Comparison of the effectiveness of two strategies teaching methodology in the development of the reading comprehension in the first school year

This article presents the results that were achieved by implementing an early literacy program using a balanced method (GE) and a traditional method (GT) to 194 first year students in five schools located in Santiago de Chile (Chile) that were characterized by a poor performance in the national standardized test called SIMCE. The objective was to compare the effect of those methods for early literacy and the possible differences related to gender. The results show that both groups obtained similar progresses at the end of the school year, although the children who learned by GE achieved better results in more complex reading comprehension abilities, particularly for what regards to the recognition of implicit information in simple texts. The GT group shows gender differences with better results for men.