Metacognitive Literacy Scaffolding: Strategic Reading Activity Sheets for Textual Analysis and Meaning-Making

Abstract

Background: Elementary learners may demonstrate adequate literal retrieval while experiencing difficulty with inferential reasoning, textual analysis, and deeper meaning-making. This study examined the use of metacognitive literacy scaffolding through strategic reading comprehension activity sheets among intermediate elementary students in Talugtug District, Division of Nueva Ecija.

Objective: The study determined learners’ baseline textual-analysis performance, examined changes in reading comprehension after the intervention, assessed the extent of improvement in meaning-making, and estimated the effect size of the scaffolding approach.

Methods: A quasi-experimental one-group pre-test/post-test design was used with 50 purposively selected students. Researcher-made reading comprehension and textual analysis assessments, activity-sheet responses, descriptive statistics, a paired-samples t-test, and Cohen’s d were used.

 Results: The overall pre-test mean was 6.03 (60.27%), interpreted as moderate performance, while the post-test mean increased to 8.45 (84.50%). The mean gain was 2.42 points or 24.23 percentage points. The paired-samples t-test yielded t = 12.85 and p = .000 as reported in the thesis, indicating a statistically significant improvement. The reported effect size for reading comprehension was very large (d = 2.55), with large effects also reported for inferential skills (d = 1.60) and vocabulary understanding (d = 1.46). Conclusion: Strategic activity sheets that embed planning, monitoring, and evaluation prompts may support learners’ transition from literal retrieval to deeper meaning-making. The findings support the development of localized, context-responsive literacy materials, while recognizing the limitations of the one-group design.