Reading is the foundation to all life skills. Without knowing how to read, life in the 21st century would be difficult. The goal for third grade students is to master the basics of decoding and reading comprehension of third grade text. Once they are reading at grade level their education shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. This is a huge push from my district as statistics show that “A student who can't read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time.” As I have attended workshops for the district this is something that I have heard over and over.
At my site we offer daily reading intervention to students who are not reading at grade level. Students are grouped across the grade level based on their reading level. Some groups focus on phonic where other groups work on reading comprehension through structured programs. This is a great intervention, but is doesn’t seem to be working for all students. We are seeing the same kids from year to year in these intervention groups. Over the past few years I have noticed a growing number of students who lack the basic skills to read and comprehend text when entering 3rd grade. I wonder why these interventions are not working. Why aren’t they making more than a year’s growth to catch up? What else can we do to help these students? I would like to see if technology could perk their interest in reading. This is obviously an area of difficulty and often students don’t want to put the effort forward if they know that they are going to struggle or even fail. The idea behind my action research is to see if technology has a positive impact in their reading comprehension. How does technology impact children’s ability to recall and comprehend text? Hopefully research will help me identify how we can help students succeed in reading, therefore succeed in life.
3 Comments
Emily Feil
10/15/2017 07:50:26 am
Seeing students languish in intervention classes year after year is painful. I think you are correct that some struggling students have developed a kind of learned helplessness. They know that reading will be a challenge, so they don't invest much effort and therefore don't make progress. (Some even engage in disruptive behavior as a way of avoiding the unpleasant task.) The cycle perpetuates itself. Because students find technology so motivating, perhaps you will find a technology-based solution that will inspire struggles to reach again.
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Christina Schreiber
10/15/2017 09:24:58 am
I think you have chosen a very important research topic. I teach middle school and I see students who have continued that dislike for reading or get by without really having the necessary reading skills. I have been looking at different digital curriculums for our middle school science program and there are a lot of programs with great reading supports for students such as embedded vocabulary definitions, text that will read to them and highlight the main idea. I am sure at younger grade levels there may be some games or fun activities to motivate the students.
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mayra cindy de la torre
10/17/2017 11:45:08 pm
I completely agree with you, if students are not reading at grade level by third grade they will most likely continue to be below grade level for the rest of their school years. We have to find some way to get them interested in reading and actually understand the message that is being transmitted through the reading. Hopefully our action research plan can help with this problem.
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