Demographics
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I teach at a suburban elementary school with approximately 600 students enrolled. Our population is 93% caucasian and only 12% of students receive free or reduced lunch. I teach second grade, there are 21 students in my class consisting of 11 girls and 10 boys, none of whom receive special education services. One student receives reading services from the reading interventionist and two students receive speech/articulation services. I have students who come from families with very high socioeconomic status (SES) and others who come from families with lower SES. I have a diverse range of needs in my classroom, ranging from five students in the High Ability Learners (HAL) program to five students in my “low” guided reading group who struggle just to read the words on the page.
Why My Students Needed This Instruction
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My Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment data and Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) scores showed that my students had a need to improve in the area of reading comprehension.
While many students read fluently on the Fountas and Pinnell reading assessments in the fall, the majority of the students were assessed at two to three levels lower than where they ended first grade because of their comprehension score. Out of 21 students 12 were assessed at a lower reading level than where they ended first grade. I had several students respond to the comprehension questions with, “I do not know,” “I cannot remember,” and “not really.” In fact, 7 of those 12 students were assessed at a lower Fountas and Pinnell reading level because of their inability to sufficiently retell parts of the text and make connections with the text. The students were assessed by the Fountas and Pinnell reading assessment again in the winter and the spring to assess growth.
Another piece of data I looked at to determine reading comprehension as a need of my students was the MAP reading scores of my students. MAP Growth is a computer adaptive test created by Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) that students take two to three times per school year to measure achievement and academic growth over time. Four students scored below the 50th percentile of all second grade students who have taken the MAP reading test. While this data did not show a drastic need in this category, it still highlights a need to increase understanding in the area of reading comprehension. This fall 11 of my 21 students scored lower in the MAP reading test than where they finished last spring, at the end of first grade.
The standard deviation for my 21 students MAP reading scores was 15.3. The “sweet spot” for a standard deviation is between 10-14.Our class standard deviation of 15.3, shows a wide range of needs in our class, therefore, guided reading differentiated grouping and instruction is necessary to increase comprehension. The MAP reading assessment will be taken in the winter and the spring as well.
These lower scores could be related to summer slide, students not reading over the summer therefore their reading skills are not as sharp when they return to a new school year. In addition, within my class population I have several students who struggle with reading in not only reading comprehension but reading fluency, few students raise their hands to answer and participate when I am asking comprehension questions in class, students are not confident when answering comprehension questions, and many students lack the motivation and desire to read on their own. Further, when they are reading many of my students are focused on reading for speed rather than understanding. My hope is that through targeted questioning I can help my students develop their reading skills, confidence, and enjoyment of reading.
Importance
Although some students demonstrated a higher need of improvement in the area of reading comprehension, all of my students had room for growth in the area. Reading comprehension is a lifelong skill my students will need and use throughout their education and professional lives. Being able to read is important, being able to understand and recall what you have read is equally as important, especially as students progress through grade levels. Reading comprehension is also a skill that translates across content areas, students will need to understand text they read in math, science, social studies, and writing. As students improve their reading comprehension during guided reading, they will also improve in other content areas as they are able to translate those comprehension skills to other contents.
Teaching guided reading, specifically reading comprehension, is an area that I would like to improve on as a teacher. I want to use targeted questioning to improve my instruction, differentiate, and prepare my students for future learning. I also can translate this learning across grades, if I am ever moved to another grade level, and for teaching across various content areas. I have access to highly qualified professionals in my school building who I plan seek out as resources, including our building reading specialist.
Literature Review
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“Asking students questions during reading has proven effective in improving students’ comprehension” (Brassell & Rasinski, 2008, p. 109). Questioning has been a major component within education for hundreds of years. Questions often activate the recall of information, build comprehension, and help to develop critical thinking skills (Tofade, Elsner, & Haines, 2013). However, not all types of questioning produce the benefits and outcomes we hope for our students. It is not productive to develop questions on the fly in the middle of a lesson; these types of questions do not typically benefit my students or allow the me to monitor students’ understanding. Targeted questioning is a much more productive form of questioning which requires preparation, timing, and higher levels of thinking. Targeted questioning is defined as: “asking a quick series of carefully chosen, open-ended questions directed at a strategic sample of the class and executed in a short time period, often a minute or less” (Lemov, 2015, p. 34). The purpose of targeted questioning is to ask less questions, but with more intention, so that students are thinking more critically about the content and the teacher can gauge understanding and mastery quickly and effectively.