Improving Reading Comprehension Achievements of Pupils in Public Primary Schools: Implications for Teacher Librarians

Teacher librarians are individuals with recognized teaching qualification as well as qualification in library science. Teacher librarians are often concerned about how much learners are able to grasp and retain meaning from the materials they read as well as their reading comprehension achievements. The term reading comprehension describes a complex process in which learners are involved in some mental processes like creating meanings and organizing texts. This study aimed to improve the reading comprehension achievements of pupils in public primary schools through the use of reflective instructional technique. Two teacher librarians served as research assistants in the study. The study employed the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design. Thirty-three pupils each were assigned to the experimental and control groups respectively. The sample comprised pupils in primary four and five classes. The instrument used for data collection was the reading comprehension achievement test. The data generated were subjected to analysis of covariance. Results of the analyses showed that the reflective instructional technique led to improvement in the reading comprehension achievements of pupils in public primary schools in that the experimental group had a significant increase in reading comprehension achievement scores at the posttest. There was no significant influence of pupils\u27 gender on their reading comprehension achievement scores after benefitting from the intervention, F (1, 65)=.259, p=.613. Results further show that there was no significant interaction effect of the instructional technique and gender on the pupils’ reading comprehension achievement scores, F (1, 65)=.228, p=.634. One of the study implications is that teacher librarians can collaboratively work with other teachers to improve pupils’ reading comprehension achievement in primary schools. The teacher librarians can also influence pupils’ learning outcomes by working directly with pupils and promoting reading

Influence of Story Books at Children’s Library on Reading Culture of Pupils in Public Primary Schools

Children libraries are libraries established in schools to support learning and teaching activities of pupils. In order to inculcate a good reading culture in pupils, they have to be encouraged to make reading part of their everyday life. Storybooks are useful for introducing new words, concepts and ideas into children’s language development, world and imagination. The purpose of the study was to ascertain the influence of storybooks at children\u27s libraries on reading culture among primary classes 4 and 5 pupils in public schools and find out the influence of gender on pupils’ reading culture when exposed to storybooks. A quasi-experimental research design was adopted for this study. A total of 35 pupils were assigned to the experimental group while 34 pupils were assigned to the control group. Mean, standard deviation and analysis of covariance were used to analyze data. The results of the study show that storybooks improve the reading culture of pupils in public primary schools. Also, gender did not influence the mean reading culture scores of the pupils after exposure to the storybooks approach, F (1, 68)=.638, p=.427, partial eta squared= .010. There was also no significant interaction effect of methods and gender on the pupils’ mean reading culture, F (1, 68)=.184, p=.669. Therefore, exposing pupils to storybooks can help improve their culture of reading. The study recommends among others that there should be more storybooks at children\u27s libraries in order to enhance the reading culture of pupils in public primary schools in the study area