My inquiry question for this year was: How to enhance well being and enjoyment while accelerating reading achievement for those students reading between the ages of 8 and 9 years? I identified this as my focus question when I noticed that a large group of my students were reading between the ages of 8 and 9 years, below where they should be reading at a year 5 level. Initially my only inquiry focus was on accelerating reading achievement, however with the nature of this year and ever changing events throughout I also decided to focus on the well being of my students and enhancing their enjoyment for reading.
To build a picture of my students learning in reading I looked at a range of different data such as PAT reading, Star, Running Records, Spelling lists and Student Voice. To build a picture of student well being and reading for enjoyment I conducted surveys at various stages of the year. Which was fascinating to see what they thought. I have broken this down extensively on my blog.
The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase was that these students were able to read the text fluently with great decoding, however when it came time to answer the questions they were unable to infer meaning or answer questions related to vocabulary. Another thing I found was that my students didn't want to participate in reading outside of our guided reading sessions, there was a clear lack of enjoyment.
From speaking to other colleagues I found that enjoyment for reading and vocabulary were key elements that many of our students were struggling with. I explored what the literature said looking at academic research that I have discussed in detail in one of my blog posts.
The changes that I made to my teaching was integrating reading and writing with an overall topic focus each week. This allowed my students to immerse themselves in the topic specific vocabulary in both reading and writing. I implemented a spelling test using a pre and post test each week with the same words to gauge the retention of this new vocabulary. I also started taking my class to the library where they were able to choose what they would like to read in their own time.
The easiest thing to change was the integration of reading and writing especially with the spelling lists. Some of the challenges were creating writing tasks that did fit in with the topic as well as being interesting and exciting for the students.
Overall there were some key markers of success. Students showed an eagerness to read independently from having that choice of what they wanted to read. My target showed more confidence in reading unfamiliar words and used new vocabulary more purposefully in writing tasks. My mid year data showed improvements in reading ages for some of my students. This data also showed key areas that needed to be worked. Student well being and reading for enjoyment surveys showed a shift with many of my students stating that they enjoyed reading for fun and felt confident and supported being at school.
A highlight from this year was the change in attitude of my students towards “super silent reading” as they call it. At the beginning of the year none of my students really wanted to participate in sustained silent reading but we persevered. Now my students ask if they can silently read when they have finished their work or when they come in from play time which is a huge change!
The most important learning I made about my inquiry was the integration of reading and writing and the focus on student enjoyment for reading. By encouraging the enjoyment of reading with my learners they were more excited to complete reading tasks and participate in guided reading lessons. My students are now excited to share what they have learnt and are eager to find out more about the topic. The excitement that they have in reading has led to greater engagement and focus during reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment