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East High School Reading Apprenticeship Action Research Project May 14, 2012

John Galle-Boyko Social Studies

Ron Hayes English

Laura Cramer Biology

Dennis Carner Social Studies

Mary Meade Biology

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Phi Delta KappanNov. 2007

“Molly Ness completed 40 hours of classroom observation in her study with secondary science & social studies classes, [she observed] that 82 minutes of the 40 hours or just (3 %) of the instruction was used to explain, model, scaffold and assist students in using effective reading comprehension strategies.”

( Ness, 2007)

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Reading Apprenticeship

A partnership of expertise

between the teacher and students, drawing on

what content area teachers know and do as

skilled discipline-based readers and on learners’

unique and often underestimated strengths

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Dimensions of Reading Apprenticeship

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What does a Reading ApprenticeshipClassroom Look Like?

A focus on comprehension and metacognitive conversation

A climate of collaboration

An emphasis on student independence

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Student Outcomes

More reading Increased engagement and

confidence as readers Development of a range of

strategies to support comprehension Higher levels of interaction between

and among teachers and students Increased retention

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How did we Assess a Baseline?

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Boyko’s Statement of the Problem Teachers at East High, an urban school in

the Erie School District, and in schools across America, are concerned with the ongoing problem of teaching and motivating students to read and comprehend text based materials at or above their grade level

27 students were tested 10th Grade 5th Period US History class

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Pre-CERA Data Sept.

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Hypothesis Data clearly shows a need for a

reading strategy that will increase their understanding and comprehension of historical text and articles. Will the technique of “Talking to the Text “improve the student’s comprehension of historical based text in order to summarize the true meaning.

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Before Same Student After

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Conclusion Comparison of Data

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Ron Hayes Statement of Problem

My target class mostly reads below grade level. As a result they avoid reading, doing so only when they have to. Because of apathy and inability, my students have no reading stamina, which makes it impossible for them to improve their reading ability

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Pre-data CERA

Assigning “On Being Seventeen, Bright—and Unable to Read,” I asked students to read for 30 consecutive minutes during class.

I asked students to measure how much they read in that 30 minutes by marking in the text where they stopped.

Of 30 possible students to take the CERA, only 16 participated.

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Pre Data Continued No student finished reading the entire

selection. Of the 16 who participated, only 6 reached or

exceeded the halfway point of the reading. Two of those exceeded the two-thirds point. Two reported not reading beyond the second

paragraph. Four exceeded the one-third point but did not

make it to the halfway point, Remaining four did not exceed the 1/3 mark

in the reading.

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Hypothesis 

I estimate that, by year’s end, 10 of my 16 students who take the CERA again will complete it

By year’s end, four of the remaining six will exceed the halfway point, but fail to gain the two-thirds point of the reading

I further predict that two of my students will make no progress

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Post-data CERA

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Conclusion

In conclusion, I would say it’s difficult for me to objectively assess the success or failure of RAISE strategies simply because I’ve become a fan. I like the RAISE approach and I would like to learn more and become better equipped to apply RAISE strategies. As it stands now, however, I still lack the confidence

and the knowledge to practically apply RAISE in all of what I do.

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Conclusion / Reflection

That said, I believe RAISE strategies helped in ways other than improving reading stamina. For example, I saw an upswing in students who were interacting with the text by coding and by recording observations in the margins of handouts.

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LAURA RAISE MISSION

The Strategic Literacy Initiative is committed to improving

learning outcomes for middle school, high school, and college students by assisting them to

become powerful, strategic, and independent readers. – © 2011

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ProblemDuring my teaching experience at East High school I’ve recognized many of my students:a.Are inexperienced but not beginning readers.b.Are mentally passive while reading academic texts-pull out key words without comprehension.c.Are not aware of their metacognitive processes while reading difficult texts.d.Are not held accountable for much reading.

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Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that students will improve their metacognition and subsequently their comprehension, of difficult texts after completing reading logs throughout the year with varied science texts.

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Procedure

1. Students were introduced to reading logs and given a rubric of how they would be graded.

Reading Log Rubric F:\Lesson Plans 2011-2012\Reading Logs.doc

2. Students were assigned reading of various texts, such as textbook pages and/or figures, magazine articles, case studies and lab procedures.

3. Reading logs were collected about twice every six weeks and student’s metacognitive comments were assessed.

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Data Collection

1. At the beginning students scored poorly on the metacognitive column of their reading logs.

2. Very few students demonstrated the ability to describe what they were thinking while they were reading.

3. Most student’s metacognitive column included more notes from the text.

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Data Collection

4. During a PLN class in December a suggestion was made to give students guided questions for the metacognitive column.

5. During the second half of the year students were given guided questions to complete reading logs.

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Conclusion

Student’s metacognition improved as the year progressed, although it did not tranfer into post-CERA assessments.

RAISE strategies were successful in the my classroom and I look forward to using them again next year.

I plan to more closely correlate the reading log and other RAISE strategies with the CERA assessment.

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Dennis RAISE

Statement of problem:• East High students lack the ability to read non-

preferred materials for sustained periods of time. In addition, students lack the skill sets to engage in the text while reading thus they struggle with the context of non-fiction based historical material.

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Pre-CERA Data Sept.

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Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that using the RAISE reading strategies will improve students’ stamina, schema, and provide them with a new set of skills that helps them achieve success while reading non-preferred non-fiction texts.

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Post CERA Data Jan.

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Conclusion As indicated by the CERA

data student performance has improved. The attitude in class has also changed significantly. The initial resistance has faded and student have begun using skills without being required.

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Mary’s Purpose:

Authentic nonfiction content in Science needs the same reading strategies used in an English classroom AND more.

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Background:

“Science is built on reading and writing. Science hasn’t started from scratch; scientists draw from a body of literature.”

“What a good reader does is hidden from a bad reader. Everything is happening in your head.”

Jodie Wheeler-Topin, PhD.

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Data and Observations

Students did not recognize that reading non-fiction material (technical, scientific writings, graphs, data charts, etc.) requires a deliberate focus on the material.

Students assumed “skimming” new material would automatically result in understanding.

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Data (cont)

Fall CERA results showed very little hi-lighting or identification of main ideas.

Many students felt the reading was “pretty easy” to read, but were unable to pick out the main ideas or show comprehension.

Students using English as a second language, tended to take more time reading and writing on the text and felt the reading was “pretty hard”.

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Data (cont.)

Winter CERA readings showed more ‘talking to the text’, hi-lighting and comprehension than Fall readings.

Students showed a better comprehension of the material and generated questions related to the topic.

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Conclusion

This being the first time the teacher actively modeled and taught reading strategies meant a learning process for both teacher and student.

Continued use of the RAISE program across the disciplines will become more natural for both teachers and students and result in better comprehension and test scores.