Debra
Meredith, Lincoln Elementary, Riverton,
WY
Research question:
How will the teaching of specific strategies for reading and working with
nonfiction literature affect the reading achievement of boys in the classroom?
I have been collecting data all year on the literature choices of students and
have come up with some interesting observations. The boys have not necessarily
been choosing primarily nonfiction. With the release of the movies Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and the Lord of the Rings, there has been a
major upsurge in the interest of boys with fiction. Some weeks the boys will
choose more nonfiction than fiction, but the girls have never chosen more
nonfiction than the boys.
This leads me to wonder if my research question isn’t too narrow. Should I
change it to query about the reading achievement of all students? I’m also
toying with including writing implications, as I’ve seen how much it affects
their writing skills as well. I’m afraid that including writing would make
it unmanageable though, and like everyone else I am already struggling with
the time constraints of all the curriculum work I have to do for the district,
the after school programs I teach, maintaining a well-organized classroom, and
trying to learn and teach Spanish at once. I’m not yet sure what to do, so
any input would be appreciated.
I have also been documenting progress in reading using the DRA assessment,
which measures the accuracy rate, self-correction rate, comprehension of a
passage, and fluency. I have beginning of the year scores on every child in my
classroom, and am working on the semester scores for each child. This is
time-intensive as it takes about 45-60 minutes to assess each child but the
information is well worth it as it provides a basis for guiding my
instruction.
As for the strategies that we have been using to work with nonfiction, I am
using the suggestions of Stephanie Harvey (Strategies That Work and
Nonfiction Matters) and Linda Hoyt (Read, Remember, Retell and Snapshots); all are incredible resources for any interested
teachers. We are using word sorts, very important points, marking text with
sticky notes (you wouldn’t believe how many we go through), alphaboxes,
retelling, paraphrasing using word sorts, red-hot research, questioning for
clarification, etc. The growth I have seen in my students is great, and we
will hopefully be putting a bunch of these strategies together in a full-blown
research project this spring. My third graders are excited about their work
and are learning life-long skills for reading content area text. |