At M. Agnes Jones Elementary, the 5TH grade goals are to push more students to exceed in Reading and Language Arts, have a higher percentage of the students receiving a score of 3 or better on the Georgia Writing Test, and have at least 50 percent gains in the areas of social studies and science. Though these subjects seem unrelated, they are linked because of the need for the students to be able to demonstrate their understanding of the subject through their comprehension skills and their articulation of their understanding through the written word. As a teacher with more of a mathematical and sociological background, I feel inept in my ability to teach my students reading and writing. This problem has been compounded by many of my students scoring in the “At-risk” and “Intervention” percentile on last year’s CRCT. This issue became critical when the scores from the computer adaptive test were release, and my student’s met 50 percent of their “I Can” goals in math but only 30 percent of their “I Can” goals in reading. Therefore to rectify this deficiency on my part, my research question is “What strategies can I implement to increase my students’ ability in reading comprehension, fluency, and decoding?” Through the use of homogenous flexible grouping, integration across the curriculum, and intensive technology usage, I plan to conduct the research and implement the experimental strategies involving teaching reading comprehension, fluency, and decoding. Furthermore, I plan to utilize a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research to observe the gains my students have made. Literature Review To ensure the teaching strategies being implemented in my class are considered best practice amongst researchers, I have included an ana... ... middle of paper ... ...ass of 14 fifth grade students, there are 3 students that have been recommended for Gifted and Challenge, 5 students recommended for early intervention program (EIP), 1 student recommended for pre-service for special services in behavior and academics (SST). All the students in room 211 are of African American descant. Through the observation of student work, writing journals, portfolios, and students’ interviews, I will have a qualitative understanding of my students’ gains implementing the strategies taught. However, I will be employing the results from the computer adaptive test, which is given three times a year, to have a quantitative and unbiased understanding of my students’ gain. This data will be collected until March of 2014, so I can predict how the students might perform on the CRCT and the Georgia Writing Test, which both are given in the month of March.
The program was doing well to improve student literacy, until there became a problem with the fluency monitoring. The teachers would administer the prompts to the children in three different levels. They would collect their data on the students by recording the number of words read correctly per minute. The scores seemed to improve at all levels in the first through fourth grade and at the first and second level of fifth grade during the first year. But, at the third level of the fifth graders the scores took a huge drop. The scores continued to drop the following year at the same level as well. The teachers reported their problem and the passage at the fifth grade level was more difficult than the passage of the sixth grade level. When the passage was later analyzed, it was placed at the 9th and 10th grade level. The committee examined all the prompts and assessed the readability levels of all the passages. They chose two prompts for each grade level and devised a protocol whereby the teachers will use the same prompts at each of three points during the year. The teachers will give the difficult prompt first and if the student scores in the 50th percentile, the student will not require any further testing. The student’s success with a reading will depend on the difficulty of the text and the students background knowledge and own interests.
This is a reading intervention classroom of six 3rd grade students ages 9-10. This intervention group focuses on phonics, fluency, and comprehension. The students were placed in this group based on the results of the DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency assessment. Students in this class lack basic decoding skills.
...ent rate then these students are used to. The teachers and educational leaders need to be encouraged and motivated to make the change and have the confidence that the strategies they are using can still be used to help students achieve the mastery of those standards. This book as a helpful guide will do both for struggling campuses, it gives them helpful suggestions to teachers and examples on how to use them in the classes. It also explains the importance of teachers working together in their subject area for increasing student engagement and achievement. I will use this book and will recommend it to other teachers to help them keep students on the path to high learning and high achievement on our high stakes tests.
As the human race continues to become progressively more intelligent, countries are becoming more and more competitive in a “race to the top.” Our society, and others alike, have placed increasing demands on citizens in an effort to ensure they go on to be productive, intelligent contributors. While this is a natural progression of the human race, those who were previously struggling to succeed are now fighting to close an even larger gap. When it comes to education, this is a clear and present concern for many educators and students. Teachers are being held accountable for raising the bar and ensuring that each student performs successfully, in accordance with the national (Common Core) standards. A big concern regarding these increasing demands of an every changing society, are students who are already struggling to succeed, such as those with learning disabilities. One of the primary targets of the Common Core is reading, as reading ability is considered to strongly predict whether or not a student goes on to be successful in the education system and in society. In order to service these children, educators have experimented with many research-based interventions in an effort to get struggling students up to grade level and prevent them from being taken out of the general education classroom. The following articles discuss various aspects of a popular research-based intervention, Fountas and Pinnell, and how this interventions benefit students with learning disabilities, specifically in the area of reading comprehension.
Direct instruction disproves the notion that students will all of a sudden develop skills on their own. Instead, direct instruction teaches students systematically through scaffolded steps, helping them see both the purpose and the result of each step. It is a research base program. “Direct instruction has a long history of meeting the needs of learners with many and differing complex learning issues” (Luiselli, Christian, Russo, Wilczynski, 2008, p. 201). Direct instruction has been successful in targeting Reading. Reading Mastery is a program designed for direct instruction to accelerate growth in the area of reading. “The Report of the National Reading Panel (2000) and Put Reading First (Armbruster, Lehr, and Osborn 2001) identified five areas that are critical to reading success: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension” (Luiselli, 2008, p. 204). Reading Mastery targets all five of these essential components of Reading.
The five big ideas are comprised of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary (Shippen, Miller, Patterson, Houchins, & Darch, 2014). Research suggests Intervention programs have assisted students through scaffold lesson that help to improve student scores through repetitive practice of encoding and decoding skil ls (NRP, 2000). Students will become more confident in their reading skills, taking risks and learning newer, more difficult words over shorter periods of time, thus building their reading levels and improving their skills and score s. In this research, I will examine the role of encoding and decoding strategies on improving student reading skills in addition to how encoding and decoding strategy information can be used to increase efficacy in special
Martínez, Harris and McClain (2014) maintain that, “among all of the academic skills a student learns in school, none is more fundamental than reading” Furthermore, they believe that competence in reading is essential for education, employment, productive citizenship, and living a successful and satisfying life. (p. 129) Daggett and Pedinotti (2014) explain that “life outside of school requires substantially higher levels of reading proficiency than most students experience in the high school classroom and even in post‐secondary education” (p. 1). Students, who struggle with reading in early elementary years, tend to fall farther behind as they progress through the educational system. Fiester (2010) confirms, “The National Research Council asserts academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of third grade” (p.9) Thus, efforts to meet the needs of all learners remains a priority across the nation. As a result, states and districts require schools to submit school improvement plans, which identify specific needs based on data, strategic goals and instructional strategies targeted toward
Imagine waking up every morning dreading going to school and doing homework. No, it is not just because they are teenagers. This is the frustration thousands of high school students face daily because of the inability to understand words. Many high school students are affected by the significant problem of reading learning disabilities; therefore, in order to effectively address this issue, the nature and level of each student’s needs must be evaluated. Upon researching the wide range of strategies and interventions used in education for such students, it is apparent that the educator who applies the strategy is more important than the choice of which strategy is chosen.
The interactivity provided by computer technology is useful in that it helps struggling readers for a variety of reasons. For example, there is always a lack of basic word reading and fluency skills for many struggling readers. These skills are needed to access grade level material (Higgins & Raskind, 2005; Manset-Williamson et al., 2008). Accordingly, the struggling reader does not have access to the material. The application of computer technology in classroom with the purpose of improving deficient reading skills provides the struggling reader with access to the material used for teaching comprehension skills (Higgins & Raskind, 2005; Manset Williamson et al., 2008). In the meantime, struggling readers who read with little comprehension need word reading and fluency skills mostly to read passages (Higgins & Raskin, 2005; Oakhill, Cain, & Bryant, 2003). The provision of visual and auditory presentation, or bi-modal presentation, of the information leads to an improvement in reading comprehension skills can be improved
This reading discusses a lot about the need for students, teachers, and the school to raise expectations. Expectations for students are limited because we choose them to be this way. Students are capable of doing incredible work if the teacher believes in them, and teaches them the appropriate and necessary skills to do their best work. Giving the students the needed skills and attributes to become successful writers is the first step to see the work they can do. Competency leads to confidence which will lead to students wanting to write, and when students want to write and are not forced to write, that is when we will see their best work.
Improving Reading in the Primary Grades goes into depth on how we can increase children’s reading skills by helping children sound out certain words, which makes them understand the word more. By doing this, children understand what letter represents which sound. If literacy is neglected from primary schools, the neglect continues as the child gets older advancing into higher grades. Vocabulary plays a major role in comprehension therefore if teacher’s neglect spending time on vocabulary, the chances of the child being able to grasp comprehension diminish. Early Literacy Instruction in the Climate of No Child Left Behind encompasses the concept of children striving for greatness. Teachers work to make students comprehend the material being presented to them. In order to make sure students are at grade level reading, reading programs for kindergarten through third grade has been developed. They are running to establish the concept of all students maintaining high-level education. Teachers ensure that the time they have with students is being used to its full capacity. Upon reading these articles, upcoming teachers are able to incorporate strategies in hopes of enhancing reading comprehension skills of
First, in regards to instruction I have learned the importance of using a variety of instructional strategies and practices to meet the needs of academically diverse learners. These include incorporating the seven multiple intelligences and different learning styles. As well as, effective strategies for gifted students, cultural diverse students, and limited English language students. “All learning disabled children can learn and become successful students, given fair opportunities” (Scholastic, n.d., pg. 1-3). Additionally, in regards to assessment I have obtained knowledge in frequently monitoring student progress through assessments. Progress monitoring is one of the four essential components of an effective response to intervention. “Progress monitoring is used to assess students’ academic performance, to quantify a student rate of improvement or responsiveness to instruction and to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction” (Center on Response to Intervention, n.d. para. 1). At Evansville Elementary, we use district wide evidence-based tools and assessments to monitor our students’
Reading is an essential skill that needs to be addressed when dealing with students with disabilities. Reading is a skill that will be used for a student’s entire life. Therefore, it needs to be an important skill that is learned and used proficiently in order for a student to succeed in the real world. There are many techniques that educators can use to help improve a student’s reading comprehension. One of these skills that needs to be directly and explicitly taught is learning how to read fluently for comprehension. “To comprehend texts, the reader must be a fluent decoder and not a laborious, word-by-word reader” (Kameenui, 252). Comprehension can be difficult for students with learning disabilities because they tend to be the students that are reading below grade level. One strategy is to incorporate the student’s background knowledge into a lesson. This may require a bit of work, but it will help the students relate with the information being pres...
Many students have a hard time when it comes to reading. There are many reading inventions that can help students out. Reading inventions are strategies that help students who are having trouble reading. The interventions are techniques that can be used to assist in one on ones with students or working in small groups to help students become a better reader. Hannah is a student who seems to be struggling with many independent reading assignments. There can be many reasons that Hannah is struggling with the independent reading assignments. One of the reasons that Hannah can be struggling with is reading comprehension while she is reading on her on. Reading comprehension is when students are able to read something, they are able to process it and they are able to understand what the text is saying. According to article Evidence-based early reading practices within a response to intervention system, it was mentioned that research strategies that can use to help reading comprehension can include of activating the student’s background knowledge of the text, the teacher can have questions that the student answer while reading the text, having students draw conclusions from the text, having
comprehension instruction: A comparison of instruction for strategies and content approaches ―[Electronic version]. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(3), 218–253.