Using graphic organizers to enhance reading comprehension

This study took place in a general education fourth grade classroom in Northern California for four days a week for four weeks. The inquiry project focused on determining what happens to students' reading comprehension skills of noting details, making inferences, and comparing and contrasting when graphic organizers are incorporated into English-language arts instruction. My hopes for the inquiry were that students' use of these graphic organizers would enable them to better organize and recall information from selected stories, and therefore improve their overall reading comprehension in these focal comprehension skills. I assessed students' use of graphic organizers. Before and after the inquiry I assessed reading comprehension through open-ended written items and oral retells. The results suggested that students' use of graphic organizers slightly improved students' reading comprehension skills of noting details, making inferences, and comparing and contrasting. Students also demonstrated growth in their ability to independently use graphic organizers to respond to reading comprehension questions.