A Comparison of Extratextual Interactions on First-Grade Students' Storybook Comprehension Abilities

This study was designed to compare the effect of different types of extratextual interactions during joint book reading on first-graders’ storybook comprehension abilities. Extratextual interactions are adult utterances incorporated into shared book readings and include questions, comments, and any other extra communication not included in the text of the storybook. Forty first-grade students, ranging from six to eight year of age, participated in this study. Each student participated in the study as a member of his or her class and took part in a group joint book reading in which an adult shared a storybook with the child’s entire class. The storybook used in this study was judged to be at a 1.6 reading level according to Accelerated Reader. Each class was read the same storybook under one of three conditions: with scripted comments, with scripted questions, or without either comments or questions. After the children had participated in the joint book reading, they answered five multiple choice Accelerated Reader questions about the story they had just been read. The group that was not provided any extratextual interactions had mean score of 87.14%; the group that was given scarped comments had a mean score of 88.27%; and the group that was prompted with questions throughout the shared book reading had a mean score of 93.33%. These means were not significantly different. This suggested that first-grade students’ performance on a storybook comprehension test was not influenced by the type of extratextual interactions that the students received during the shared book reading activity. Children performed equally well in all three conditions. Additional observations were made concerning the possible impact of extratextual interactions on students in special populations.