Academic Readings

It has come to that time of our inquiry where we are looking at academic research and readings to see what changes that we can make to support our hypothesis and inquiry. I have been fortunate enough to take part in RPI this year where we have been able to look at some academic research into reading and the changes that we have made so far to our practice in the teaching of reading. For my inquiry this year I have also sourced some academic research to have a deeper look into changes that will make to my practice to raise reading achievement for my learners this year. I had a look at three pieces of academic research will I will outline below in this blog post. 

Reading One:
The first piece of academic research that I looked into was "Improving pupil group work interaction and dialogue in primary classrooms." This research outlined how structured group work can make a big difference in student engagement. When teachers set up group activities in a thoughtful way, students get more involved and have better discussions.

What I learned from this reading is that I need to be more intentional about how I organise group work. So, I’m planning to mix things up by giving students specific roles in their groups and creating tasks that encourage them to think critically and talk to each other. 

With being part of RPI this year I have also been able to implement ground rules for talk which aligns really well with what I have found in this academic research. 

Reading Two:
The second piece of academic research that I looked into was "Fundamentals of inferencing during reading." This article emphasises how important it is for readers to make inferences using their background knowledge. Good readers connect new information to what they already know, which is key for understanding what they read.

What I learned from this reading was the need to focus on teaching inferencing skills in my classroom. I plan to introduce lessons that help students practice making inferences while reading. I think the key thing to start with is gathering students prior knowledge using topics I know they are confident with to start discussions and make those connections. 

Through RPI we are given a range of different graphic organisers that can focus in on this skill. Another thing I would like to try in the classroom is continue to use key into inference as well as using images in follow up tasks so that students are able to make inferences with images and then transfer this into what they are reading. 

Reading Three:
The final piece of academic research that I looked into was "How Can Teachers Facilitate Productive Talk?" This article highlights how the way teachers talk can really impact small-group discussions. It introduces a lot of effective teacher dialogue and moves to help students engage more meaningfully with what they are reading. 

What I learned from this that my role as a teacher in leading discussions is super important. I want to start using specific questions that encourage deeper thinking and conversation. For example, I’ll ask open-ended questions that prompt students to elaborate on their thoughts or respectfully challenge each other’s ideas. I want my classroom to be a space where everyone feels comfy sharing their opinions and using evidence from the text to back them up. Again this links in really nicely with ground rules for talk from RPI.

I’m really excited about these changes and can’t wait to see how they impact my students learning. These articles have been helpful in shaping my next steps, and I’m looking forward to trying these strategies out in my class. With a little tweaking along the way, I hope to create an even more engaging and effective learning environment for my students!

References:

Cook, A. E., & O'Brien, E. J. (2017). Fundamentals of inferencing during reading. Language and Linguistics Compass, 11(7), e12238. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12238

Wei, L., Murphy, P. K., & Firetto, C. M. (2018). Improving pupil group work interaction and dialogue in primary classrooms: Results from a year-long intervention study. The Elementary School Journal, 118(4), 568-588. https://doi.org/10.1086/697175

Wei, L., Murphy, P. K., & Firetto, C. M. (2018). How can teachers facilitate productive small-group talk? An integrated taxonomy of teacher discourse moves. The Elementary School Journal, 118(4), 589-608. https://doi.org/10.1086/697176

Academic Reading

For our CoL inquiry we have been asked to look at academic research and readings to help us understand our inquiry focus in more detail as well as see what other studies and research that have been done that could strengthen our inquiries. I have completed some readings over the last couple of weeks and here are some of my thoughts and takeaways from each of the readings and research. I have also had some amazing conversations with my colleagues around what I should look into and how to strengthen my inquiry and my learners progress. 

1. Words as Tools: Learning Academic Vocabulary as Language Acquisition
Nagy, W., & Townsend, D. (2012)

Words are a mean of communicating and thinking about the content of a specific discipline. "Lack of academic vocabulary knowledge has consistency been identified as an obstacle to student success." This research article provides a set of recommendations to improve the practice in the area of academic language. It is interesting to note that there is a significant difference between the academic language and typical conversations and it is important that students have access and the opportunity to be exposed to academic language. Academic language tends to have longer words due to the prefixes and suffixes of the words. This article outlines the six characteristics of academic language and they are:

•  Latin and Greek vocabulary
• Morphologically complex words
• Nouns, adjectives and prepositions
• Grammatical metaphor, including nominalizations 
• Informational density 
• Abstractness

These six characteristics are not seperate facts rather that are all functionally related. I found a two really interesting quotes from this research. "Just because people who read more can read better doesn't mean that if you read more this will make you read better."
AND
"The correlation between the amount of reading and reading ability does not imply a causal relationship."Both of these lines really resinated with me in the fact that so often in relation to the problem we just say children need to read more and they will get better. This is something that is important with reading of course, however this has also shown me how important exposure to topic specific vocabulary is as well as deliberate acts of teaching that can help the students unpack what they are reading. Just because they can read it does not mean that they can unpack what they are reading and think about all of this abstract ideas with text.

This reading has really shown me that we do need to use words as tools and be able to expose our learners to this specific language and explain what it means in order to help them succeed. This research paper gave some great insight into guiding questions for teachers and the role of the teacher to insure that students have access to academic vocabulary. There are some key parts of this that I will use in my guided reading sessions that I will document as evidence to see that there is a change in my students achievement.  

2. Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
Shanahan, T., Callison, K., Carriere, C., Duke, N. K., Pearson, P. D., Schatschneider, C., & Torgesen, J.

This article provided a large number of recommendations to help with reading comprehension. The five recommendations were outlined in detail with how each of these areas could be improved.  The five recommendations were as follows:

• Teach students how to use reading comprehension strategies.
• Teach students to identify and use the text's organisational structure to comprehend, learn and remember content.
• Guide students through focused, high-quality discussion on the meaning of text. 
• Select texts purposefully to support comprehension development. 
• Establish an engaging and motivating connect in which to teach reading comprehension.

This article outlined a range of different strategies that could be used in the classroom to extend learners and focus on improving reading comprehension in all areas. There was lots to unpack in this article and I will refer to this throughout my inquiry to see if there are some areas that I could strengthen and improve and add some information from the article into my classroom. 

3. Key into inference
Parkin, C., Pool, B., & Parkin, C. (2010).

This was resource that was highly recommended for my learners and is something that I really want to implement into my reading program. Although this is a program I have been able to read the key parts of what key into inference in and how to use this in the classroom. This has also prompted me to look into further readings that have provided research for this which I will try and get access to and then share what I found from the readings in another post later on. 

4. The Reading Book
Cameron, S., & Dempsey, L. (2019).

This was one of the first books that was recommended to me to check out in relation to reading and what I can do to change the way I look at inferring or how I could focus more on my students who need help with inferring. This book gave a great breakdown of guided reading and how to facilitate independent reading with activities as well as how to have share reading with the class that can lead into some of the key overall topics that we look into each week. From this I was then able to find another book of Sheena Cameron's which was the one I have outlined below. 

5. Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies: A Practical Classroom Guide
Cameron, S. (2009) 

I have read through Sheena Cameron's teaching reading comprehension strategies and have found some really insightful information. This guide has been really great to see the reading comprehension strategies being broken down into key areas. There is a part to this that focuses just on inferring which is an area of interest for me this year with my CoL inquiry. This section of the book explains what inferencing is as well as gives some great inferencing follow up tasks that I will be able to use in the classroom to support this part of reading. 

As I continue on with my inquiry I know that there will be more academic readings that I will want to look into and come across and will update these readings on my blog as they come. This is just a starting point for what I will use for my intervention and build on some incredible work that has already been done. 

References:

Cameron, S. (2009). Teaching reading comprehension strategies. North Shore: Pearson.

Cameron, S., & Dempsey, L. (2019). The Reading Book.

Nagy, W., & Townsend, D. (2012). Words as tools: Learning academic vocabulary as language acquisition. Reading research quarterly, 47(1), 91-108.

Parkin, C., Pool, B., & Parkin, C. (2010). Key Into Inference: Guide & answers. Triune Initiatives Limited.

Shanahan, T., Callison, K., Carriere, C., Duke, N. K., Pearson, P. D., Schatschneider, C., & Torgesen, J. (2010). Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade: IES Practice Guide. NCEE 2010-4038. What Works Clearinghouse.

Forming my hypothesis: Academic and Professional Readings

Share three pieces of academic or professional reading and explain how they and other sources helped you form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning. 

In order to form a hypothesis I have looked at some research papers that have looked at reading achievement and how progress can be made at an accelerated rate in reading. The first piece of research I looked at was:

1. "Sustained Acceleration in Reading Comprehension: The New Zealand Experience" by Mei Kuin Lai, Stuart McNaughton, Mealoa Amituanai-Toloa, Rolf Turner and Selena Hsiao. This piece of researched looked at how to lift reading achievement through comprehension. From looking at my own data and my own individual learners I can see that comprehension is an area that some of my students are struggling with which is keeping their reading age below standard. I do also however have some students who need work on decoding in order to make the progress in reading they need. This research looked at the summer effects of reading and how that can effect students with their reading each year. This is something that we have also seen with our learners over the years, the summer drop off. This research showed that the quasi-experimental design not only saw increased rates of reading achievement but this was also sustained over a three year period. From reading this is has given me a better understanding of my hypothesis of reading comprehension needing to be improved in order to accelerate my learning reading progress. 
   
   This has strengthened my hypothesis around this. The research used baseline data of PAT star and reading comprehension which is also something I will be using as baseline data. This has deepened my understanding of important baseline data and also given me some other areas that I could incorporate in my teaching of reading. 
   
   
2. "Vocabulary Development During Read-Alouds: Primary Practices" by Karen J. Kindle was another piece of research that I have looked at. Another hunch I had about my readers from what I have seen in guided reading sessions across my class is the ability to read in and understand new vocabulary as an area that needs development.
   
   "Reading aloud to children provides a powerful context for word learning" (Biemiller & Boote, 2006; Bravo, Hiebert, & Pearson, 2007) 
   
   This is something that we have been looking at widely as a school and how we can increase vocabulary with read aloud's. Previously I have read novels to m y learners due to being in year 5 & 6 but in the last few years have also discovered that picture books are a timeless classic and all of my learners love being able to see the pictures. This is something that almost seems common sense in a classroom but is also something that is greatly over looked. Reading this paper and seeing the importance of this in the classroom has made me make sure this is part of my daily reading program - whether is be a picture book or a novel. 
   
   This research has strengthened my hypothesis of vocabulary being an important aspect of reading acceleration. It has also highlighted why it is important. The biggest part of this research was making sure that these read aloud's are planned like any other lesson. This is something that I would like to develop not only in my guided reading sessions but in my read aloud's too. Being prepared brings out richer vocabulary and important key parts of what is being read. 
   
   
3. Finally I have looked at "Utilising Nonfiction Texts to Enhance Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary in Primary Grades" by Karen E Kuhn, Casey M. Rausch, Tiffany G. McCarty, Sarah E. Montgomery and Audrey C. Rule. This research looks at how important nonfiction texts are for learners and reading achievement. This linked how non fiction texts are not only enjoyable for learners but they lend greater vocabulary and wider reading making the students think about connections as they are reading. 
   
   This was another important piece of research to read especially with those students reading below 8 years as it is often easy to access fiction texts at their levels but it is important to extend readers and give them non fiction options. This also links well with the previous reading and how to improve vocabulary development. 

This research that I have looked at has given me the hypothesis of reading comprehension specifically vocabulary development could be needed to make accelerated progress. This is something that I will continue to look into and strengthen in my classroom as I have also need this in my running record and PAT data. 

References

        Biemiller, A., & Boote, C. (2006). An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in primary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98(1), 44–62.

        Bravo, M. A., Hiebert, E. H., & Pearson, P. D. (2007). Tapping the linguistic resources of Spanish-English bilinguals: The role of cognates in science. In R. K. Wagner, A. E. Muse, & K. R. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension (pp. 140–156). New York: Guildford Press.

        Kindle, K.J. (2009, November). Vocabulary Development During Read-Alouds: Primary Practices. The Reading Teacher, 63(3), 202-211.

        Kuhn, K.E., Rausch, C.M., McCarty, T.G. et al. Utilizing Nonfiction Texts to Enhance Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary in Primary Grades. Early Childhood Educ J 45, 285–296 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-015-0763-9

        Lai, M., McNaughton, S., Amituanai-Toloa, M., Turner, R., & Hsiao, S. (2009). Sustained Acceleration of Achievement in Reading Comprehension: The New Zealand Experience. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(1), 30-56. Retrieved May 18, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20304572