The Effectiveness of Using Direct Instruction in Teaching Comprehension Skill of Third-Grade Students

Abstract

Direct instruction is required in the use of different comprehension skills in order to advance students' ability to independently comprehend texts. Being able to make connections is an important reading comprehension strategy which allows students make meaning of what they are reading. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effectiveness of using the direct instruction method in developing the reading comprehension skills among a sample of third-grade students in Irbid Kasbah District that comprised of 60 students distributed into an experimental group 30 students from public schools, who were taught by using the direct instruction “routine”, and a control group that consisted of 30 students from private schools who were taught by the conventional teaching method. A test of 20 items was used to measure the effectiveness of using the direct instruction “routine” in developing the reading comprehension skills. The researchers checked the validity, and the reliability of the test, and the statistical analysis was extracted. The findings revealed statistically significant differences attributed to the effect of the teaching method, in favor of the experimental group, and significant differences attributed to the gender effect in favor of females, while there are no statistically significant differences due to the interaction between variables group and gender. From the findings of this study, the research concludes that the teaching method has notable effects on the reading comprehension skills of students regardless of their age, gender or other socio-demographic characteristics. More importantly, the study has demonstrated that direct instruction method has immensely positive effects on the comprehension skills of third grade students.