Some preliminary findings

After analyzing the data (which I will analyze even further since I was still gathering some through yesterday), it seems that repeated readings can be helpful if used occasionally in content classrooms. The data from my female surveys help support this. Interviews from my 4 focus students also support this.

I can also state that using repeated readings is difficult to do in a content classroom because the majority of time needs to spent teaching content.

I also found that on my survey (the second time I asked students to add comments to at least 3 questions) all students but 2 said they like reading only if it is something that is interesting to them. One of my focus students wrote "I like to read things in my category of life."

Reading Survey...post study

Here are the results from the post-study survey...


The biggest and most obvious change between pre-study and post-study results are my females' response to question 4 about reread things. In the pre-study only 6 of the females said they would reread but in the post-study, 12 females said they would. There was no change in the number of males that said they would reread. It makes me wonder if the females are being honest or if they are trying to tell me what I want to hear since they are more aware now of my study.

males	1	2	3	4	5
1 I really enjoy reading	3	1	2	2	2
2 I like reading for pleasure but not for school	3	3	3
3 I struggle to understand what I read	4	1	4	1
4 If I read something and realize I didn't understand it, I will reread it	1	2	1	4	2
5 I have many strategies to help me understand what I read for school	1	2	4	2	2
6 I like reading novels but dislike reading articles or textbooks	3	2	4	1
7 I get frustrated when I am given something for school that is too hard for me to read and understand	2		4	2	2
8 I wish I read more in school	4	2	1	2	1
9 I wish I had more time at home to read for fun	6	1		1	2
10 I really dislike reading	2	3	2	1	2

Females	1	2	3	4	5
1 I really enjoy reading	1		5	4	4
2 I like reading for pleasure but not for school	1	1	4	3	5
3 I struggle to understand what I read	3	5	2	2	2
4 If I read something and realize I didn't understand it, I will reread it			2		12
5 I have many strategies to help me understand what I read for school	2	3	5	3	3
6 I like reading novels but dislike reading articles or textbooks			6	3	5
7 I get frustrated when I am given something for school that is too hard for me to read and understand	2	2	4	1	6
8 I wish I read more in school	1	1	5	2	4
9 I wish I had more time at home to read for fun	2	2	3	2	5
10 I really dislike reading	8	3		2	1

Focus student interviews

After completing Do You Hear What I Hear, I asked my four focus students the following questions:

• What do you think about this strategy? Did it help? Did it not? Do repeated readings help usually?
• If you were given this passage on your own and asked to complete it, would you have read it once, more than once, or not at all? Explain

Here are the answers...

Ezavion *fake name (low african american male)

• "It was in between hard and easy. I liked that you read it to me. "
• "I would have read it once and then quit. I would not have reread it, I would have just been like I'm not gonna do it."

Billy (medium-high white male)

• "I think it was helpful. I had a better understanding and I got to hear it a second time."
• "I would have read it once and then scanned it for answers."

Alexa (low white female)

• "It was helpfu. When I hear it over and over, it sticks, like repetition."
• "I would have read it more than once, to make sure I understand it."

Shianne (medium-high african american female)

• "I like that you reread it because I had forgotten some. I got more info this way."
• "I would have reread it if I needed to...and highlight. I like to highlight."

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Today I finally used the startegy of Do You Hear What I Hear? (DYHWIH) that I wrote so much about in  my research proposal. As previously mentioned in other posts, I LOVE this strategy and wanted to use it at least once a week...but then I remembered (once I started teaching) that I teach social studies and have way too much content to use a time-consuming strategy so often.

Today I used it with Columbus's journal entry upon arriving to the Americas. Because this is a primary source, the reading level is higher than what most of my students could do independently. I read the journal once while students wrote down only thoughts, feelings, ideas or questions in the appropriate box. The second time I read it (students do not have it in front of them) they were asked to answer the focus question only "How did Columbus describe the Native Americans?" Then they were asked to summarize the main idea in 20 words or less, still without looking at the passage. After they completed the summary, students were then given the passage to read/scan to complete the backside of the worksheet. On the back, one box asks for students to define a given word from the passage using only context clues (this passage I picked aquainted. Used "They had no weapons, nor were they aquainted with them since when they saw the sword, they grabbed at the blade out of ignorance."). Another box asks a content question. I used "Is Columbus's description of the Native Americans accurate? EXPLAIN." The third box asks what the author's purpose is and the final an fourth box asks the students to make a connection to their lives from the passage.

While using this strategy, I had every single student completing each box when they were asked. Everyone knew how to do the box they were asked to complete at each time. By letting the students start with just listening to the passage and writing down feelings, thoughts, or ideas (no wrong answers) before they are asked to think about real content questions seems to set them up for success. By the time they are answering content questions with support from the passage, it has been read aloud to them twice and they have the passage in front of them to scan and reread. They have been frontloaded with information to help them be successful.

Above are pictures of the front and back of the strategy worksheet.

Clozed notes with repeated readings

Today I gave my class clozed notes on European explorers to go with a reading packet. At first, I instructed the class to read through Spain and France sections while completing the clozed notes. I gave them 20 minutes to work on as much as possible. As I circulated the room, the majority were slow to get started and I think even a little confused, even though I had given an example of clozed notes as a class. With prompting and redirecting, students got to work. After 10 min., only 5 students had finished the Spain section and the other 20 were still working. When I asked one white female student how she was doing, she stated she was confused and having a hard time filling in the blanks. Another student, african american boy, called out "This is hard." This surprised me because I thought using clozed notes would be helpful since it gave them look-fors. In retrospect, it may have given them too-specific look-fors which were tripping them up. After 20 min. we went over the clozed answers as a class and many of them said "Ohhhhh" when I gave answers, like they were making it too difficult by themselves

After that, I then read over the clozed notes on England and Netherlands aloud with them. I then read England's section and then asked them to reread it on their own to fill in clozed notes. The level of immediate on-task was much higher. All but 3 of my students got right to work on England. I asked the same female student if she understood it now and she said "It seems easier, like it makes more sense and I can guess better what you want in the blanks." I followed up asking her if she thinks it is because I already read it aloud and now she is rereading it. While I was hoping for a "yes, that must be it!" I got instead "I dunno, maybe." Looking at just the participation and frustration levels, independently, it would be easy to claim that the repeated readings made a difference. While I am sure it helped some, so did the fact that the students were more familiar with clozed notes the second time, had gone over answers for other countries so could more easily anticipate what I was asking, and had also read over the clozed notes as a class prior to reading.

Tomorrow, I plan on using the Do You Hear What I Hear repeated reading strategy with a Columbus journal entry. I predict that it will be very useful since asking students to read a primary source like that is usually tough since it is a higher reading level.

See below for pictures of clozed notes students were given.

Change of methodology

After looking back on my original proposal after much reflection, I have decided that the specific way I was going to utilize repeated readings is a bit ridiculous for a content classroom. I hit on it in my earlier post but today had a great opportunity to see how well my new method works. I have been giving students specific look-fors prior to asking them to read. Today before students read about the African trading kingdoms (there are 3 but each student was given only one to become an expert on) I wrote on the board and verbally told them what their look-fors were. They were to look for and take notes on that Kingdom's religion, economy, and government. They had approximately 10 minutes to read and take notes. Every single student was on task and writing notes, including my lower ability students and behavior issues. Afterwards, before we even started the discussion, I asked them to raise their hand if at any point, they reread any of their section to help them find the look-fors. 16 out of my 23 students raised their hands saying that they conduct self-repeated readings to find their look-fors. I will definitely continue to focus on this aspect of my study with repeated readings. During the discussion over what they found, again I found all students were able to give me specifics about economy, government, or religion on their kingdom. I called on every student and everyone participated with information gathered from their readings. I was really pleased with the effect!

Issues

When writing my proposal in the summer, it never occurred to me how difficult implementing my methodology would be due to time constraints. I am a content area teacher and my job is to teach my students social studies content. Obviously I teach reading and reading strategies in my class but I had grand illusions of conducting repeated readings at least 3 times a week. This is an impossible task if I want to keep my students on track with my other classes and make sure I'm on track timewise for content. Not to mention, because of maternity leave, I came in three weeks behind the other social studies teacher and had to reteach a few important concepts my sub didn't cover well enough and of course teach and reteach expectations and procedures. When I have used repeated readings for this study, I did not use the specific strategies that I mentioned in my proposal, again due to time. Using Do You Hear What I Hear?, pulled vocab front loading, and chunking graphic organizers is very helpful BUT again, all three of those take most of class period and the concept has to be extremely important for me to spend that kind of time on just reading it. Instead I have used more informal whole class first read, then give "lookfors" and ask them to reread with the "lookfors" in mind. As of now, the observational data that I have collected shows a decent percentage of students that because of the lookfors and repeated readings, feel confident enough to volunteer to answer comprehension questions in the whole-class setting.

When thinking back to my earlier proposal and literature review, I was surprised that I did not find any studies that discussed the affect of repeated readings in middle or high school content areas. Now, however, after seeing the problems I have run into, it is starting to make sense...