Overall Observations
The students in the focus group reflect the general population of my students taught the reciprocal teaching method. The following is a brief overview of each type of learner:
There were students, like Kelly and Joanne, who showed a natural ability to strategize as they read before the intervention was taught. But like Kelly and Joanne, their strategies sharpened and became more concise in a positive way and helped improve their ability to infer and interact with text, both narrative and expository. These students have also been strong influences within their cooperative groups and have taken on the role of modeler that is needed for many of the literal learners.
Many students were similar in their approach with the strategies to Chris and Melissa, since the majority of the population are grade level learners. The majority of these students improved their comprehension and felt more comfortable using the graphic organizers when reading narrative text, so that they can keep track of what is happening in the plot line. These students also showed the transfer of the strategies to expository text and considerable growth was observed within the nonfiction multiple choice style questions. This group of students overall showed the most growth in narrative and expository text through the use of the reciprocal teaching method, although the focus group students did not necessarily demonstrate this outcome.
The students in my classes that relate more to Don and Josh are showing some improvement with the use of the comprehension strategies. Although still very literal, many are showing glimpses of inferring text on an independent basis. Most of the students who have trouble with comprehension show growth when working in cooperative groups, especially when they work with other students who have been able to master the strategies and can model them for those who have not. Unlike Don, many of the students who have difficulty with comprehension have not shown the kind of growth I hypothesized before the intervention. Overall there has been growth in a positive way and with constant modeling and supervising this will continue throughout the remainder of the school year. Many of the students who have difficulty with comprehension have been unable to completely transfer these strategies into expository text. This is reflected in their nonfiction multiple choice style questions. Like Josh many students are still unable to clarify the question being asked which has made it difficult to answer the questions correctly. This indicates to me that more work needs to be done on how to use the strategies with expository text, for metacomprehension to occur.