What is my hypothesis?

As I have been reflecting over the holidays and during my planning for learning for term 2 I have been thinking about some of the reasons as to why my learners are still reading between 7.5 and 8.5 years in year 5. I have some hunches as to why this might be which has given me a clearer idea of my hypothesis. Below I will discuss some of the key hunches/hypothesis that I have been contemplating. 

Confidence
Students confidence in reading is something that immediately stood out with these learners. I have wondered if this has to do with mask wearing and being able to hear and understand the children but this term with masks off the lack of confidence is still evident in reading. It it the confidence of being able to share their reading with others as well as answering questions. What I have noticed is many of my students will answer a question but they are not confident in their answers. They will answer the questions but will show a real hesitation in sharing the answers along with hesitation that they might be wrong.

Missing School
A big part of term 1 was lots of absences across these learners due to being sick or isolating. I think that this has had a large impact on my students as trying to come back to norms and routines after an extended period of time can be a challenge. Not only with student wellbeing but also the social aspect as well. I find that many of my students in my target group will either be away for the beginning of the week and our first reading or will be away at the end of the week and miss the follow up text that goes along with the topic. So this also could be a reason for these students reading at this age. 

Inferencing gaps
When I has interviewing for my CoL position last year one of the key things that I discussed as my hunch was the gaps in being able to inference. I have noticed with my target group that they are able to use the text to answer literal comprehension questions but struggle to read between the lines and answer questions that are not directly stated in the text. This is an area that I will focus on with this target group moving forward. 

Learning to read change to reading to learn
The biggest change with this group of learners is moving from learning to read to using reading to learn. The questions they are needing to answer are focused more on applied knowledge, inferring and vocabulary related questions. 

These are some of the wonderings I have had throughout looking at my inquiry so far and are some areas that I will continue to look into along with looking at further readings related to some of these hypothesis.