History
The school in which I work has 380 students. Of those, 39% are receiving free or reduced lunches. I serve as a special education teacher working with students that are verified with a variety of disabilities. My capstone project was centered around a group of five 4th grade students that have reading goals within their Individualized Education Plan (IEP). These goals focus on skills to help them become strong readers and close the gap between their peers. All five individuals come from families of divorced or separated parents. These students lack a consistent support system at home, which results in them coming to school tired with homework not completed. They are also on free or reduced lunches. There are also two students who are currently on a classroom teacher created chart to help motivate them to complete classroom work. One student uses a checklist in the classroom to help him stay organized throughout the day.
Need
Through research, it is shown when students struggle with reading fluency, it contributes to their overall struggles in reading. Based on multiple data sources including text leveling, MAP, IEP goals, and observations, a group of students were identified as showing difficulty with overall reading skills. Specifically, they show a need for growth in the area of fluency. Once fluency growth has been attained it will help them with other components of reading. All five students that participated in the study have reading goals within their IEP. These goals focus on being able to answer comprehension questions and decode unknown words. According to the Fountas & Pinnell leveling system, these students were below grade level. They should have been at a text level Q/R in the winter of fourth grade.
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Student A - text level H
Student B - text level N
Student C - text level N
Student D - text level G
Student E - text level H
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Through my observations, when these students reached a word that they thought was too difficult to sound out, they were unable to move forward. It was also observed that they were reading primarily two-word phrases. This affected their ability to comprehend what they were reading. Through running records, all five students were not able to recognize sight words within their own grade level. The current Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) data indicates that the scores of these students were significantly below their peers ranging from the first percentile to the twenty second percentile. When working with these students in other subject areas such as math and unit studies, it was seen that their lack of reading skills holds them back from growing in other subjects. It was also necessary to provide materials to parents to help promote learning at home and show the connection between home and school.
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Importance
The information gained from formal and informal assessments and observations helped me see where these students were as readers. I was able to take the data and see that they needed additional support in the area of fluency, which could help them grow in other areas of reading such as comprehension. I was confident that by providing additional support at home through the use of reading logs and fluency phones, these skills would grow. By sending home reading logs with the students they had exposure to practice different reading skills. The reading logs were signed by parents when students read, so I could track when they were being used at home. By increasing their reading skills, they would close the gap between their level and the level of their peers. Because reading is essential to many subjects, an increase in reading skills would also show growth in other academic areas. I believe that this study would allow me to gain information on how the use of reading logs could help increase reading fluency, which would then lead to stronger overall reading skills.