Doing This, That, and the Other: Finding Our Way to Independent Reading in First Grade by Kayla Carnaghi

Introduction Concord Elementary School mentor teacher: Mrs. Carol Roper first grade A classroom of 23 students content area: Reading

Round One Statement: Multiple students are unfocused during their independent reading time: – Get up and go to the bathroom – Talking to their neighbors – Staring off into space or looking around the room – Playing with their books – Not reading Questions: What are the students doing when they’re not reading? Which students are the most unfocused during independent reading time?

Round One: Data Collection Methods: – observation and anecdotal note taking – video recordings

Round Two Statement: 9 out of 23 students appear to be the most unfocused during independent reading time; these 9 have their own individual desks placed in the inner semi-circle Question: What are the 9 boys and girls in the inner semi-circle doing during independent reading time?

Round Two: Data Collection Method: frequency chart – tally by behavior Method: interviews – written notes BehaviorBoysGirls Head not in book 5823 Talking to a neighbor 1510 Playing with book- flipping pages 615

Round Three Statement: I realized that the students don’t understand why they’re reading independently during the school day and that reading has a purpose Questions: How do I get the students to think about the multiple purposes of reading? How do I get the students to read for a purpose?

Bibliography Avery, C. (1993). And with a light touch: Learning about reading, writing, and teaching with first graders. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. GreatSchools Staff (n.d.). Your first grader and reading—Academic Skills|GreatSchools. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from skills/234-first-grade-reading.gs. skills/234-first-grade-reading.gs In2Books.com. (2013). Retrieved November 6, 2013, from id=Setting_Purpose. id=Setting_Purpose Reifman, S. (2013, March 18). Reading with a Purpose and Taking a Stand|Teacher's Lounge Blog|Really Good Stuff®. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from Teaching Reading Skills. (n.d.). Retrieved November 6, 2013, from

Round Three: Data Collection Method: introducing some purposes for reading mini lesson reading purpose safari menu Method: analyzing students ability to pick a good book to go along with a particular purpose analysis chart

Student’s Purpose for reading the book: - Why is the student reading the selection? Does the purpose help the student stay focused? Is he/she able to read the selection using that purpose? Student 1 (S1) chose the purpose: to practice the skills (strategies) we learned o selection: Big Fat Hen o selection 2: In The Forest S2 chose the purpose: to practice the skills (strategies) we learned o selection: The Apple S3 didn’t choose a purpose; the teacher ( I ) chose the purpose: to practice the skills (strategies) we learned o selection: Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do you see? S1 chose the first selection and read it to me. She read it straight through without much visual evidence of strategy usage. o When S1 chose selection 2 (a book she couldn’t read most of the words), there was more visual evidence of strategy usage, and she was able to read the pages within the book S2 chose her selection expecting to use one or more strategies to help her read. When reading it to me, however, there wasn’t any visual evidence that she used a strategy, or more. o Instead of using strategies, S3 made a text-to-self connection S3 didn’t pick this purpose. But when reading to me, he made clear signs of using more than one strategy to help him read his selection. He wanted to read all of his books in his book box this way.

Conclusion Children need to understand why they are doing something. Making a graphic organizer to outline purposes for reading provided a system for selecting, using, and checking on the use of reading purposes. Setting purposes for reading provides support for young readers to read more challenging text. When they are given a purpose they are better equipped to stay on task and learn more.

Acknowledgments The Albion College Education Department Dr. Kyle Shanton Mrs. Carol Roper first grade students at Concord Elementary

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