Heightening Fourth-Grade Students' Sensitivity to Sources of Information for Answering Comprehension Questions

THIS STUDY consisted of two experiments training fourth-grade students to recognize the relationship between comprehension questions and answer sources. In the first experiment, students who received four days of instruction about sources of information for answering comprehension questions did not differ from untrained control group students on three dependent measures. In the second experiment, the length of instruction was extended and conducted by teachers during their reading classes. Four teachers participated in two levels of training, a traditional half-day teacher workshop, or the half-day workshop supplemented by instructional materials and weekly monitoring by researchers with feedback. Six additional teachers did not receive any training, though their students participated in either a practice control group or a no treatment control group. When both trained and control group students were tested on the three dependent measures, significant effects for ability and question types were revealed in predicted directions. Performance of high ability students was superior to average and both were superior to low; performance on text based questions was higher than that on knowledge based questions. Both groups of trained students were generally superior to control groups in their quality of responses.