This dissertation includes two manuscripts. Both manuscripts focus on the same cross-sectional descriptive research study, which explored students' comprehension of three types of informational texts. The study addressed two research questions: (1) How, if at all, does students' comprehension differ for three types of informational text (biography, persuasive text, and procedural text)? and (2) Within each informational genre, how, if at all, does students' comprehension differ by grade level?Participants were 40 second- through fifth-grade students. Drawn from 20 different classrooms and many different schools and districts, all participants were considered on-grade-level readers by their teachers and tended to provide evidence of low levels of previous knowledge about the featured task, topics, and genres.The elementary students completed a verbal protocol training task, participated in concurrent verbal protocols, and answered questions about their background knowledge. Participants read one biography, one persuasive text, and one procedural text in counterbalanced order on different days. They reported their use of processes before, during, and after they read. Participants' reported use of processes and responses to background questions were transcribed, coded, and analyzed. I calculated descriptive and inferential statistics. I compared and contrasted participants' reports and responses by grade level, genre, and grade level by genre. Results suggested that participants' comprehension approaches differed significantly by genre and grade level. Their reported use of processes differed between (a) second and third through fifth grades and (b) procedural texts and biography and persuasive texts. The elementary on-grade-level readers appeared to use different approaches to comprehending informational texts before third grade and with at least one of the three focal types of informational texts. The first manuscript is written for researchers. The manuscript describes the study's rationale, background, design, methods, materials, results, implications, limitations, and contributions. The second manuscript is written for teachers, reading specialists, and other practitioners. Although the manuscript also provides information about the study background and results, the primary focus is on the study's practical implications. This dissertation study contributes to the growing literature on genre-specific reading comprehension. It extends previous research by featuring younger grade levels reading multiple types of informational texts. In addition, practical suggestions for aligning instruction and assessment with elementary on-grade-level readers' reported use of processes for comprehending biography, persuasive texts, and procedural texts are provided.
Read
