As my data collection comes to an end, I am starting to look for themes in my observations and quantitative data. Here are a few notes I have collected on my possible findings...
Qualitative data
DISTRACTED!!! About 75% of my observation notes contain some form of the word distracted. I knew that most of my students struggled with attention and focus, but wow! I can't really do much to change the environment of the classroom. Right now students have their back to the door and "walking area" of the room where people from other groups come and go. I do seem to think that students were more engaged and less distracted in the observation that included the self-checks for fluency. I have started to use this strategy more in all of my groups. The distraction has to have a negative impact on their performance in the classroom. I can only imagine how distracted they are in a large group setting.
Here are some excerpts from my observations:
"Gabby is distracted after the first reading"
"Tyler is inattentive during comprehension check"
"Tyler was not paying attention during word review... "
"Gabby isn't paying attention. She is looking at her paper and smiling..."
"Robert looks around the corner to see who is coming in the door"
"Tristyn puts his head down"
"Brooke hears another teacher say tornado drill. She interrupts lesson to ask about drill"
"Mike is playing with shoestring"
"Ryan chats about Crazy Hair day in the middle of the lesson"
"Ryan is distracted after he sees the word 'up'. He starts talking about the movie Up"
Quantitative Data
Just by glancing at the number of words read per minute and the number of comprehension questions answered correctly, I am not seeing a correlation between fluency and comprehension. For several students the lowest comprehension scores were received on the same assessment date as their highest fluency score. Additionally, one of the strongest readers (reads approx. 125 wpm) has consistently low comprehension scores.
Also, students with fluency scores below 20 words per minute (approximately) are unable to identify the main idea of the passage or answer any question correctly. Students finish the passages independently, which may be a limitation of my study. I simply did not have time to read the entire passage with each student in our 30-45 minute group session. Once I have completed the statistical analysis, I am going to look at the extreme differences in data points and consistently low scores. I wonder if at some point the struggle to decode words overloads the processing skills and students can't compensate.
Megan,
ReplyDeleteI think you are making an accurate assumption. Students who are constantly stopping to decode words won't retain the information they read. Sometimes, I have seen kids sound out words that they know, just because they are so used to relying on nothing but phonics. They don't use context, background info., structure clues. Just bringing that to their attention can sometimes help. I also know what you mean about distractions, I think it is just their age.
I agree with you and Jennifer, in that constantly stopping to decode words can definitely affect a student's abilty to comprehend. I always find it interesting when students can read so fluently, but do not understand anything about what they are reading.
ReplyDeleteI haven't really thought about limitations of my study yet, but I like how you have already been thinking about this. There may be some connection between their fluency rate and reading the passages independently, especially if the students are really distracted when they are reading independently.