Participants were selected through P.S. 97 third grade students who are currently attending to the summer camp program. Initially, 41 participants participated in this study, including 20 boys, 20 girls, and 1 female teacher. The consent forms of this experiment were signed by the 40 third grade students’ parents or guardians. Two classroom setting existed: The first group of students received direct-instruction teaching on Day 1’s English Language Art lesson and the second group students received arts-based instruction (integrating drama) or drama-based teaching on Day 2’s English Language Art lesson. The participants in the first group consisted of 10 boys and 10 girls, including 5 students are ELL learners and their reading levels ranged from A to H, 5 students’ reading levels ranged from J to K, 5 students’ reading levels ranged from L to M, and 5 students’ reading levels ranged from N to P. The participants in the
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Both of the two lessons addressed the same common core standards and learning goals but different teaching approaches for the two groups of students. The first lesson was used a fiction book Caleb & Kate by William Steig which was appropriate for third graders; the teacher would ask literal, inferential, and critical questions which were created by the teacher for the group of students who received direct-instruction teaching during read aloud. Sample questions included “What is the relationship between Caleb and Kate?”, “Why did Caleb go to the forest by himself?”, and “Why did Caleb turn human again after the burglars slashed his paw?”; the teacher used markers and chart papers to create a graphic organizer to illustrate the beginning, middle, and the end part of the story and wrote down other relevant information, questions, or students’ responses in the chart
Both of the two lessons addressed the same common core standards and learning goals but different teaching approaches for the two groups of students. The first lesson was used a fiction book Caleb & Kate by William Steig which was appropriate for third graders; the teacher would ask literal, inferential, and critical questions which were created by the teacher for the group of students who received direct-instruction teaching during read aloud. Sample questions included “What is the relationship between Caleb and Kate?”, “Why did Caleb go to the forest by himself?”, and “Why did Caleb turn human again after the burglars slashed his paw?”; the teacher used markers and chart papers to create a graphic organizer to illustrate the beginning, middle, and the end part of the story and wrote down other relevant information, questions, or students’ responses in the chart