The study aims at investigating the effect of using short stories on the development of 5th graders’ reading comprehension skills. The study was applied on a purposeful sample of 5th grade students in a governmental school in Hebron District in the academic year 2016/2017. The sample included (87) students at The Korean Palestinian Basic School for Boys in Hebron District. Students were assigned to experimental group and control group, the experimental group was taught by using the short stories technique, while the control group was taught by the ordinary method (English for Palestine). The researchers prepared a reading test. Content validity and reliability were established for the instrument. It was 0.8 for the test. The experiment lasted one month, a pre-test and post-test were performed using the reading skills’ test to measure the effect of using short stories technique. The means and standard deviations (ANCOVA) test were used in the study. The findings of the study showed that there were statistically significant differences in students’ reading skills due to the method of teaching in favor of the experimental group. This study recommended that training programs could be offered to train teachers on using the short stories technique. Students need to be provided with opportunities to practice using it. Based on those findings, the study recommended the necessity of implementing modern methods of teaching short stories for better outcomes in students’ reading skills, and more studies should be conducted on different variables and subjects were recommended.
Keywords: 5th Graders, Development, Effect, Hebron District, Reading Comprehension Skills, Using Short Stories
