School districts and educators have been criticized for many years for not teaching students’ all of the skills needed to compete with higher achieving countries. In the past 20 years, there has been a lot of debate over reforming education in the United States. With all the emphasis focusing on ways to raise academic standards and performance levels in schools throughout the United States (Donalevy, 2007) higher expectations have been placed on educators to seek out and use research-validated instruction to ensure student learning (Norton, 1997). In 2000, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind legislation. NCLB has placed mandates on school districts to increase student achievement by raising test scores in the area of reading and math. Reading comprehension has been identified as one of the major goals for reading instruction (Norton, 1997). One research-validated instructional method that may increase reading comprehension is graphic organizers. Graphic organizers are representations, pictures or models used for processing textual information (Pang, 2013).
Problem Statement Comprehension is the ultimate …show more content…
During this time frame, the social studies teacher will model and demonstrate to the students how to effectively utilize the graphic organizers in class to Group A. The students will learn how to pick out the key points to include in the organizer to gain the 21st century skills needed to increase reading comprehension. The students in Group B will be instructed through lecture and be taught through the traditional method of reading and re-reading the passage for understanding. Group A will be given a graphic organizer that will be used is a Venn diagram. Dictionary.com states that a Venn diagram is an organizer that uses circles to represent sets and their