|
|
Reflection
|
Proposal Process Design Assessment Reflection |
Transactional
strategies instruction demonstrates positive results in the area of reading
comprehension. The subjects found that as readers they were thinking as they
were reading, and were engaged with the text. The students were familiar with
making predictions about stories, but in the beginning only gave a
generalized prediction about a story. At the end of the study, these students
were able to predict: Who is in the story?, Where the story takes place?, as
well as, What will happen in the story? The
students were not familiar with the strategy of questioning. They seemed
uncomfortable about pausing to write down a word, or a few words, about a
confusing concept. However, as time went on, the students would jot down
word/words, or attempt to reread for clarification, when they came upon a
confusing concept. Through this strategy, the students were able to interact
with the text and develop not only their understanding of the story, but
also, their vocabulary. The visualization strategy was also a foreign strategy
for the students. After modeling and instruction, they had difficulty with
understanding what they needed to do. Their visual representations did not
have supporting sentences for each section. With practice and additional
instruction, their visualizations improved and had a supportive sentence for
the beginning, middle, and the end of the story. The summarization showed that the subjects had improved
from the baseline. When collecting the baseline data I noticed simple errors
were made in their written samples. At the start of my research study, the
subjects’ summarizations lacked capitalization, punctuation, and consisted of
one paragraph. As time evolved, there were fewer grammatical errors and instead
of one paragraph there were three paragraphs; one for the beginning, the
middle, and the end. Also, the students seemed to be thinking more about what
they had read when they created their summary. Within the transactional strategies study, there were
limitations. First, the genre used was limited to narrative books. Even
though there was a large variety of genre within our school’s literacy
closet, the students seemed to favor narrative books over others that were
offered. Second, because the subjects were grouped by ability, it was easier
to meet their particular needs. In comparison to a general education
classroom containing students of varying abilities. Third, only trade books
were used for the TSI research. Basal readers or anthology books were
excluded from my study. Fourth, my study was conducted with a time
constraint. The students had a limited amount of time to demonstrate their
ownership of transactional strategies instruction. Additional time would be
needed to investigate further comprehension potential for the subjects.
Lastly, my study did not have a support system within the regular literacy
curriculum. Therefore, the students’ transactional strategies instruction was
limited to one hour for four days per week.
Also, they had only each other to talk with about the book selections
and the learned comprehension strategies, while their classmates could
converse about what they were reading, and assignments that were being done, with
their literacy group. Even
though my research may have had several limitations, TSI did improve the
reading comprehension of the students, and moved them closer to becoming more
strategic readers. |
Sharon R. Dulin
