I propose to begin my "treatment" after Spring Break. Madness, I know, to wait so long. I have some limiting factors to take into account. First, one of the most important pieces of my data is a reading log recorded by my students from home. It details the minutes they spend reading and what kind of material they read. Although this is in no way tied to a grade and not part of their homework, I do want to capture information from typical weeks of their lives, which includes school and no travel plans. Second, up until spring break, my program accepts new students and typically at this time of year we get new students every week. For my sampling to remain consistent, I will need a stable student enrollment. Third, CAASP testing falls (for us) the last week of April. This is the ideal second week for my treatment to run. Fourth, my post-test for the Reading Inventory can be done the first week of May when we would typically begin collecting the end of year RI's as part of the school calendar. I only see my middle school students once a week for 2 to 3 hours, so scheduling an additional RI would be disruptive to their normal course of classes and study. Here are my proposed steps:
I thought about trying to use technology for my student questionnaire, such as setting up an online survey for the students to use, but it didn't seem as if it would provide much leverage for me. My questionnaire is comprised of open-ended questions that require narrative or descriptive answers, so I couldn't take advantage of any kind of automatic tabulation of answers such as would occur with a multiple choice survey. Also, not all my students have full access to devices and the internet at home. As well, not all my students are proficient at keyboarding, and I didn't want any obstacle to them using as many words as they can in their answers. At least - that's the plan right now.
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Darling-Hammond, in her closing chapter of The Flat World and Education, lays out five key elements that must be included in a wise, deep, lovely reform of education in the United States. Of the five elements, three of them resonate the most soundly for me in light of my past and present teaching contexts.
Meaningful Learning Goals “Higher achieving countries have much learner standards; teacher fewer topics more deeply each year; focus more on inquiry, reasoning skills, and applications of knowledge, rather than mere coverage; and have a more thoughtful sequence of expectations based on developmental learning progressions within and across domains.” Just this change alone, leaner standards with a mile deep rather than a mile wide approach, would make the culture of any classroom richer and more enjoyable. Feeling a sense of “leisure” to learning, allowing exploration, deep discussion, questioning and student-driven tangents (relevant ones), all of this fosters a community where students and teachers alike WANT to be. I had a principal who used to say that learning cannot take place in the midst of anxiety and frustration, a relaxed, friendly environment must be in existence. The challenge of this form of deep learning calls upon a teacher’s expertise of content area and knowledge of the full spectrum of skills and developmental abilities of her students. In my own experience, when I have had the freedom to engage in this kind of teaching, I needed more time to prepare myself to teach. I needed to reread material, investigate the best pedagogy to design lessons designed to bring the students into the learning, I had to consider my audience and their current skills and backgrounds so I could build on what they already knew and could do, I needed time to collect realia and stage learning centers in my room. When I did this well and thoroughly the results were nothing short of amazing. Students were observably enthusiastic, engaged, and their performance tasks reflected their increased learning. Too, I myself would walk away feeling satisfied and fulfilled as a teacher and more likely to succeed on the next learning unit design. Strong Professional Standards and Supports Designing this type of deep study underscores the need for teachers to be fully trained and supported. Not only does a teacher need a full command of subject content and pedagogy, as mentioned above, a teacher needs time to think deeply and plan masterfully. It calls to mind Darling-Hammond’s comparison between U.S. teachers and teachers in more successful countries. U.S. teachers spend more time actively teaching and little time in planning and collaboration whereas the teachers in the most successful countries spend less time actively teaching and more time in lesson, curriculum, and professional planning and learning. My experience from teaching in a private school highlights this use of time. On some days I was with students all day without a single break - including monitoring recess and lunch time. I was lucky to get 2 or three prep periods of about 30 minutes to 45 minutes each for the entire week. For most of these, I relied upon parent volunteers to teach P.E., Art, Music, or Gardening. If they didn’t show up, well, I was just out of luck. The flip side was that I was allowed the freedom to set my own pacing and design my own learning units in most subjects. Very exciting and very time consuming. But the allure of crafting deep learning like that… well, to be continued while I segue into the third key element of education reform that struck a chord with me. Schools organized for student and teacher learning So there I was with little prep-time (and incidentally, no formal training as a teacher as I acquired my teaching credential eight years into my career)... but it was a school setting structured for personalization. It was the essence of what Darling-Hammond called a communitarian school - smaller class size, looping the teachers to stay with kids, teams of teachers who collaborate and share students, and involving students’ parents. It had most of the structures for personalization: a close advisory system for the students; reduced pupil loads for teachers; intellectually challenging and relevant instruction; flexible supports in the form of individualized tutoring and high teacher accessibility; multiple instructional strategies; community service; performance-based assessments; and weekly whole-staff collaboration time which was highly student-focused. In this environment, you not only come to know your students personally, but you also come to love them, truly, and want the very best for them. As a teacher, you will dig deeper for them, almost as if they were your own children. Near to what John Dewey describes, you are like the best and wise parent, wanting something lovely and deep for your children. And so you work harder and perhaps (even if you have little provided for you in the way of ongoing teacher supports, such as training in meaningful pedagogy and adequate prep time) longer. That allure of loving WHAT you teach, HOW you are given permission to teach, and WHO you teach will offset many other less desirable considerations - like staying several hours after school every day to get it done, not having an intelligent, reciprocal accountability system, or a lack of resources. Nationally and in California, reading scores are below proficient. National and state statistics show that the majority of students are performing below proficiency in reading.The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) results for reading in 2015 showed that thirty-six percent of fourth-grade and 34 percent of eighth-grade students perform at or above the Proficient level in NAEP reading tests (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading). NAEP also reports that California 4th grade students performed lower than the national averages in all years from 1992-2015. Some researchers and educators claim that one influencing factor for these low scores is an overall decrease in students’ personal reading time. These educators and researchers claim that an increase in independent, self-chosen, voluntary reading, or pleasure reading, would result in a rise of reading proficiency. One of the men doing extensive research on reading Stephen Krashen. He claims that “numerous research studies prove that wide reading improves children’s comprehension, background knowledge, vocabulary, fluency, and writing” (Krashen, 2004). Krashen’s studies date back to the 1980’s and 1990’s, when research on the correlation between pleasure reading and reading competency seems to have hit its apex. Another major contributor to information on America’s reading habits is The National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA conducts a national survey and report on literacy about every four years.Their 2004 report, Reading at Risk, alarmed our nation with its statistics on a widespread drop in reading rates. The latest report from 2015, Reading on the Rise, shows a mild increase in adult and child reading rates, especially when digital readers are involved. Linda Gambrell, professor of education at Clemson University, another frequently quoted researcher, summed up the NEA’s overall message, “Among the many findings reported by NEA is that reading for pleasure correlates strongly with academic achievement. Individuals who engage in reading for pleasure are better readers and writers than nonreaders. Children and teenagers who read for pleasure on a daily or weekly basis score better on reading tests than infrequent readers” (Gambrell, L.B. 2008). Anecdotally, of course, most teachers and parents will affirm this assertion. We know that the kids who tote around books and read every chance they get are the ones with the highest scores on standardized reading tests and they’re often better writers, too. Research also supports this conclusion.Researchers Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988), studied the relation between the amount of student reading outside school and reading achievement for 155 fifth-grade students, and found that the reading of books was the best predictor of reading achievement. Researchers at the University of Connecticut designed a study to examine their hypothesis that increasing the amount of time spent independently reading student-chosen, appropriately leveled books in grades 3–5 would positively affect student achievement . Although they did not find a significant rise in reading comprehension over fourteen weeks, they did conclude that there was “evidence that enriched independent reading may be a promising way to increase reading fluency” (Reis, Eckert, et al, 2008). They also noted that they did not find recent research on the connection between extensive, independent reading and reading fluency and comprehension scores. Generally speaking, in conducting a search for literature and research on this topic, I found that the majority of widespread studies available on the correlation between students’ reading choices and their overall reading proficiency were done in the 1980’s, 1990’s. There seems to be a temporary increase around 2006 to 2008, perhaps due to the NEto a rising level of research about the effects of extensive reading on second language acquisition. Even Stephen Krashen’s most recent publications are in the field of second language learners. “In recent years, there has been phenomenal growth in the interest in ER (extensive reading) amongst L2 researchers and educators” (Yamashita, 2015). The lack of a current research-based connection between independent, or free, or pleasure reading in a first language has been noted by the National Reading Panel. They concluded that “based on the existing evidence, the NRP can only indicate that while encouraging students to read might be beneficial, research has not yet demonstrated this in a clear and convincing manner.” The panel called for research on the effectiveness of encouraging students to engage in independent reading and emphasized the need for rigorous experimental studies that measure a range of reading outcomes, including reading fluency and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). Some more recent statistics do support the supposition that reading for pleasure is connected to higher reading scores. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 4th graders and 8th graders who report reading for fun almost every day scored higher than 4th and 8th grade students who report never or hardly ever reading for fun. (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/report.aspx) Many of the publications surrounding reading for pleasure and overall reading proficiency focus on a student’s affect toward reading - their overall attitude toward reading on their own that drives their decisions to read or not to read. Originally, I had not intended to include this in my study, but reading the literature, I changed my mind and decided to include a brief questionnaire with open-ended questions aimed at ferreting out my students’ thoughts on their enjoyment (or lack of it) in reading. In this way I can not only find information on the “what” and “how” of the correlation between pleasure reading and reading proficiency, but a little bit of the “why”. http://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-assessment-with-tech
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