Direction-Setting Activities in Reading Comprehension: A Comparison of Two Approaches

Two-direction-setting activities designed to increase high-school LD students' comprehension of important concepts during content area instruction were compared. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two instructional groups. The first group was taught with prereading activities based on a basal approach to teaching comprehension. The major focus of this condition was on (a) developing student interest and motivation, (b) highlighting the relevance of the passage to the students' past experience, and (c) offering a general introductory discussion. The second group received instruction using an advance organizer in the form of a text outline designed to help students process information from the text. Daily instructional sessions lasted 50 minutes and continued for 9 school days. The dependent measures consisted of (a) three probe tests administered at the end of each 3-day unit and (b) a 12-item posttest. Results indicated that on both dependent measures the advance-organizer group significantly outperformed the basal group. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of teaching strategies for LD students.