This is a copy of my Draft for my Action Research Project in EDLD 5397
Week 3 Assignment, Part 3
Draft Action Research Project Progress Report
Improved
Reading Comprehension Strategies and Skills for High School Students
Needs Assessment
For the needs assessment of my
action research project, I used data
from the AEIS reports from the past several years, which included TAKS and STAAR-EOC
scores, as well as ACT Reading and Accuplacer scores. Students struggle at all
levels of reading on standardized testing as exemplified by these exams because
of a decline in basic reading comprehension.
This is fed by a lack of exposure to expository texts that creates a
limited working vocabulary.
Additionally, students are not aware of or equipped with skills or
strategies to attack complex or dense texts.
Disaggregated TAKS and STAAR- EOC data, as well as ACT Reading and
Accuplacer Reading scores, were divided into sub-groups as a part of my initial
research. My goal is to find ways to improve the reading comprehension of students. If this is accomplished, the scores will
improve not only in reading, but also all other tests that contain reading
questions. When I sat down with my site
supervisor, this was the one area that he felt we needed to make improvements
in. As I have researched this problem, I realize it is not only a local problem
for our school, but also for our country.
If we hope to have students be successful in the the future, educators
must ensure that they have the tools to fully comprehend what they are reading,
whether it be literary, expository, or technical in nature.
Objectives and Vision
My vision is that students will
be exposed to expository, real-world texts through strategies that will be
implementedas a part od curriculum in core classes that incorporate reading as
a part of the lesssons. Students will
understand and apply strategies for comprehending difficult texts by learning
to attack new, unusal, or unfamiliar words.
Students will learn strategies to increase comprehension, like re-reading,
paraphrasing, notetaking, annotating and outlining as a part of close reading .
Students will apply knowledge of Greek and Latin roots and affixes in attacking
new words and learn to recognize and decode context clues as a part of reading
comprehension. My goal is to implement several different strategies in the many
of the core classrooms of our school to see if we can indeed improve reading
comprehension through a school-wide approach to reading across the curriculum.
Review of Literature and
Action Research Strategy
Porter-O'Donnell, C. (2004). Beyond the
yellow highlighter: Teaching annotation skills to improve reading
comprehension. English Journal, 93(5), 82-89.
Ness, M. (2009). Reading comprehension
strategies in secondary content area classrooms: Teacher use of and attitudes
towards reading comprehension instruction. Reading Horizons, 49(2),
143-166.
McCallum, R. (2011). Improving reading
comprehension of at-risk high-school students: The art of reading program. Psychology
in the Schools , doi: 10.1002/pits 20541
Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide: How
schools are killing reading and what you can do about it . Portland, ME:
Stenhouse Publishers.
When I first selected this
topic for my action research project we were looking at how we could improve
reading comprehension to ensure college readiness. As I went through my data and looked at the
problems we had with our test scores, I felt the need to change my approach and
not look at the college readiness part yet, but to find a way to improve
reading comprehension for all of the students in our high school. My wife is an English teacher at the high
school with me, so we have taken on this project and we have started
implementing some of these strategies in our classrooms already. She agreed to help me get these ideas in the
classroom for our students to start learning in the hopes that we can make a
difference in our student’s lives.
Articulate
the Vision
This was an easy sell to the
Principal at the High School and the Superintendent. The last few years we were always looking at
ways to improve our test scores. We
tried many different ideas on improving scores, especially in Math and Science
while not addressing the other core areas because math and science were always
the lowest scores. When I visited with my site supervisor, who is also the High
School principal, the problem of reading comprehension jumped out at us. The more we discussed the issue and how to
approach it, the more we realized that reading comprehension is the key to all
test scores. Students today feel like
they understand what they are reading and the assume that know what certain
words mean. Looking at test scores, it is evident that they do in fact struggle
with comprehension. After much
discussion with the Principal, I approached our Superintendent about the idea
for this study. I have talked to many of
our teachers at all three levels (Elementary, Jr. High, and High School) and
all of them have agreed this is a project that our district needs. I have visited with parents and community
members to elicit their responses about views on the ability of our students to
comprehend the meaning of words. I
explained to them that my goal is to implement new strategies that would
benefit our students and help them to master reading comprehension on a variety
of texts at increasing difficult levels.
