TechQuest : “Problem of Practice Preview”
The Problem: I feel that I do not have a way(s) to assess, develop, and have students self-reflect on their reading skills (knowing where their strengths and weakness) in our classroom. We read 3 novels as an English class and students do book reviews , and read many text on-line and with printed resources, but I don’t feel that I have created a way that they know how they are reading and what they could do to improve it. I continuously evaluate (rubrics and conferences), monitor, and show writing examples, for their writing skills. However, when it comes to reading I may know who are the stronger and who are the weaker readers, but I do not have a way for them to self-reflect and become better readers. All of my students come to seventh grade already knowing how to read, but many are not reading to learn. I believe in order to do this they need to understand where their strengths and weaknesses are in reading. Most of my students can generalize and tell me that, “I am not a good reader,” or “I love to read” or “I hate reading school stuff”; however, this does not help them know the specifics in how they can become better readers. Is it vocabulary that is troubling them? Is it fluency that is difficult for them? Is it comprehension… low or high? I want them to be more aware of their reading and be able to improve and see those improvements throughout the year.
The why: We need to have strong readers. Much of what students have to do in school is based on how they can read. If students understand their own reading process better, I think it will be easier for them to develop into better readers and in turn, better students.
I face a similar problem with my 4th and 5th graders. I have found the work of Robert Marzano helpful. He has 9 strategies that have been proven to increase student achievement levels - summarizing and note taking being one of them. You might want to check out this link http://gets.gc.k12.va.us/VSTE/2008/. Google Earth Lit trips is something I think your students will enjoy (http://www.googlelittrips.org/) It takes summarizing and note taking to the WWW. I attended the student showcase a MACUL this spring and one of the classes featured their trip. The students worked in teams of two - summarizing a chapter's content (the whole class read the book, though). They then pinged the location on Google Earth and entered in their summary. Looking forward to seeing what direction you go with this project.
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