Data
Disclaimer: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, not all data was able to be retrieved. The final week of comprehension tests, final reading survey and the pre/post test data results are not included.
Comprehension
Test
Students completed a weekly 10 point comprehension test based off a cold read passage. This data point was selected to see if the skills they were learning during guided rotations were being applied during testing. The first two weeks these were taken paper pencil and the remainder were online. I chose to use this data set because it showed what skills were being applied during independent tasks. The data below shows that over time, the students overall average score of their comprehension raised because of the text tagging and questioning strategies. I think that if the comprehension tests wouldn't have been online more students would have decoded the text while reading which would have impacted their scores even more.
Text Tagging
Log
Students were observed daily during guided reading to identify which text tagging strategies were the most commonly used. They were given points each week based on the amount of sticky notes they accurately used. The students used text codes to understand what they wrote on the sticky note. Since there was a different skill each week, students could score either a zero, one or two for the entire week. They each had the entire week to use all of their sticky notes correctly and had chances to redo them. With that being said. All students accurately obtained full points each week. I could tell that the strategies were helpful based on their increase in comprehension,which was the over arching goal of the sticky notes. I chose to track their sticky note progress because I wanted to see if it would align with their progress. The students that struggled during text tagging, were the students that scored lower on their comprehension test, meaning that there was a significant impact on the students progress. Overall, the use of sticky notes kept the students engaged while reading and gave a purpose during the tests.
Accelerated Reader
Test
Students used the leveled reader to complete an Accelerated Reader (AR) test weekly. These were 5 points and were showing their comprehension from that weeks story. Each leveled reader was marked with their text tags that they wrote and created. They were encouraged to use them on their tests. I chose to use this data set because it showed the impact on text tagging while reading. Many of the students immediately scored high because they remember writing a sticky note for a question that was asked on the AR test or they remembered that I had asked a similar question while they were reading. Overall, the impact of text tagging was significantly impacting their achievement on AR tests.
Reading Survey
All 23 of my students participated in an eight question survey on Thursday, January 23rd. It was important to see how they felt about reading before implementing strategies. My instruction was driven based off their attitudes and opinions. I noticed some students didn't enjoy text tagging before using it, this was easy to identify when we started using it and I think their overall attitude towards it changed over time. Many of the students also weren't confident in their comprehension ability which impacted my instruction and questioning.
Reading Survey Responses
Triangulation of Data
To start my action research, I used the data collected from the F & P benchmark to select my teaching points for the first week of instruction. After this, I explicitly taught the different text coding symbols and color system which followed with observations of which strategies were used the most or the least. I noticed a variety of usage between the different groups and levels. The survey at the beginning of the study allowed me to understand which students already didn't like to use text tagging, and which students needed extra support during reading. The weekly comprehension quiz and AR test helped me understand what was working and what wasn't working.
T-Test Write Up
A paired-samples t-test was conducted to determine the effect of the use of guided questioning and text tagging will increase reading comprehension. There was a significant/not a significant difference in the scores prior to implementing summarizing strategies (M=?, SD=?) and after implementing (M=?, SD=?) the summarizing strategies; t(22)= ?, p = ?. The observed standardized effect size is large (1.01). That indicates that the magnitude of the difference between the average and μ0 is large. These results suggest that the use of guided questioning and text tagging had a positive/no/negative effect on students reading comprehension. Specifically, the results suggest that the use of summarizing strategies to identify the main idea increased reading achievement.
Growth
I was able to understand how my students grew by seeing their improvements in scores over the course of time within their comprehension scores. I also noticed that it was impacting their ability to complete their morning work more successfully because they were similar to the comprehension tests. I was able to tell that they improved from the beginning of the study to the end because of their progression of their average scores for their comprehension tests. I think that if students weren't successful in creating their text tags, they wouldn't have improved their overall comprehension. If I did have a student that struggled with this, I kept them at my back table for extra reteaching strategies. This was helpful on days that we completed our comprehension and AR tests because they didn't have a time limit for testing and could use all of the taught strategies. We used a lot of highlighting methods that taught them how to highlight the main ideas and cross out the things that weren't important. All of these strategies combined helped in the success of their forever growing level of comprehension.