Which assessment procedure would best help a teacher understand a second-grade student's comprehension process?

The procedure of having the student summarize the story they read in their own words is highly effective for understanding a second grader's comprehension process. When a student can articulate the main ideas, characters, and events of a story they have read, it demonstrates not only their ability to recall information but also their capacity to synthesize and interpret the material. Summarization requires active engagement with the text, as the student must distill the essential elements and construct a coherent narrative in their own language.

This approach provides insight into the student's ability to identify key details and understand relationships between those details, which reflects higher-order thinking skills related to comprehension. Additionally, summarizing allows teachers to assess the student’s grasp of the story's themes and overall message, which are critical components of reading comprehension.

Other methods, while valuable in their own right, may not offer the same depth of understanding. For example, answering multiple-choice questions or true/false items can limit responses to recognition rather than recall or interpretation. Listening and drawing a picture may engage creativity but may not fully capture textual understanding in a comprehensive way like summarizing does. Therefore, summarizing stands out as the most direct assessment of comprehension skills in this context.