Three pieces of Professional Reading to support my Hypothesis.

Provide opportunities for an extended discussion of text meaning and interpretation

Providing students with the opportunity to participate in effective discussions regarding the significance or meaning of a text in all content areas is a way to improve reading comprehension. Teachers may guide a whole classroom discussion or monitor students as they discuss in small groups. Effective discussions may include constructing comprehension and investigating outcomes both through cognition, relating what one knows, and listening to what others have to say.

Reference: 

Kamil, M. L., Borman, G. D., Dole, J., Kral, C. C., Salinger, T., & Torgesen, J. (2008). Improving adolescent literacy: Effective classroom and intervention practices (NCEE 2008-4027). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.

Teaching students with comprehension difficulties

Issues with reading comprehension occur when students struggle to understand the meaning behind words, phrases and other texts.

Signs that may indicate a reading comprehension difficulty include:

• the trouble with letter and word recognition
• difficulty understanding words and ideas
• slow reading speed and fluency
• limited vocabulary or underdeveloped oral language skills
• difficulty answering questions about or discussing a text.

When supporting students with comprehension difficulties, it is vital to understand the reason(s) behind their difficulties.

The approaches include:

• building students' vocabulary
• building students' background knowledge
• modelled reading
• shared reading
• guided reading
• reciprocal teaching
  
• close reading.

Key elements of guided reading

Guided reading sessions are made up of three parts:

• before reading discussion
• independent reading
  
• after reading discussion

The main goal of guided reading is to help students use reading strategies whilst reading for meaning independently.

Why use guided reading

Guided reading is informed by Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development and Bruner’s (1986) notion of scaffolding, informed by Vygotsky’s research. The practice of guided reading is based on the belief that the optimal learning for a reader occurs when they are assisted by an educator, or expert ‘other’, to read and understand a text with clear but limited guidance. Guided reading allows students to practise and consolidate effective reading strategies.

Retrieved from 

https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/learningneeds/Pages/comprehension-difficulties.aspx

Reciprocal Teaching is a contemporary application of Vygotsky's theories; it is used to improve students' ability to learn from text. In this method, teachers and students collaborate in learning and practising four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting.

Retrieved from

https://strategiesforspecialinterventions.weebly.com/reciprocal-teaching.html

How am I going to use my baseline data?

 Timepoint one data (shared and analysed in this blog post) was captured through:

• Informal teacher observation

• Student voice through Google forms

• Assessment (PAT & e-asTTle)

• Recording my lesson

The PAT and e-asTTle assessments were carried out in Week  5. I am really looking forward to seeing an accelerated shift later in Term 3 and Term 4. I believe Term 1 data collection will help me to make clear comparisons at the end of the year.

My findings about the Nature and Extent of the Student Challenge!

The challenge for my students this year is to make an accelerated shift in Reading by being more culturally visible and making use of prior knowledge that will boost confidence and capability in Reading. 

One of the significant challenges my priority group is facing is the inability to connect ideas in a text, lack of concentration during reading, needing more prior knowledge and most importantly understanding the meaning between the lines.

How to overcome these challenges?

I am trying to incorporate different ideas and thinking strategies such as Reciprocal Teaching ( Tuakana Teina), more scaffolding and providing opportunities for an extended discussion of the text. 

Some of the strategies that I have already started working on it are : 

• More structured lessons - I have made some changes in my Reading Plan such as using multimodal planning. 

• Activating prior knowledge

• Explicit teaching like using small steps to allow students to understand and practise.

• Choosing texts and activities that are appropriate and matched to their level of ability.

• Collaborative learning - I am trying to incorporate more peer learning.

• I am working on my feedback as well, trying to be more explicit.

I actually created a Workbook to keep a record of the texts and the reflections.