Reading Comprehension
CADRE Capstone
2020-2021
RATIONALE
- History -
I was teaching in a third grade classroom in Elkhorn, Nebraska. As of 2019, our school had 540 students enrolled. Of those 540 students, about 25% were minorities, mainly of Asian descent, and 100% qualified for the free and reduced lunch program due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we were offering a hybrid learning environment for our students, I had seventeen students in person and two students who participated in lessons through Zoom. Examining my nineteen students’ demographics specifically, 56% of my students are Caucasian and 44% of my students are minorities. Fifteen students consistently participated in the study and were the ones analyzed at the conclusion of the research. Two of the students who took part in this study were in the Student Assistance Team (SAT) process and three of the students received small group reading intervention with my school’s reading specialist. During the study's duration of the seven weeks, eight of my students attended an enrichment class that varied each week with our High Ability Learner Education (HALE) teacher.
- Need -
Overall, the data I collected from my students showed a need in the area of reading, specifically in reading comprehension and finding text evidence.
After administering and assessing the very first independent Wonders reading assessment in the fall, I determined that out of my eighteen students, nine students received above seventy percent, five students received seventy percent correct and four students received lower than seventy percent correct. With nine of my students receiving seventy percent or lower on these assessments and nine students receiving above seventy percent, this showed that my students needed growth opportunities, but also enrichment opportunities. With half of my class performing below average on these assessments, it was evident that many of my students were struggling with their reading comprehension skills. I dove a little deeper and examined my students’ written responses to comprehension questions presented within these biweekly Wonders Reading assessments. These written responses require students to use the RACE strategy to restate, answer the question, cite information from the text to prove their answer, and then explain how they know their answer is correct. After reading my students’ responses, I realized more than half students were struggling with strategies to look back into the text to identify important information and to identify sequences of events within the stories.
Restate the question
Answer
Cite evidence
Explain reasoning
As students’ fluency rate plays a role in their comprehension abilities, I administered fluency reads at the beginning of the year to determine how many correct words per minute they were able to read. Once I analyzed the results, it was apparent that I had six students reading below the third-grade expectation of ninety-four words for the Fall. When listening to these students read, it was clear that decoding words and a lack of pausing at periods affected some students' ability to answer comprehension questions about the passage.
MAP is a computerized adaptive assessment that provides an individualized RIT (Rash UnIT) score that is an estimation of a student’s instructional level and is used to measure a student’s longitudinal academic growth throughout their education. With this assessment, I was able to gather the information needed to develop differentiated groups for guided reading based on my students’ common needs/instructional level, their current Lexile reading level, and specific areas of weakness in reading comprehension.
Based on my students’ reading Lexile level gathered from the winter Measurement of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment administered two weeks prior to the study, I realized I had seven students reading below a third grade level. With this information, I specifically looked at these students’ scores on our weekly selection quizzes that assess comprehension of the Wednesday whole group reading story and vocabulary words learned throughout the week. Out of these seven students and the five selection tests they had completed independently, they had an average score of seventy percent. This data gave me the information needed to determine that my students were struggling with their comprehension skills and ability to find relevant information in the text to answer questions.
When observing my students read aloud, their confidence and abilities varied. During the biweekly Wonders assessments, some students displayed signs of frustration and would spend a significant amount of time completing the tests. This observational data proved that my students needed to grow in their confidence within reading aloud and when determining answers to questions about a reading passage.
- Importance -
The information gained from this study is important because it allowed me to examine the effectiveness of differentiated targeted questioning strategies within both whole group and small group settings. Being a new, reflective educator who was not completely confident in my reading instruction, this study gave me the opportunity to grow in confidence with my ability to intentionally plan differentiated questions to meet the wide range of needs my students have and use my students' responses to those questions to inform my daily instruction. As comprehension is a critical piece of the foundation of reading, I believe this study was beneficial for both my striving and thriving readers in the sense that they were given opportunities for intervention, as well as enrichment.
As a result of this study, my students were able to gain more confidence in answering various types of questions that require them to utilize learned comprehension strategies, find text evidence, and make inferences. With these improvements to their reading comprehension, my students are now more prepared to continue their learning in fourth grade. With the support from my grade level team, building mentor, CADRE associate, in-building reading specialist, other qualified professionals, and my CADRE cohort, my students and I were able to find success through this action research.