Research Project

Introduction & Background

Dearborn Heights School District #7 is one of three school districts located in Dearborn Heights, Michigan and one of the forty-three school districts located in Wayne County, Michigan. District #7 houses approximately 3,000 students in kindergarten through the twelfth grade and is comprised of one high school (grades 9-12) one middle school (grades 6-8), and four elementary schools (grades K-5). All of the schools within District #7 have a highly diverse population, with only half of our students being within the district boundaries, making the other half school of choice students. Taking everything into consideration is the shared desire to create an educational environment that students are able to thrive in and grow.

Dearborn Heights School District #7 is a failing school district within Wayne County. One of the reasons we are considered a failing school district is due to our incredibly diverse population, with many different ethniticities and different demographics bringing us together. About fifty percent of our schools population is made up of students who are economically disadvantaged and twenty percent of our students are African American and/or Hispanic.

Over the past few years of teaching, I have begun to see a problem with the reading fluency and comprehension levels of the students in my classroom. Dearborn Heights District #7 uses the exact same reading comprehension and fluency strategies from grade two through grade five. This is a huge problem for me in my classroom, especially when growths in reading comprehension and fluency are not evident among my students.

When my students are asked to complete a reading assignment, the vast majority of my students take the entire time allowed to complete their work. Many students wind up taking their work home to complete and when they do, the assignments are rarely brought back to school. I have also noticed that, when asked to read out loud, the vast majority of my students really struggle with reading at their current grade level. It is very discouraging, for a teacher, when we see this, especially in the area of reading. It feels as if we [teachers] are not doing the job that we set out to do.

Reading fluency can be defined as the ability to read text accurately, quickly, and with good expression so that time can be allocated to understanding what is read (Meyer & Felton, 1999) Reading fluency is fundamental to students’ overall reading success. Students who do not read fluently, spend too much energy decoding the words, often inaccurately, which results in poor comprehension. The inability to read fluently can also negatively affect an individual’s motivation, desire, and interest to read. It has been proven, time and time again, that these factors are linked together and, unfortunately, fluency is often neglected in the classroom.

After speaking to our school’s language consultant, it appears that students seem to “slip through the cracks” because they do not know how to apply the appropriate strategies to that they need to develop and strengthen their reading skills and abilities, therefore their reading and comprehension levels suffer early on, leading to many students opting out of college because they are embarrassed that they are not able read well.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that 44% of the nation’s fourth graders were low in fluency and the percentage of students who have low fluency levels, are increasing through high school (National Reading Panel, 2000). Students struggle with understanding the strategies they need to acquire prior to going onto middle school. Reading fluency is a neglects aspect of regular reading instruction (Zutell & Rusinski, 1991, Vol.3). With this said, the issue in education that I am planning to address is, what effect does a change in reading strategies have on students reading fluency, comprehension and/ or interest in reading?

I am hoping to come up with new strategies to help my students excel in the areas of reading fluency & comprehension, thus increasing their desire to read. Giving my students the confidence they need to excel through middle school, high school and later on in life.

Literature Review

In my literature, I revised my one sentence paragraphs, added a more detailed conclusion that better connected with my research question and fixed my grammatical conventions.

The first question that everyone asks is what is reading Fluency? The National Assessment of educational Progress (NAEP) fluency is defined as the ease or “naturalness” of reading where students have the strong and natural abilities to group and/or phrase words as revealed through intonation, stress, and pauses (White, 1995). These students can adhere to the author’s syntax, or rules of language, and they are extremely expressive when they read orally. Fluency is more than reading fast, its reading at an appropriate rate, with good expression, and praising that reflects an evident understanding of the text being read (National Institute of Child Health and Development, 2000).

Problems in reading fluency are becoming more and more evident every day. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about one third of the United States’ eighth grade students read at or above a fluent or proficient level. With reading fluency problems, come reading problems. Children have attention spans that are only so big and if he or she is reading the words on a page at a slow pace, there is no way that they will remember what he or she has read, much less, make connections using the information they read about. However, reading fluency ranges from child to child. A third grade student may read a word and instantly recognize it again with greater speed than a seventh grade student who needs twenty or more exposures to even so much as recognize the word and the development of reading fluency. Through the teaching of spelling, children receive examples of how letters represent the various sounds of speech which helps them to develop a quicker sense of word recognition (Moats, 2001).

Fluency is a very difficult concept to comprehend and there is not one set definition for reading fluency, however; generally fluency is that quality that makes reading and comprehension seem almost effortless. With fluency come a number of key components. Fluent readers must have a vocabulary of high-frequency words, graphphonic skills, and strategies for accurately and quickly decoding new words. Fluent readers can also accurately and automatically decode words without use of their cognitive resources (Worthy & Broaddus, 2002)

Fluency is key to a child’s success because after elementary school, students are expected to read, and comprehend what was read, independently. The problem with this is that the traditional reading fluency strategies taught in the elementary grades are not doing the trick. Dedicated fluency instruction is rare in classrooms today. The only time students ever read out loud is when there are unrehearsed, whole group lessons where students orally read textbooks and/or novels. Students who develop reading fluency, generally develop it on their own (Worthy & Broaddus, 2001/02).

One of the most important things that a school has to do is to clearly distinguish two main goals for student literacy. These goals are learning to decode and learning to comprehend (or as literacy experts would put it, distinguishing the difference in Learning to Read and Reading to Learn).

Middle schools are beginning to provide specialized reading programs for students who do read below grade level; however, these programs provide a main focus on the mechanics of reading and literacy and do not pay much, if any, attention to reading fluency and comprehension strategies. Another problem with these programs is the lack of motivation, involvement, interest, and engagement of the students because their lack of reading and fluency strategies have brought on extreme frustration in their literacy and language arts classes (Wise, 2005).

Reading fluency is thought to be multidimensional. The first dimension focuses on the importance of accuracy of word decoding, the second dimension focuses on quick and automatic recognition of words within text, and the third dimension focuses on meaningful and expressive interpretation of text (Risinski, 2006). There are many other fluency dimensions including word phrasing, reading smoothness, and reading pace. Each dimension is directly related to reading comprehension (Risinski, 2003).

The ability to measure students reading fluency levels is a key component to successful fluency teaching. The assessments themselves must resemble ways in which fluency is defined and they must provide consistent measures of fluency and won’t vary due to imperfections within the assessment. Reading fluency assessments should be quick and easy. If they are not, teachers may not find time to use them or may rush through them producing inconsistent scores. Reading fluency assessments consist of three distinct components. The first of the three components is decoding accuracy, the second is the ability of readers to decode words in text with minimal use of cognitive resources, and the third component is prosody or the ability of readers to appropriately use phrasing and expression (Risinski, 2006).

Middle school students who are not fluent in reading will often read with appropriate instruction. Middle school students have experienced this failure (or feeling of failure and frustration) at an early age so they must now be convinced that a new investment and effort of energy will be worthwhile. It is recommended that students who do not have strong reading fluency skills receive a minimum of two hours of reading instruction a day, but some schools struggle in servicing this prescription There are many reading fluency strategies that could be incorporated into a general, middle school, curriculum and be taught in an hour’s time one to two days a week. By implementing these new strategies, students reading fluency levels began to sky rocket.

Before reading, students should be taught to preview, predict, and set a purpose for what they are going to read. Students should be given class time to skim thorough the text or book they are going to read to make their own predictions. Students should also receive clarification on any vocabulary words that they do not understand. During reading, a good strategy to enforce is partner reading. With partner reading, the main goal is to practice fluency and teach students to independently apply reading strategies that allow them to understand and comprehend what they are reading. Other strategies that may be implemented during reading include choral reading (reading short passages out loud in unison), echo reading (reading out loud after you, the teacher models correct phrasing), readers theater (allowing small groups of students to perform a particular text), and annotated text (students highlight, underline, or jot notes down on sticky notes, the important or “key” parts of the text they are reading) After reading, students should be given time to have a partner discussion that would give students an opportunity to clarify the meaning of the text they recently read. (Garriott & Jones, 2005).

In the recent years, new reading strategies have been developed to assist students in reading fluency growth. One strategy that has shown growth among poor readers is the Repeated Reading Strategy. With this strategy, students are asked to read a given a short passage of a text that contains word that are recognizable to the students. They are asked to read this passage several times until a fluency rate can be determined. Once a fluency rate is determined, the students then begin a new passage. Each new passage read by student’s increases in reading level. This is done until the students reach their reading frustration level. Once they reach this point, they are given a number of short passages that they must master before proceeding to the next level (Mastropieri, Leinare, & Scruggs, 1999, vol. 34).

Computer-assisted instruction can also be used to practice, promote, and increase reading fluency. There are many programs that can assist students at all grade levels. The program mentioned in the article Strategies to Increase Reading Fluency is the Hint and Hunt program. This program helps students to recognize words at their grade level. This program also acts as a game that calculates and monitors students reading speed and monitors their reading accuracy (Mastropieri, Leinare, & Scruggs, 1999, vol. 34).

Guided oral reading and independent silent reading are the two traditional strategies that teachers have been implementing in their classroom for the past five years. These strategies show an increase in students reading fluency; however the increase is not shown at as much of a rapid rate (National Institute of Child and Human Development, 2000).

In summary, we find that all teachers should be educated in the area of reading fluency and reading fluency strategies that meet the needs of students in all grade levels. Most are only taught reading fluency strategies for early to mid elementary grades. Teaching students the right reading fluency strategies, their fluency levels and rates in increase dramatically and students will wonder and ask why they were allowed to get so far in school without being taught to read (Moats, 2001).

Through my research, I have learned that reading fluency is crucial because it provides a connection between word recognition and reading comprehension. A student cannot comprehend something they don’t recognize and/or understand which also explains low test scores among students. Since fluent readers don’t have to concentrate on decoding the actual words, they can focus their attention on what the text actually means, thus understanding questions on tests that are given to them. Students are even able to make mental connections throughout text they are reading and even make connections to their personal lives, backgrounds, and experiences. Through the implementation of new reading strategies in my classroom, I am hoping to accomplish all of the above and discover an answer to my research question, what effect does a change in reading strategies have on students reading fluency, comprehension and/ or interest in reading?

In my data analysis section, I added how I will determine if there is an effect.

Research Plan

Research Question

What effect does a change in reading strategies have on students reading fluency, comprehension and/ or interest in reading?

Sample

The sample in which I am planning to collect data on and conduct my research on are the fourth and fifth grade students at Bedford Elementary School located in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. My student sample consists of approximately fifty-seven fourth grade students and fifty-nine fifth grade students. My sample will be heterogeneously populated.

My sample is well suited for my particular research question because

Students are only tested in reading and fluency in Dearborn Heights through the third grade. I feel that the implementation of new reading strategies should be evident in the upper elementary grade levels, in preparation for middle school.

Study Design

The objective of my research project was to see if the implementation of a new reading strategy would increase my students develop a desire to read, while at the same time, increase their reading fluency and comprehension levels. Throughout my years of teaching, I have discovered that the vast majority of my students are struggling readers and writers (since reading and writing do go hand in hand). I have also conducted research in the past that has shown that middle school students would rather completely give up on reading and simply “dislike” reading as opposed to admitting that they are a struggling reader and work to try to fix their problem so that they may excel in the area of reading, resulting in an increase in the student’s desire to read. The main reason students don’t enjoy reading is because they can’t read and/or they don’t understand what they are reading. My goal for this project is to implement new reading strategies in hopes of finding one that will help to increase my student’s reading fluency, comprehension, and reading levels altogether.

I have devised a data collection plan (see Appendix A) to increase my knowledge of my student’s reading fluency levels in the classroom and the feelings that my students display toward reading. My data collection plan posed the following three questions:

· Other than low reading fluency and comprehension levels are there any other contributing factors to low interests in reading in the upper elementary school grade levels?

· What reading fluency strategy will work the best with increasing the reading abilities of my students (students in upper elementary school grade levels 4 and 5)?

· How do vocabulary and comprehension skills contribute to low fluency levels among my upper elementary school students?

Data Sources & Procedure

The first form of data that I would collect would be through a Direct Reading Approach Reading and Fluency Assessment (see Appendix B). I will use this assessment to test fifty-seven of my fourth grade students and fifty-nine of my fifth grade students. This assessment will help me to determine each of my student’s specific reading and fluency levels and where each student stands (in relation to the rest of the students in their grade level) so that I am able to place each student into specific reading groups/categories by their reading levels. This assessment would be administered prior to the implementation and trial of the reading strategies and after the instruction about the strategies, to determine how and which strategies implemented actually helped to increase students reading and fluency levels.

I would next, have each of my students complete the Reading and You survey (see Appendix C). Upon the completion of this survey, my goal would be to better understand each of my students' reading lifestyles outside of school. This would help me to determine my student’s interests and also allow me to see the attitudes that my students have toward reading. I would then use this information to formulate multiple reading and fluency strategies that would meet the individual needs of each one of my students.

I will also, hopefully, be able to determine additional contributing factors to low interests in reading at the fourth and fifth grade levels, which is the purpose of the second questionnaire that I administered, Why I May Not Like to Read

(see Appendix D), Using this questionnaire, I would be able to identify the common factors as to why my upper elementary school students have such low reading interests. Is it because they cannot read at all? Is it because of all of the technological distractions in today’s time? Is there another underlying reason?

Along with this questionnaire, I would send home the questionnaire, My Child and Reading (see Appendix E), to have my student’s parents complete. This questionnaire would really allow me to see whether or not my students negative attitudes come directly from their parent’s attitudes and influences on reading. This questionnaire would also help me to determine areas, in reading, that parents feel that their children need to work harder in.

After all of my data has been collected, I would begin implementing various reading strategies into my everyday reading curriculum. While implementing these strategies, I would take notes on how my students were utilizing, understanding, and applying each learned strategy to their daily reading using the Teacher Observation Notes worksheet (see Appendix F). After reading over and analyzing these notes, I would formulate a second parent survey, What Strategies Work Best (see Appendix G), to see how and whether or not the reading strategies learned in class were being encouraged and/or applied at home.

The final level of my data would focus on how spelling and vocabulary influence my student’s reading levels and abilities and whether or not my student’s reading fluency levels increased with the daily study of spelling and vocabulary. I created a pretest, Spelling and Vocabulary Assessment (see Appendix H) to determine whether or not my students who are labeled as low leveled readers, read at a lower level because they are also low in vocabulary and spelling. I have also created a student Reading Checklist (see Appendix F) that I will also be using as an assessment tool. I will be orally assessing each one of my students to see how well they use the learned reading, spelling, vocabulary, and fluency strategies that I implemented.

Data Analysis

Using the data collected and a variety of sources, I will able to make specific generalizations about my students’ and student’s parents’ attitudes toward reading. Once I begin implementing specific programs and/or strategies and begin to seeing my student’s reading scores rise, I will be continue to implement a specific reading strategy program in which my students would benefit from and over time show growth in the areas of reading fluency and comprehension. With growth in these areas, I will also be able to see an increase in my student’s desire and interest to read.

Executive Summary

My research study focuses on answering the question, what effect does a change in reading strategies have on students reading fluency, comprehension and/ or interest in reading?

The vast majority of students that I have taught over the past years are extremely low readers. I believe that low reading fluency levels are a huge reason why my students struggle in the area of reading. Through my research project, I am planning to prove that implementation of a new reading fluency strategy program, within my classroom, would increase students reading fluency and comprehension levels, thus resulting in my students desires to read and write.

Related literature reveals that problems in reading fluency are becoming more and more evident every day. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about one third of the United States’ eighth grade students read at or above a fluent or proficient level. With reading fluency problems, come reading comprehension problems and with reading comprehension problems, come writing problems. Having these problems in the areas of reading and writing result in low scores on standardized tests. My goal as an educator, as should be the goals of all educators, is to put a stop to this critical domino effect.

Beyond the second grade, school districts (and even Michigan’s Curriculum Standards) do not require educators to teach and implement reading strategies that focus on and strengthen reading fluency. However, school districts push teachers to teach students to master the standardized tests that are given each year. Because these specific reading standards are not required, my though is then why teach them? I hardly have time to teach what is required, let alone implement new strategies that focus on areas in reading that students are not required to master. I then find myself wondering at the end of each the school year, why are my students still struggling in reading and why can’t they comprehend what they read?

The research that I conducted made me think differently about this. I have learned that reading fluency is crucial because it provides a connection between word recognition and reading comprehension. A student cannot comprehend something they don’t recognize and/or understand which also explains low test scores among students. Since fluent readers don’t have to concentrate on decoding the actual words, they can focus their attention on what the text actually means, thus understanding questions on tests that are given to them. Students are able to make mental connections throughout text they are reading and even make connections to their personal lives, backgrounds, and experiences. Simply put, fluent readers recognize the words and comprehend their meaning at the same time.

My plan is to implement a reading program into my classroom that will provide a main focus on reading fluency and comprehension strategies, forty-five minutes a day four days a week. With this plan, I am hoping to see an increase in my student’s desire to read due to the fact that they are more proficient in reading at their grade level and are able to better comprehend and understand what they read. Thus, resulting in higher standardized test scores, the completion of more classroom work and homework, and increasing student’s desires to read, attend school, and so forth. The entire reading and writing domino effect will change, and only for the better.

Annotated Bibliography

Mastropieri, M. A., Leinart, A., & Scruggs, T. E. , "Strategies to Increase Reading

Fluency." Intervention in School and Clinic 34 (1999) 278-283. 25 May 2009. This article discusses new reading strategies that have been developed to assist students in reading fluency growth. One strategy that has shown growth among poor readers is the Repeated Reading Strategy. With this strategy, students are asked to read a given a short passage of a text that contains word that are recognizable to the students. They are asked to read this passage several times until a fluency rate can be determined. Once a fluency rate is determined, the students then begin a new passage. Each new passage read by student’s increases in reading level. This is done until the students reach their reading frustration level. Once they reach this point, they are given a number of short passages that they must master before preceding to the next level.

Another strategy that is thought to help students increase their reading fluency levels is Class Wide Peer Tutoring. How this strategy works is that one half of the students in class are reading a particular text at one time to a partner. The other half of the class is actively engaged in monitoring the other halves performance. Each of the halves then switch roles, where the monitoring half is now reading to their partner. This is a one-on-one strategy. Computer-assisted instruction can also be used to practice, promote, and increase reading fluency. There are many programs that can assist students at all grade levels. The program mentioned in the article Strategies to Increase Reading Fluency is the Hint and Hunt program. This program helps students to recognize words at their grade level. This program also acts as a game that calculates and monitors students reading speed and monitors their reading accuracy.

Moats, L.C.. "When Older Student's Can't Read." Educational Leadership (2001): 36-40.

Moats claims that problems in reading fluency are becoming more and more evident every day. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about one third of the United States’ eighth grade students read at or above a fluent or proficient level. With reading fluency problems, come reading comprehension problems. Children have attention spans that are only so big. If he or she is reading the words on a page at a slow pace, there is no way that they will remember what he or she has read, much less, make connections using the information they read about. However, reading fluency ranges from child to child. A third grade student may read a word and instantly recognize it again with greater speed, then one of my seventh grade students need twenty or more exposures to even so much as recognize the word. Spelling instruction also fosters the development of reading fluency. Through the teaching of spelling, children receive examples of how letters represent the various sounds of speech which helps them to develop a quicker sense of word recognition. This article makes great points in regards to the importance of fluency in the upper grades.

"National Institute of Child Health and Human Development." What Works in Fluency Instruction (2000) Web.26 May 2009. <http://readingrockets.org/articles/72>.

The National Assessment of educational Progress (NAEP) defines fluency as the ease or “naturalness” of reading where students have the strong and natural abilities to group and/or phrase words as revealed through intonation, stress, and pauses (White, 1995). These students can adhere to the author’s syntax, or rules of language, and they are extremely expressive when they read orally. Fluency is more than reading fast, its reading at an appropriate rate, with good expression, and praising that reflects an evident understanding of the text being read.

Risinski, Timothy. The Fluent Reader. New York: Scholastic, 2003.

This book discusses How there are many fluency dimensions including word phrasing, reading smoothness, and reading pace. Each dimension is directly related to reading comprehension which explains why there are so many adults who are struggling readers today.

White, Sheida. "How Fluently Do Our Children Read? ." Reading Rockets 2007.1 Jun 2009. <http://www.readingrockets.org/articles/104>. White explains and defines reading fluency as the ease or “naturalness” of reading where students have the strong and natural abilities to group and/or phrase words as revealed through intonation, stress, pauses, and interjecting a sense of expression. White also gives examples of fluency assessment within this article and studies and test results of upper elementary student’s fluency, accuracy, and reading rates.

Wise, B.. "Improving Adolescent Literacy." Middle Matters 14. September 2005.1 Jun 2009. Wise states that middle schools are beginning to provide specialized reading programs for students who do read below grade level, however these programs provide a main focus on the mechanics of reading and literacy and do not pay much, if any, attention to reading fluency and comprehension strategies. Another problem with these programs is the lack of motivation, involvement, interest, and engagement of the students because their lack of reading and fluency strategies have brought on extreme frustration in their literacy and language arts classes. This is why the implementation of reading fluency needs to be implemented on a regular basis starting in and continuing all the way through elementary

Worthy, Jo, Broaddus, Karen. "Fluency beyond the Primary Grades: From Group Performance to Silent, Independent Reading." Reading Teacher 55Dec.-Jan. 2001-2002 334-343.

1 Jun 2009.This article demonstrates how engaging, effective oral fluency practice can be part of daily reading instruction and how this instruction and practice can help to develop independence and understanding in silent reading. Describes how the approach includes explicit teacher modeling and teacher-guided time for group and independent oral and silent reading practice in materials from all areas of the curriculum. Worth and Broaddus state that fluency is a very difficult concept to comprehend. There is not one set definition for reading fluency, however, it makes reading and comprehension seem almost effortless. With fluency come a number of key components. Fluent readers must have a vocabulary of high-frequency words, graphphonic skills, and strategies for accurately and quickly decoding new words. Fluent readers can also accurately and automatically decode words without use of their cognitive resources.