2nd Round Action Research: Accelerating the Learning Part 2

At the beginning of my 2nd round of Reading Recovery I wrote a post about participating in a LitCon session, The Quest for Accelerated Gains in Writing, presented by Mary Fried, reflecting on my own practices during the writing part of my Reading Recovery lessons, and my desire to do some action research centered around writing and examining the impact on my students.

2nd Round Action Research: Accelerating the Learning

My goal was to accelerate my students faster in order to make a substantial impact on their reading and writing learning. Another great resource that guided me while working on this goal was the LitCon session titled, From Day One: Fostering Independence to Promote Acceleration presented by Amy Smith, Beth Magsig, and Amy Emmons.

Hurdles along the way

During this time, I was out of work for 5 1/2 weeks for a long overdue surgery. Fortunately, my students had a retired Reading Recovery teacher as their substitute. Unfortunately, my substitute occasionally became a classroom substitute teacher. Upon my return to work, I was also required to be a substitute teacher in the classroom frequently. I saw my students consistently for the first 6 weeks of their program. The artifacts that I will be sharing will be from this time period only.

Action Steps

The following were the actions steps I implemented along with a few observations.

☑ During the 1st 6 weeks spend more lesson time on writing

As a result of spending more time on writing early on, I noticed that my students would automatically extend their sentence or create a new sentence. I found that I would often have to stop them from writing and record what they wanted to say so that the student could continue their story the next day.

☑ During roaming around the known include at least 2 episodes of writing

☑ Include more entries on the practice page

Overall I had more entries on the practice page than previously. This is still an area that I would like to continue to work on.

☑ Encourage the crafting of complex stories

☑ Be purposeful with supporting students with generating a variety of stories

I noticed that none of my students tried to say simple safe stories like, “I like to…” and their complex sentences did not morph into simple sentences when they went to write it down.

☑Teach for independence.

By the end of the first week of lessons, my students were all taking unknown words to the practice page on their own. I also put my students in charge of using the cover-up tape for their mistakes. To save time, I would have pre-torn tape stuck to the tape dispenser for students to take as needed. Since the students fixed their own mistakes, I think that I was better able to observe monitoring and self-correcting during writing. Students knew that they were expected to keep writing and not write a letter/word and wait for me to continue.

☑ Make connections to the books the child is reading

I did make connections to books more often, but this is also another area I would like to continue to work on.

Data

Although I did these actions steps with all four of my Reading Recovery students, I will be sharing the results of the two students with the lowest stanines.

Student A (ENL student)

Observation Survey Scores:

Letter Identification	Concepts About Print	Word Reading	Writing Vocabulary	Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words	Text Level Reading
33	6	0	8	4	0

I also did the Oral Language Acquisition Inventory with her in which she had a score of 2/7. At the beginning of roaming, she communicated primarily in 1-2 word phrases and with gestures.

Sample 1

*This unassisted writing piece was done on the student’s 2nd day of roaming.*

Message: “Whale”

During the first two sessions of roaming the student read the book Mom several times. After the second read, on day two of roaming, I asked the student what her mom likes to do. The student turned to the swimming page and said, ” She is swimming”. I invited her to go ahead and write that story down. She said “sh-e” slowly and then said, ” I don’t know.” I remained silent and jotted down some notes. She searched the room and found a picture of a whale on an ABC chart. She copied “whale” on her paper. When she was finished I asked her to read her story and she said, “swimming”.

Strengths:

Orally generated a grammatically correct 3 word sentence
Used the -ing grammar structure that she had learned from her book
Said a word slowly
Nice letter formation
Held on to her idea
Picture matched her story
Used resources
Worked out her problem on her own

Work on:

Saying words slowly and recording at least one dominant sound
Holding on to more than one word during construction

Sample 2

*This 2nd unassisted writing sample was done after the 1st week of lessons (15 sessions).*

Message: “Tomorrow I eat 6 apple.”

I showed the student stickers with pictures of food. She quickly pointed to an apple. I asked her to tell me about the apple. She said, “Tomorrow, I eat six apple.” and then began to write after I handed her a piece of paper. She said, “tomorrow-t-t-t-t” and wrote a “t”. She said “tomorrow” slowly a few times and then looked to me. I prompted her to keep writing. I assume that she was aware that “tomorrow” should have more letters but she wasn’t sure what else she was hearing. She reread her story and wrote “I”, said “eat -e-e-e” wrote “e”, Stretched “eat” two times. When she stretched “eat” she was articulating the “t” sound very softly, so I think it was hard for her to hear. She reread, wrote “6”, said, “apple” and then another word which also began with “a” and then wrote “a”. She realized that she wouldn’t have enough room to write “apple”, so she covered it with white tape and then wrote “apple” on the next line. She used a nearby ABC chart to copy the rest of the word apple. She reread her story one last time.

Strengths:

Generated a meaningful 6 word sentence
Used a time order word (tomorrow)
Attempted to leave spaces
Monitored her writing
Held on to her message
Recorded initial sounds

Work on:

Saying words slowly and recording beyond initial sound
Extending sentences with “and” or “because” which were starting to emerge at this point in her speaking

Sample 3

*This unassisted writing piece was done at the end of the 5th week (25 sessions).*

Message: “Here is Bella and Rosie. Is happy and sad because no like the picture!”

We had read several Bella and Rosie books and the student had fallen in love with the characters. She chose a sticker and I asked her to tell me a story about it. She laughed and said, “no like”. When I asked her to tell me more, she said, “Bella and Rosie no like the picture”. When I handed her a piece of paper she initiated the writing. She said words slowly and recorded the sounds she heard. She moved to each word on her own. She spent a lot of time saying words slowly multiple times to hear and record sounds and also to check the word that she had finished writing. When she checked words she pushed up each letter as if she was doing sound boxes. She reread after every 2-3 words. We ran out of time for the rest of her idea so I quickly recorded what she wanted her story to say.

Strengths:

Using language structures from the books she was reading
Generated a complex sentence that included the word “because”
Crafted the more complex sentence “on the run”
Recorded more sounds in words
Said words slowly, multiple times
Appropriately used exclamation mark

Work on:

Make sure her known words are known in detail (“here” and “and” were recorded as part of her writing vocabulary)

Clear up the sudden x/e confusion

Spacing

Student B

Letter Identification	Concepts About Print	Word Reading	Writing Vocabulary	Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words	Text Level Reading
50	17	10	20	33	3

Despite a higher amount of item knowledge this student had remained at a low text reading level for the first half of the school year and his writing in the classroom consisted mostly of pictures with some labels.