The Missouri Reader Vol. 38, Issue 2 | Page 49

Some strategies to use in arousing curiosity or engaging are Guided Imagery, Story Impressions, and Problematic Perspectives. In Guided Imagery, the teacher describes a story and students visualize. With Story Impres-sions, students are given a list of words from the text and must create their own story with them. The Problematic Perspectives strategy

allows students to step inside a

character's shoes and solve a

problem. After arousing curiosity,

students can make predictions about

the story.

Strategies to use in making

predictions are Anticipation

Guides and Imagine, Elaborate, Predict, and Confirm or IEPC (Vacca et al., 2011). An Anticipation Guide is a series of statements that students must respond to before reading the text. IEPC involves before, during, and after reading strategies. This encourages students to use visualization and subsequently comprehend the text. The students must imagine the story based on the title, illustrations, graphs, or figures and then elaborate on those images. Next, the

student predicts what will happen in the

story, and finally, he or she confirms predictions after reading the story.

Some strategies to use when generat-

ing questions are Expectation Outlines, ReQuest, and Your Own Questions (Vacca

et al., 2011). Expectation Outlines focus on students creating a question outline based on the text. ReQuest is a strategy that allows both the teacher and student to take turns asking each other questions about the text. The Your Own Questions strategy involves students listening to or reading the text, writing 5-10 questions, discussing the questions, answering the questions through reading, and explaining answers (Vacca et al., 2011). All these strategies help students become interested in the text and reflect upon it.

Methodology

A causal comparative study was utilized to examine student reading achievement based on reading strategies and activities before, during, and after reading. Archival data from one fifth grade class in southwest Missouri was used to examine the use of literacy strategies and activities on reading achievement. As part of the regular classroom instruction and assessment, students completed a reading assignment and test that were compared to the reading with no strategies and or learning activities. Immediately after, the students completed another reading assignment, but this time the students used strategies before, during, and after reading to learn from the text. After completing the reading with the strategies and learning activities, the students took a test over the reading. During the

following week, students repeated all

the steps listed above. Archival data

from these tests were statistically

analyzed to determine if there was a

significant difference in students'

comprehension abilities between when

they read a text without any

preparation and when they participated

in before, during, and after reading

strategies preceding the test.

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Chelsea Boehler is a graduate of Missouri State University with a BS in elementary education and a MS in literacy. She was born in Arizona, but spent the majority of her life in Missouri. Her goal is to be a teacher who inspires her students’ learning.

"Activating prior

knowledge while

stimulating interest generates a learning atmosphere in which students learn purposefully."