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Rationale
The Justification for my Study
History:
My capstone project focused on my third-grade class for the 2019-2020 school year at a suburban school district. As of October 2019, there were 405 students enrolled in my primarily Caucasian, middle-class school building. In 2019-2020, 10% of my school’s students were identified as being in Special Education, while 12% of my school’s students were identified as High Ability Learners. I had twenty-four students in my class that had a variety of skills and experiences. In my classroom, there were 11 boys and 13 girls. Similar to the demographics of my school's zip code, 21 of my students were Caucasian, two were bi-racial, and one was of Asian descent. One of my third-grade students was on an Individual Education Plan for social emotional support and seven students were identified as High Ability Learners in Reading. I also had one student involved in the Problem Solving Team on a Reading Action Plan and on an Individualized Reading Improvement Plan for reading support.The student received additional reading support for a half-hour each week in the classroom reviewing and practicing reading comprehension strategies one-on-one. This student also received reading intervention services from our reading specialist. The student met four days a week with the reading specialist for a half hour and received extra practice and teaching over skills the student needed to become a successful active reader. During the academic school year of my action research study, students were introduced to a new district-wide implementation of writing about what they read to show and test their comprehension abilities. With the new writing about reading implementation and diversity in the classroom, it was important for me to choose a comprehension strategy that met the learning needs of all students and my district's Reading goals to improve students' reading comprehension.
I used this form to guide my small group lessons before, during, and after reading our weekly small group readers.
On the back, I wrote down each students' name that was in the guided reading group. Throughout the week I added notes next to the names about what I noticed in guided reading groups.
The Need for this Study:
Benchmarking Assessment System (BAS):
When examining my students' reading benchmark assessments in November, using the Fountas & Pinnell leveling system, more than half of my students were not reading on grade level. Out of the 24 students in my classroom, 13 students were reading below grade level and 11 students were reading at grade level. While the students averaged high fluency scores, their lack of understanding what they read posed concerns. How could my students truly be good readers if they did not fully grasp the main ideas of the text? This data point, specifically, supported my implementation of graphic organizers to increase reading comprehension because it exposed the struggles that my students had to organize their thoughts and ideas over what they read when being asked questions about a text.
Accelerated Reader Independent Reading (AR):
Throughout the school year, my students had worked on improving in their reading comprehension skills by taking online quizzes over books of their choice that are within their designated reading levels. When looking at students' comprehension percentages, or the number of questions they answered correctly over their book; my class's average comprehension percentage was 85.76% for their Quarter 2 report that ran from the middle of October until the middle of December. Out of the 24 students in my classroom, seven students scored below 80% on their average comprehension percentage on Accelerated Reader, five students scored between 80-90%, and 12 students scored 90% or higher. While students were meeting their Accelerated Reader point goals for the quarter, their low comprehension scores posed concerns as half of my students averaged below 90% comprehension rate. This showed me that students did not fully understand the books that they were reading at their instructional level. This data point supported my implementation of graphic organizers to increase reading comprehension because it showed me the struggles my students have comprehending books they read on their own time. This data alone did not prove students were proficient with their comprehension, as it is only one measure. As any strong educator or data analyst knows, you must perform multiple tests and have multiple forms of data to show significance.
Analytical Response to Writing:
Analytical Response to Writing is where students are given an essential question writing prompt to a story, and answer the question using text evidence. When given a baseline assessment over a weekly writing response comprehension question in November, five students showed they were unable to go back into the text and use text evidence to help them answer the comprehension question over the whole group weekly Reading Wonders Literature Anthology short story. In addition to the five students, the majority of students who did use specific evidence from the text, however, could not explain how the evidence they selected to use related to the comprehension question. This posed concern as students should be able to explain and relate the evidence they have chosen to use to answer a question. For this weekly writing response, students were originally taught to use the acronym RAPP where they Restate the question, Answer the question in their own words, Prove their answer with text evidence, and Proofread their answer. While implementing this comprehension strategy for analytical writing earlier in the school year has helped students grow from where they started, it does not appear to be sticking nor helping students elaborate and fully explain their answers. This showed me that the need is in both comprehension and text dependent analysis instruction, and not just applying comprehension skills in the context of reading, but in having the skills to go back into a text to find text evidence to support an answer and explain the answer fully. This data point supported my implementation of graphic organizers as students could use the organizers to draft their thoughts and ideas to a question and the text evidence used to support their answers.
Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth Assessment:
In early September, my students took the Measures of Academic Progress Reading Assessment. The Measures of Academic Progress Reading Assessment is an online standardized test that measures the academic growth students make throughout the school year. Typically, students take this test three times during the school year, in the early fall, winter, and spring. Due to the circumstances, my class only took this assessment in the Fall and Winter. This test measured each students' reading skills in the areas of comprehension, concepts of print, vocabulary, and writing. Using the data from this assessment, I was able to see what my students knew and what they were ready to learn in the area of reading. According to the data I received on the Comprehension portion of the assessment, 26% of my students scored Below Average, 21% of my students scored Average, 13% of my students scored High-Average, and 42% of my students scored High. The standard deviation for my students' Comprehension on the Measures of Academic Progress Reading Assessment was 18.6. This was much higher than the average standard deviation, showing the vast differences in my students' Reading needs. I had to differentiate my instruction by explicitly selecting and planning not only how to teach my students how to use the different graphic organizers, but also the weekly comprehension skills.
Anecdotal Notes:
Finally, at the beginning of the school year during guided reading small groups, I began taking anecdotal notes to help keep track of students areas of growth and areas that needed more reteaching. While students were growing in their reading abilities, especially in their fluency, students showed deficiencies in the ability to go back into the text to find evidence to help support their answer choices. When asked a question about the text, the majority of students would guess incorrectly, rather than going back into the text to find the correct answer. Students also showed deficiencies in the ability to summarize what they read. Some students could not summarize the main ideas of the stories we read, while others showed that they believed summarizing was telling every little detail of the story. This showed me that I needed to teach my students how to properly summarize a text. Also, the majority of students lacked confidence in the ability to comprehend what they read. This data point is concerning as students should feel confident and excited in their ability to explain to another person about what they read. I used the student data centered around comprehension and summarizing through the use of graphic organizers as a foundation to push my students to grow as active readers.
Analytical Writing Response Rubric Sample and Prompt Samples
Analytical Writing Response Rubric Sample and Prompt Samples
Why it is Important:
The information gained from this study is important because it allowed me to know my readers’ comprehension skills on an individual level. It informed and directed my instruction in my daily Language Arts block and reading small groups. This study helped me to meet my students where they were at and challenged them to work to their full potential through differentiation and individual instruction of reading comprehension. I planned to differentiate instruction by forming my guided reading groups based off of my students’ most recent benchmarking scores from December 2019. In these leveled guided reading groups, I differentiated the activities I used to help build students’ comprehension skills. These skills included implementing different graphic organizers based on our weekly comprehension skills and the R.A.C.E. comprehension strategy where students Restated the question as a statement, Answer the question in their own words, Cite text evidence to support the answer, and Explain how their evidence supports their answer for our weekly analytical response to writing prompts. I desired to help my students learn these skills to help them when trying to comprehend a text they recently read. As an educator, I was not confident in my abilities to teach how to go back into a text to find text evidence, lead small groups, and help students use this skill in all subject areas. Since I had access to high quality professionals with specializations in Language Arts, I wanted to utilize them as resources to make me a more effective Language Arts teacher. I believe this study allowed me to help my students grow as readers and feel more confident in their ability to go back into a text to find answers with validity and reliability.
