Wow!
This has been a crazy week. I gave the summative assessment (the English III MSL) two weeks ago in hopes of closing the research and finishing my paper. Remember, I am a biology teacher, and not English. The english teacher had the English IV answer key for the English III MSL and did not have the correct key. This also means that the Exam that was given as a midterm also was not graded yet (Yikes! it had been 4 weeks ago!) so I felt that the data that was taken was valid as they did not have the 'correct' answers yet.
Finally, last Tuesday, I received the correct answer key for the English III exam and had the kids upload their answers again so they could compare the results of what they had made in January to the new score in April after the instruction of the close reading strategies.
Data analysis:
It is evident that the close reading strategies did assist in deepening student understanding of the content at hand, however the utility of the strategies correlates with text at hand. Visualize and connect was the most difficult to do with creative writing, but the easiest to usefully apply to informational text such as chemistry.
Students utilized the strategies correctly, they knew how to apply to different situations and did receive valuable understanding from it.
My follow up to this is to see if the levels of questions required of the students to respond to text would then determine the most effective strategy to use for the task at hand.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
A Hiccup in the plan
I chose to complete my action research on close reading strategies to assist students with reading comprehension and hopefully higher achievement on their AP english and AP US history courses that they are enrolled in this semester.
The students have received instruction in marking the text to do the following with their comprehension: summarize, clarify, question, respond, visualize and connect. After the initial instruction of the strategies were complete, I gave them a reading and respond assignment with the instructions of "use what strategies you feel are most useful to you". They reflected, and in short order I discovered that they did not utilize visualize, connect and respond as much as I had hoped.
I wondered if it was the nature of the text, as these were English essays that I was using to assess. Maybe it would be easier to utilize science text? This is definitely the platform for the visualizing component. It makes learning science content so much easier if the words can be converted into images.
I decided to forgo the original plan of teaching the strategy 'rereading' for another attempt to answer this question with a different type of text.
I copied a chapter from the college level chemistry text and gave them two focuses to be reading for with the explicit instruction to use the strategies that were least used during the prior assessment.
The students utilized the strategies requested, and reflected on the responses. I have not evaluated the responses thoroughly as of yet.
The students have received instruction in marking the text to do the following with their comprehension: summarize, clarify, question, respond, visualize and connect. After the initial instruction of the strategies were complete, I gave them a reading and respond assignment with the instructions of "use what strategies you feel are most useful to you". They reflected, and in short order I discovered that they did not utilize visualize, connect and respond as much as I had hoped.
I wondered if it was the nature of the text, as these were English essays that I was using to assess. Maybe it would be easier to utilize science text? This is definitely the platform for the visualizing component. It makes learning science content so much easier if the words can be converted into images.
I decided to forgo the original plan of teaching the strategy 'rereading' for another attempt to answer this question with a different type of text.
I copied a chapter from the college level chemistry text and gave them two focuses to be reading for with the explicit instruction to use the strategies that were least used during the prior assessment.
The students utilized the strategies requested, and reflected on the responses. I have not evaluated the responses thoroughly as of yet.
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