Reading Interventions with Sixth Grade Students ETEC 543 Research Project Griselda Caudill Margarita Garcia Guillermina Gonzalez Pat Nicholson

Introduction Each grade level at our school was required to create a plan as a response to intervention program to meet the needs of students who are not reading fluently at grade level. Third through sixth grade students have access to an online reading intervention program, Reading Plus. As we transition to the Common Core State Standards, we are learning how to teach reading using the close reading strategy.

Only 37 of our ninety-nine sixth graders were proficient on a beginning of the year reading assessment. About 10% of our students were in the below basic category in reading fluency. We identified nine students who needed to be in the RTI group. We also identified a second group of six students who would benefit from using Reading Plus as an intervention during the RTI time. Five students in the RTI group also participated in Reading Plus. We began our response to intervention groups on October 7, 2013.

Response to Intervention Four days a week for 45 minutes Students from all 3 sixth grade teachers go to Miss Garcia for RTI Students who are Academic English Learners and are in the Reading Plus group, go to Miss Garcia’s class during this time to work on Reading Plus independently. Students who are in the RTI group and are not English Learners, use Reading Plus for 30 minutes during AELD time. Mrs. Caudill teaches science and Mr. Watring teaches Social Studies during RTI time. Miss Garcia’s students who are not in RTI are split into two groups to join the other two classes for science and social studies. Mrs. Caudill and Mr. Watring switch groups after two weeks of instruction.

RTI Structure Students in the RTI group go to Miss Garcia on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 2:00 to 2:45 p.m. Wednesdays are the library day, so she monitors their fluency progress with DORF fluency assessments. During instruction, she guides students through Close Reading strategies that include cold reading, annotating, quick writing, rereading and vocabulary instruction at their instructional level.

Literature Review Fluent reading is an important skill (Elder & Paul, 2004 ) When students have difficulty reading (Marrsn & Patrick, 2000) Intervention Programs (Therrien, Kirk, & Woods-Groves, 2011)

Methodology- Research Questions Will students make greater growth in reading fluency using Reading Plus alone, or a combination of Reading Plus with teacher- guided small group close reading? What effect do extrinsic motivation, self- efficacy, interest in reading, and value for reading have on the growth of students?

Methodology As action researchers, we used a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Qualitative data was collected in the form of a reading inventory questionnaire. This questionnaire provided us with reading background information of the subjects in our project. Quantitative data was collected using the Daily Oral Language Fluency assessment designed by DIBELS.

Subjects The 15 subjects of this study were all sixth grade students at Emerson Elementary School. Each student received core instruction in their homeroom classes and attended Margarita Garcia’s classroom for Response to Intervention time (RTI) for 45 minutes 4 times a week. 9 students received highly structured guided practice in close reading. These students were labeled Group A. These students also utilize Reading Plus for 30 minutes at a different specified hour. Of the 15 students who attended Miss Garcia’s classroom for RTI, 6 students utilized the Reading Plus program only. These students were labeled Group B.

Results

Group A (RTI and Reading Plus students) showed more growth in WCPM and Accuracy. Group B (Reading Plus only) only 2 of the 6 students demonstrated growth and 4 of the 6 demonstrated significant decline in WCPM.

Reading Inventory 1.What do you enjoy reading? 2. When do you read? How long do you read? 3.Do you have a favorite book, character in a book, author, or magazine? If so, explain why it is your favorite. 4.Why do you read? (Give examples like what you read this week and why you read it). 5.How do you select your reading material? 6. How do you feel about reading? 7. What is the best thing you ever read? Explain why you liked it. 8.What is the worst thing you ever read? Why? 9.How did you learn to read? 10. Do you have books to read at home or do you visit the library regularly? Do you enjoy visiting bookstores or book fairs? If you have books at home, who bought them? 11.What does the word reading mean to you? 12.Do you talk about what you read to others? If so, who and why? 13. Do others at home read too? If so who?

Discussion Having a combination of Reading Plus and structured guided reading practice yields a greater growth in fluency than either in isolation. It would be interesting to see how other factors impact their growth in fluency such as students who have learning disabilities or are English Learners, and whether or not they have support in reading at home.

Conclusions We need more time to determine how successful our Response to Intervention program will be because we will continue to implement it until the end of the school year. We may look at reconfiguring groups based on other factors such as students who are only in the Reading Plus group who may benefit from being in the RTI group because they are regressing instead of making progress.