My first round of action research results showed that my students knew the importance of reading and felt that they should be reading well, but they didn't see themselves as successful readers. Further, increased reading volume didn't necessarily correspond to better reading comprehension. Put simply, if they don’t like it, they don’t do it. Increasing the amount of unsuccessful reading does not bring successful reading. My students needed their reading to bring them meaning, engagement, confidence, and yes, pleasure. For the second semester of the program I set out to develop a capstone project that would use 21st century learning innovations and technology to “hook” my students on reading. If more reading didn't lead to better reading... what is a solution? Originally my idea was that I could create a “reset” button”. Create that one positive experience with reading that might be a seed. I wanted to bring my readers enjoyment and motivation, especially those who had already experienced frustration and perceived failure. I had an idea, but I was, quite honestly, lacking some enthusiasm for it. I didn’t feel I had come up with a good solution yet. Near the beginning of the third semester, quite accidentally, the content of one of the 703 classes intrigued me. Marshall McLuhan presented the history of and the possible future of man’s communication, collaboration, “village making”, and literacy. I began to see that throughout mankind’s history and evolution, reading has not always existed. Technology brought about reading as we know it now. And technology could also do away with reading as we know it. Certainly, at the very least, the digital age will change reading. Somewhere in the middle of his theories, I found my enthusiasm for an approach to the next step in my capstone project. It was also when I stumbled across the transliteracy theorists. Basically, they propose that we should try to foster students who are transliterate, who have the “ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.” (Thomas, S. with Joseph, C., Laccetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S., and Pullinger, K. Transliteracy: Crossing divides, First Monday, Volume 12 Number 12 – 3 December 2007) For several weeks I viewed my ELA instruction through the lens of transliteracy. My lessons exposed the students to "reading" through text, audio, video, and multimedia. One important tool for me was the district-adopted ELA curriculum, StudySync. It has a robust digital component that incorporates visual and audio text, videos, peer modeling, peer collaboration and review, and 21st century learning tools. The results show that my students have one foot planted in each world - traditional reading and transliterate reading. A majority of my middle school students report that a real book is still their favorite way to read. At the beginning of my eight week exposure to a digital platform for reading and reading instruction, 52% of my students reported hating or disliking the multi-media, online reading program and only 14% liked or loved it. After months of exposure, the results were almost completely reversed: 10% of the students hated/dislike it and 57% like/loved it. Sixty-seven percent of the students reported that they felt they gained the best understanding of their reading when they read the text with audio and/or audio and visual highlighted tracking. Over half the students, 53%, report that the background information and skill videos are helpful or extremely helpful. One student said, "Three things that I like about the digital StudySync program are that I can listen and read to the text in the book other than just reading it wondering how to pronounce it, also it is very accessible because you have the book but if you like reading online you can sign into StudySync. The third thing I like about StudySync is that there are helpful videos that help understand the lesson." In the end, overall, 71% of the middle school prefer a digital platform for Language Arts.
2 Comments
james landis
11/27/2017 10:42:19 pm
Nancy,
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Nai Saelee
11/28/2017 07:16:46 pm
Nancy,
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