REFLECTION
Successes and Challenges
Overall, the action plan created gave me tools and resources to fix a need in my classroom. Throughout the year I saw the struggle of reading comprehension within my classroom. This struggle was impacting their overall ability to read, comprehend, and decode text. Once the need was addressed I created a plan and used different forms of collaboration between colleagues, my associate, and co-workers. These individuals assisted in creating ideas and modifying instruction to overcome obstacles along the way.
There were many celebrations and successes throughout the action plan. One success we reached as a class was a better understanding of the strategies. We may not of mastered all of the strategies, but the students were introduced and are on their way to mastering the skill. I saw successes within myself, too. I was purposeful in my planning for guided reading groups. I dove deeper into my planning to help my students dive deep into the book and strategies. I learned different instructional methods to teach reading comprehension strategies. The greatest success was my students' increase in love of reading. I saw students become more confident and willing to try and comprehend more difficult text. Also, I saw independence increase in all of them. They were excited to come back to small guided reading groups and chose to read their books when they had the chance.
There were many successes that occurred during the time of my action plan, but there were many challenges, too. One of the challenges was the time restraint during our action plan. To be able to teach each strategy I had to teach one strategy per week. My higher guided reading groups had text that were longer than the other groups. Some, not all, exit tickets required the whole story to be read to complete the exit ticket. The higher leveled guided reading groups took two to three days to complete a story which made the exit ticket difficult to finish. There were modifications with the higher group to complete the exit tickets on a different schedule than other students. During the few weeks of research we had snow days, professional development days, and sick days. This created obstacles in my data and making sure I saw every group and student. I also found students being absent a great challenge in my data. I had a few kids that I did not see for a whole week in guided reading groups due to the student being absent.
Impact on Student Learning
The research and action plan was important to my students learning because the majority of the population struggled with comprehending text. They struggled with independently reading a text and answering questions. Students were not confident in their ability to read and understand the author's message. Most students were not practicing real reading and instead guessing on text and questions.
Throughout my action plan my students increased their knowledge and skills in reading comprehension strategies. The strategies increased their overall understanding of the text read. Through explicit instruction I was able to gradually release my instruction of the skill and lead to more self-regulation of comprehending text. The structure of our guided reading groups increased due to my success of more purposeful planning. Everyday looked the same with sight word flash cards, introducing the skill, reading, modeling the strategy, apply the strategy together, and finishing with an exit ticket. The students knew what to expect coming to my guided reading groups and were engaged.
In the future, I am able to positively impact my students learning by choosing appropriate text to connect to the strategy taught. I learned to observe and understand my students strength and weaknesses within their ability to comprehend text. I will impact student's learning in future guided reading groups by continuing to take observational notes and reflect on how they learned.
My students were no longer afraid to take risks and answer questions about text. They wanted to dive deeper into the meaning of the book and challenge themselves in their ability to read. Their confidence went beyond guided reading groups and I saw a change in confidence in all areas of our educational journey.
Future Teaching
The strategies found have helped me set up a plan for future guided reading groups. I can use the strategies and the methods I took to teach the strategies to reflect on future groups and students. I gained knowledge on how to modify and differentiate strategies based on my student's data and their overall achievement in reading comprehension. I will continue to use purposeful planning in preparing my guided reading groups. I felt more confident as a teacher and more prepared when I planned for the week. I feel more confident in my ability to teach guided reading strategies and more confident in why I am choosing to teach the strategies. I will continue to use quantitative and qualitative forms of data to reflect and modify instruction. Overall, the confidence in my students reading ability increased and I want to continue that love of reading in future classes.
Throughout my action/research plan I have wondered if there were parts of the process I could have done differently. I am trying to figure out how to best organize my instruction for guided reading group. I want to figure out the best way to structure my guided reading groups without feeling rushed or feeling we did not accomplish our goal. I also wondered if my student's absences would changed the results of my data. I had multiple students absent for the times I would meet with them in guided reading groups. I wonder if they would been present if their results would had a negative or positive impact on my data?