Effective Comprehension Strategies After Initial Reading of Fiction and Nonfiction Texts

Given that responsible students actively engage in their own literacy learning by developing personal literacy goals and that learning occurs when effective reading strategies are taught, this action research project asks, which after reading strategies work best with fiction and nonfiction texts in developing comprehension in fifth graders? Research for this study takes place at Middlebrook Elementary School. Three fifth grade students participated in several reading and assessment tasks over the course of seven work sessions. The findings and implications suggest that inferring is most useful when reading fiction, summarizing proved to be an effective for both genres. Lastly, results for the questioning strategy showed that students asked clarification questions for nonfiction texts and ‘I wonder’ questions for fiction texts