Using anticipatory reading guides to improve elementary students comprehension

One of the greatest challenges of an elementary school teacher is equipping students with comprehension strategies that transfer to all content areas. With stable levels of reading achievement over the last two decades in the United States,it is necessary that further research be conducted on methods of increasing students comprehension proficiencies. This experimental research study explores the use of an anticipatory reading guide with third grade struggling readers across multiple subject areas. Findings indicate that the experimental treatment group outperformed the control group by a statistically significant rate on both reading and content area measures,indicating that when struggling readers practice and use strategies to explicitly think what will be asked of them after reading the passage they perform at higher levels.