This article examines the beneficial effects of student-generated diagrams versus student-generated summaries on conceptual understanding on the topic of plate tectonics. A group of fifth grade students were asked to read text about plate tectonics. One segment of the group was asked to draw diagrams about the material, another was asked to write summaries and the third group simply read the text (control group). While the summaries themselves contained more information than the diagrams, the students who drew the diagrams outperformed both of the other groups on the posttest given to determine understanding of the topic. These results are discussed in the context of how they impact on-line reading comprehension and conceptual understanding of a domain.
