Stories: Short Story Reading for Comprehension Skills Improvement and Elevating the Reading Comprehension Gaps of Grade III Pupils

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The ability to read and comprehend efficiently is essential for meeting the needs of everyday life, as well as for success in the academic arena in school (Anderson, et al, 1985). However, educators need to find strategies to enable them to better understand the printed materials they need. Studies have indicated that reading comprehension skills can be honed by using " ̃think-aloud' strategies while reading (Baumann, et al; 1993). Another research has indicated that these difficulties can be alleviated by extensive teacher modeling of more fruitful reading strategies (Presley and Wharton-McDonald, 1997).In the context, after the Phil-IRI pre-test last July 2018, poor results were noticeable. The huge number comes from Grade III-A pupils of Dughan Elementary School. With a population of 8 pupils showed issues of poor comprehension skills. Resulting in absenteeism, misbehavior, low academic performance in class and dropping out in school.

METHODS

The participants were purposively chosen after identifying the pupils who are in frustration level during the conduct of Phil-IRI pre-test last July 2018. The research instruments that were used were the Phil-IRI graded passage in Filipino Grade III and the teacher made a compilation of short stories with comprehension check-up after reading. The teacher-researcher made daily reading monitoring charts noting in what comprehension level do pupils committed most mistakes.

RESULTS

After the 8 weeks, the intervention program majority of the Grade III pupils had improved their correct responses on comprehension check-up upon the conduct of the graded passage for the group screening test. It can be further gleaned on the table that pupils found difficulty in critical questions since it shows lesser improvement on their mean scores as compared with the improvement on the inferential level of comprehension questions.As observed by teacher-researcher, pupil's most type of miscues falls on mispronunciation miscue.

DISCUSSIONS

Their reading comprehension skills had improved through the increased figures in the correct responses in the level of questions during the implementing of Phil-IRI post-test. Most of the grade III pupils show difficulty in answering critical levels of questions as shown on the tallied result on the daily reading task monitoring chart. The teacher-researcher likewise concluded that difficulty in comprehending reading passages is due to a lack of vocabulary of the pupils.