The purpose is to explore how the PW, KWL, and DRTA might influence developmental reading abilities and content acquisition when used with informational text in the primary reading group context. 

5. Who were the subjects?

The participants were 31 second-grade students in two demographically similar schools, in the same school district, in a Midwest city. 

6. Describe the reading materials used during the intervention.

Informational texts were selected on topics that were likely to be familiar to second-grade students.  The texts addressed science topics that had been taught to the students in their first or second grade science curriculum.  The specific sequence of topics for each group during both cycles was: spiders, the moon, how water changes form, and insects.  Each week a set of three different informational texts containing common information about the same topic was used.  This resulted in the use of 12 texts or leveled little books during the study. 

7. How long did the experiment last?

10 weeks

8. What were the experimental conditions?

Picture Walk (PW), KWL, DRTA, and Non-instructional control condition (NC).

9. Describe the procedures specific to the Picture Walk, KWL, DRTA, and the Control Group conditions.

Picture Walk:  Before reading a brief overview of the text was presented.  They engaged in an interactive discussion about the book as they worked through the book page-by-page, talking about the pictures, the text structure, and the student’s prior knowledge, and formulating predictions based on that information.  Topic headings were also addressed when available.  This was the only method that specifically introduced new vocabulary before reading the text.  After the PW, the children mumble read the text independently.  After reading, they discussed whether predictions were verified and collectively summarized the information from the text.

KWL:  On Day 1 and Day 3 a group KWL chart was made interactively.  After the teacher introduced the topic, the children discussed the topic. The children’s input was written on the chart in the Know column.  The children then wrote what they knew on their own personal KWL chart before it was shared with the group.   The next step was for the children to generate questions about the topic which would be placed in the “What I Want to Learn” column.  The teacher used guided discussions to help the students generate questions as well.  After the pre-reading discussion, the children mumble read the entire text.  After reading the class began their post-reading discussion by considering whether the text had provided answers to any student questions, if so this information was recorded in the “What I Learned” column. 

DRTA:  Before reading the children formulated and justified predictions about the text based on the title, cover, prior knowledge, and table of contents (if available).  Students then predicted for a two page or three page section of text.  They then mumble read that section of text.  After reading each section of text a brief discussion was held in which they verified predictions, summarized the text, and generated new predictions. 

Non-instructional control condition (NC):  This was used to compare the effects of providing reading opportunities in informational text versus providing a social context for the activation of prior knowledge, setting personal purposes for reading, and generating and verifying predictions for a text.  The children had an opportunity to read the same informational texts that were read in the intervention conditions.    

 

10. What measures were used to determine the relative effectiveness of the treatments? Describe the measures briefly.

Vocabulary Recognition Task (VRT) – a yes/no task used to estimate vocabulary recognition in a content area and to confirm that groups had similar levels of prior knowledge of the topic.  Consisted of 25 words; 18 of the words were related to the content in the informational texts and 7 words were unrelated foils.  Students circled the words that they both were able to read and related to the topic.  Students also categorized those words under provided headings on a concept web.

Maze- this was a multiple choice cloze modification.  It was a timed (3 min.) group administered task.  The original text was reprinted with 10 of the content words deleted and the students had to choose from multiple answers to complete the text.

Free Recall- Individually each child provided a free recall of the day’s text.  Students responded to the prompt “Please tell me everything you can remember about the book, also tell me anything the book made you think of.”

Cued Recall- Each child was asked to answer 3 explicit and 3 implicit questions based on that day’s text.

11. Which treatment(s) were found to be more effective in increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and maze performance (p. 381)?

All groups made vocabulary gains, which prove that the use of informational texts with novice readers does extend their vocabularies.  However the Picture Walk and DRTA yielded statistically significant effects on the maze.  Both of these procedures were proven more effective than KWL or control procedures in facilitating fluent reading and micro-level comprehension. 

12. Students’ comprehension of the texts was greater under the DRTA condition than KWL and the control conditions. What do you think explains DRTA’s advantage over the KWL condition (p. 382)?

DRTA procedures tended to demand higher levels of thinking by students than did the other three procedures by requiring justification and verification of predictions.  Also, both the teachers and the students initiated the conversations.  The immediate interaction around the text also helped promote consistent engagement, clarify confusions, and provide a vehicle for creating accurate representation of text as well as assimilation with prior knowledge. 

 

13. It was found that the treatments did not differ in the quality and quantity of students’ retellings (p. 384). In other words, students were not differentially affected by the treatments in the way they integrated textual information with prior knowledge. What does this finding mean in terms of the different emphases employed by experience-based (KWL) vs. text-based (DRTA) treatments?

A lack of cognitive organization seemed to be an inhibitory factor in the students’ ability to create a retelling in response to the prompt.  The key is to be able to organize information so easy retrieval is possible.  Students will require different ways of organizing information so it important to show them a variety of ways to successfully organize information through the use of graphic organizers. 

Answer the following question AFTER you read the article.

14. In light of the findings from this study, what conclusions can you draw about the role of teacher support in children’s construction of mental representations from informational text?

Teachers should always help their students make connections with the text.  It is important for teachers to encourage students to draw from their own experiences and prior knowledge to help construct meaning of what they are reading.  Teachers should also provide students with ways of organizing the information they are gaining from the text so they better understand and remember what they read. Lastly teachers should make sure students are given texts that provide students with new vocabulary, so they can continue to build on that knowledge.