Children's knowledge and use of organizational patterns of prose in recalling what they read

This investigation focused on what sixth graders know about organizational features of prose and whether use of specific organizational patterns (top-level structures) facilitates written recall of expository prose. Students were given one of two versions of a well-organized passage of expository text; one version was written with an adversative top-level structure, the other with an attribution top-level structure. Students who read the adversative version recalled slightly more of the passage than students who read and recalled the attribution version. This difference in recall for the two versions was not statistically significant. What was important and also contributed to significantly greater recall was the students use of the top-level structures to organize their written recall. Students knowledge and intentional use of organizational features of prose as mnemonic strategies are discussed.