The mission of the Department of Education (DepEd) in protecting and promoting the right of

every Filipino to quality, equitable, culture-based, and complete basic education does not only

emphasize the important roles of the students, teachers, and staff. It also highlights the active

participation and engagement of family, community, and all stakeholders in sharing the

responsibility towards lifelong learning.

With, learning does not start and end within the bounds of the classroom. Moreover, the

facilitation of learning is not only limited to teachers. Hence this action researches the possible

impact of story mapping in improving the skills of pupils in reading comprehension.

Facts demonstrate that many children struggle with reading comprehension, according

to a variety of observations. Most issues that came up have symptoms or reasons why some

grade 6 children cannot grasp, others cannot read well, and some cannot even read. Teachers

investigate the tactics or methods that will help pupils do better in reading comprehension.

At the elementary school level, the pupils are expected to comprehend some types of

text. Based on school-based curriculum there are some kinds of text that should be acquired by

the students. They are descriptive, procedure, recount, narrative, and report text.

Based on the writer’s teaching experience in SMP Negeri 12 Sungai Raya, most of the

students had difficulties in comprehending a narrative text. They could not find the major

elements of the narrative text including setting, character, conflict or problem, the goal, and

resolution in the text. Because of that, they could not find the detailed information from the text.

If the teacher asks them to answer some questions related to the text, most of the students

could not answer them well.

To comprehend the content of the text, pupils should not only have a good mastery of

English but also a reading strategy. Therefore, in this research, the writer is interested in

providing a solution to help the students improve their reading comprehension, especially in
narrative text. This research was conducted by applying an appropriate reading strategy, in this

research the writer used story mapping that uses a graphic organizer to help students learn the

major elements of the story.

This study will show how something that is advanced and very timely affects a student’s

performance in school. This study will evaluate the level of performance of pupils who are

exposed to conventional instruction and the use of the Story Mapping Technique in the learning-

teaching process. Data gathered will also help the students improve students reading

comprehension of narrative text.

Reading skills are unique and act as the main communication tool for human life. On the

other hand, reading skills become unique because not everyone can use the skills to promote

oneself or internalize it as a culture. Not surprisingly, reading skills function as the main

communication tool and become an effective and efficient medium of communication. Reading

also contributes significantly to the advancement of science, as reading accounts for most of the

knowledge transfer. Because reading involves a logical and linguistic component, research in

recent decades has demonstrated that someone with reading skills will be able to reason

logically.

Generally reading is a process of getting information from written words. Reading

passages usually talks about the aim to grasp the author’s ideas. Reading is not simply a

process of getting the meaning of the printed speech. It involves skills in the visual recognition

of words. The readers interpret what they have read and comprehended. Thus, mastery of

reading and speaking is one of the major concerns of different schools in the implementation of

the K-12 curriculum.

Through reading the readers will know about the text, get the main idea of the text, or

get the point of the reading materials. Westwood (2018:10) states that “Readers must use
information already to acquire to filter, interpret, organize, reflect upon, and establish

relationships with the new incoming information on the page. To understand text, a reader must

be able to identify words rapidly, know the meaning of almost all the words, and be able to

combine units of meaning into a coherent message. In short, the reading process involves both

the acquisition of meaning intended by the writer and the readers’ own contributions in forms of

interpretation, evaluation, and reflection.

The ability to understand and grasp the point or major concepts of the reading or reading

material requires the reader to read to acquire proper information and thoughts. The

arrangement and writing style of a text also affect how well it is understood by the reader

because they may already know what the book is about and understand what the author is

trying to say.

Meanwhile, it can be challenging for elementary school kids in general to comprehend

reading material thoroughly. According to Fuzidri (2019), the three problems that often arise in

students' learning to read are as follows: 1) there is a lack of student interest, motivation, and

seriousness; 2) the reading material used by the teacher is less attractive so it does not foster

student interest; 3) the learning model used by the teacher is less effective, less interesting, and

does not motivate students to read.

Reading is primarily done for comprehension. The goal of reading comprehension is to

comprehend, assess, and identify the author's thoughts in a work. To understand the meaning

or information in the text, the reader must have comprehension. Using interaction and

involvement with written language, Snow (2019:11) defines reading comprehension as the

process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning. Constructing meaning from text

is the process of reading comprehension. Reading comprehension requires motivation, a mental

framework for holding ideas, concentration, and a good study technique, according to Martin
(2018: 7). This means that the reader needs to be motivated to read more intently, try to form a

mental framework for holding ideas, and have a good reading technique.

Wilhelm (2008:2) cited in Agustiani (2017:2) states, ”Reading comprehension is the

degree to which we understand what we read. it is the ultimate end goal of reading that if we

don’t read to understand, we’ll read for nothing. and comprehension requires the reader to be

an active constructor of meaning”. It means that in reading comprehension, students are

hopefully able to create their own interpretation actively in an effort to get meaning from the text

he/she read.

Reading is an interactive activity to pick and understand the meanings contained in

written materials. Adding to the above opinion, another expert Rahim (2019) emphasized that

the most effective learning process can be done through reading activities. Readers usually use

background knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, experience with texts, and other

strategies to help them understand written texts. As the literature indicates, reading is the

introduction of symbols of written language, a stimulus that helps the process of memorizing

what is read, to build an understanding through the acquisition of experience (Smith & Feng,

2018). In this regard, it can be interpreted that the purpose of reading is to gain understanding

as well as to develop the knowledge of the reader (Kozak, 2018).

There are many reading techniques that can be used to comprehend and some reading

strategies or techniques that were explained and studied before are good but more researchers

intend to overcome the problems to improve students’ reading comprehension of narrative text

by using story mapping reading technique. Story mapping is a technique used after a story has

been read. It includes identifying the main elements and categorizing the main events in

sequential order. A graphic representation is often used to illustrate the story structure and

sequence of events.
 A story map is a visual depiction of the settings or the sequence of major events and

actions of story characters. This procedure enables students to relate story events and to

perceive structure in literary selections. In this research, the first procedure in applying the story

mapping strategy is by distributing the outline of the story map to the students and explaining to

the students how to apply the story mapping strategy in their reading. The outline of the story

map was designed by Idol in 1987, it covers the components of the story such as the setting

including character, time and place, the problem of the story, the goal that the character wants

to achieve, the action that the character does to solve the problem and to reaches his/her goal,

and the last component is outcome was the problem is resolved.

After completing the story map outline, the researcher hopes that the students are able

to comprehend the components of the narrative story and also to find and understand the main

idea of the narrative story as well. Chesla (2017: 11) states, “Finding and understanding the

main idea of a text is an essential reading skill.” Therefore, to comprehend the whole story, the

students need to comprehend the components of the story and understand the main idea in the

story.

Knowledge plus skill will definitely level the playing field. But with the transition from

Elementary to Junior High School can be overwhelming to some students. This may cause

some students to be withdrawn from their classes. They now become students at risk of

dropping out (SARDO). Academic institutions have implemented mentoring programs to

increase student retention (Casey, 2018).

A lot of academic institutions here in the Philippines and overseas have implemented

this kind of culture such as in the study of Casey (2018). Learning resource centers are funded

and built to establish continuity of education where students become facilitators of knowledge

themselves -learners teaching learners.

narrative text. Because with this strategy, students are able to divide every part of the story by

putting each part of the story in the story map. By using this strategy in their reading, students

will be able to recognize the story elements of narrative text. Fink (2017:1) states, Knowing the

elements of a story aids students in their understanding of what is taking place in the story.

When students comprehend the story element of characters, setting, problems, events, and

solutions, they become more involved in the story and take greater interest and detail. By

knowing the story elements of a text, the students will have good comprehension of the text.

Considering the reading comprehension on text problems faced by the sixth-grade students of

An-anaao Integrated School for the School Year of 2022-2023, the teacher-researchers propose

to implement Story Mapping Technique to improve reading comprehension of students.

This action research is focused on the use of Story Mapping Technique in improving the

skills of pupils in reading comprehension. This research will give significant benefits to the

teachers and students in the improvement of reading towards the improvement of learning

outcome. Through this research, the students will get a new experience to improve their reading

comprehension Skills through interactive learning material encounter. The main objectives of

this research is to determine the effectiveness of Story Mapping Technique in improving

students’ reading comprehension. The researchers strongly believe that the implementation of

an appropriate teaching method can improve students’ motivation and interest in reading. If the

students’ motivation and interest in learning reading is captured, their reading comprehension

skills will definitely improve. This action research further aims to determine the success stories

and significant impart of the Story Mapping Techniques on learners’ interaction and reading

skills using the English Language.