Strategy 5

At Fairmont Senior High School, 54.75% of students are at Mastery or above in reading, 57.05% are in math, 40.09% are in science, and 48.70% are in social studies. While it appears that science is the area of serious need, there is a significant discrepancy in the number of students tested in comparison to the other tests. In the data, it states that 197 students were tested in science, while in the other tests the only variant in student testing is that 545 students took the math test, instead of 546 students taking the other two tests. With that being said, social studies is an area of great need in the school.

One recommended instructional intervention for Social Studies is to activate prior knowledge. One method of this is to make predictions. This strategy asks students use text features such as headlines and bold faced terms to make predictions about what the content will be in the textbook.

A video commentary of this from Sue Wimsatt can be found at: http://www.jackson.k12.ky.us/readingstrategies/more/video/wimsatt3fix.htm

My question is, how does the emphasis on prior knowledge and the implementation of the strategy to "make predictions" increase the test scores for Social Studies?

To assess this strategy, you could utilize the long passage essay portions of WestTest preparation materials for Social Studies. First, you would give the students the test as a pre-test. After they learn how to utilize the strategy, a second version of the test could be given (a different test, but the same format). In that sense, the teacher implementing the strategy could see whether the "make predictions" strategy was efficient in raising test scores in their classroom.

Action Research Activity

1. What is the title of the project?

Making Meaning through Written Response

2. What is the problem?

The researchers used two driving questions for this project- “How do reading journals guide instruction to improve student learning?” and “How do readers with varying abilities respond to literature?” The researchers, Rosemary Barilla and Karen Dreyfuss, wanted to learn more about “what students think about while they read”. Barilla and Dreyfuss began this research with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of reading comprehension.

3. Describe the instructional intervention.

Barilla and Dreyfuss created a three week study where reading journals were used as an assessment tool in a 5^th and 7^th grade classroom during novel studies. The whole class read one particular novel, and would respond several times a week. Prompts alternated between student selected responses and those chosen by the teacher. Teachers took into consideration journals from six students in each class- two lower level readers, two average readers, and two high level readers. Student responses were analyzed according to categories that teachers saw emerge, and documented their own observations. Students additionally completed questionnaires about their understandings and preferences about the reading journal.

4. What kind of strategy is the instructional intervention?

Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers                         

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work?

• Learning increases when teachers focus their questions on content that is most important, not what they think will be most interesting to students (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Schulze, 1994; Risner, Nicholson, & Webb, 1994).
• Higher-level questions that ask students to analyze information result in more learning than simply asking students to recall information. (Redfield & Rousseau, 1981). However, teachers are more apt to ask lower-order questions (Fillippone, 1998; Mueller, 1973).
• Advance organizers, including graphic ones, help students learn new concepts and vocabulary (Stone, 1983). Presenting information graphically as well as symbolically in an advance organizer reinforces vocabulary learning and supports reading skills. (Brookbank Grover, Kullberg, & Strawser, 1999; Moore & Readence 1984).

6. How will data be collected to determine if the strategy will work?

They had students do reading journals and fill out questionnaires, and the teachers observed and reflected upon the class time.

7. How was the data analyzed?

The data was analyzed in three ways. They were analyzed based on reading journals, teacher reflections, and student questionnaires. Reading journals: The categories mentioned in step three are: summary, interpretation, personal connection, literary elements, opinions and wonderings/predictions. They looked at what each level of reader’s reflections fell into. Barilla and Dreyfuss also took their own reflections in journals and had students fill out questionnaires about the journals.

8. What were the results?

They found that low level reader entries tended to be simple in structure, and usually fell into the categories of summary or opinion. Average level students had entries that were longer, but still very simple, while the entries of high level reader entries analyzed the literature and included each of the categories almost daily. The high level readers also provided text support for their ideas. During the teacher reflections, they noticed two things. They noticed that the higher level readers exhibited higher levels of thinking and caused the teachers to wonder what they could do to have all of their students reach that level. They also noticed that student entries were not consistent with their capacity. The teachers wondered about student motivation and if they would be able to increase the quality of entries. The questionnaires showed that students had a general understanding of the journals’ purpose, while higher level readers tended to have a deeper understanding of the teachers’ intention. Low and average level readers had a mixed preference for the type of prompts, and high level readers had confidence in their own prompts. The last thing that they found was that reading journals facilitated discussion among the students.

WebQuest

Rather than to post where each individual aspect of my WebQuest is, I'm going to go ahead and post my (NEARLY COMPLETED!!) WebQuest link here.

Update about webquest

It occurs to me that I probably should have been posting what I've been working on HERE instead of just to my Google Site. The first document is my pre-assessment. I had originally created it for my old topic, but adapted it fit the new one. It is a Googleform asking basic questions about the project we are going to undertake.



For the formative assessment, I created a KWL chart for the students to fill out.

New Anchor Video

For the driving question "What makes a website easy to read?"

Successful Web Design - Tips & Tricks - For more amazing video clips, click here

Driving question

My driving question is, "How are captions important to the story telling ability of photos?"

I had a hard time finding an anchor video for the subject my teacher wants me to talk about. This video is the closest I could find, though it is very long and dry.

Power Standard

Since my teaching specializations are journalism and library, I had a difficult time trying to track down a power standard that would actually fit my subject areas. The Power Standards site only had a blank spot where journalism standards would go, and none for library, so I decided to look at English standards for the sake of this blog post.

I decided to focus on Power Standard RLA.O.11.2.10, which states that students should: "use proofreading and editing strategies to correct errors in and improve organization, content, usage and mechanics. In the editing process integrate print and electronic tools". The examples include spell check, grammar check, thesaurus, dictionary, style sheet or guide, or readability score.

This doesn't directly go with the lesson I had in mind (caption writing!), it is still important for students in journalism classes to be well aware of proofreading and editing processes. The only lesson plan that was in the 11th grade range and went along with proofreading that I could find on the sites we were given in class was a project entitled "And I Quote: A Punctuation Proofreading Minilesson". Since it's just a minilesson, it could easily be integrated with other lesson plans as just a way to reinforce proper grammar (and be a segue to introduce AP style).

Since I have so few students (only library assistants at the moment, though the plan is to do this project with her yearbook students), there isn't really a struggling student.