Action Research...Action!

Since the beginning of last school year (2012/2013) I've been conducting an Action Research study on Reader's Theater and repeated reading and the effects these strategies have on reading fluency.
When I began this research last year I had a group of 26 second graders, 16 who were below grade level. With this alarming number came a group of kids who had yet to develop their love of reading..mostly because they had no idea WHAT they were reading. I knew I had to start somewhere but simply teaching them how to break apart words didn't seem to be enough. Yes, some of them needed this strategy, but most were ready to move on to that "next step" of reading..but what was that next step?

After reading many articles about reading fluency one thing became very clear: to become more fluent with a passage it must be read over, and over and OVER. The more the student read the passage, the more cognitive attention would be needed to decode and could therefore be given to comprehension. Great...so I'll just have my kids read the same book 20 times. No problem...not boring...at all..

I knew this wouldn't go over too well and that I had to incorporate a more motivating strategy to get them to WANT to practice a passage multiple times. This is where Reader's Theater came in to place! While I won't go too far into detail, this website does a wonderful job explaining what Reader's Theater is and how it may look in a classroom. Also, ReadingA-Z offers many multi-leveled scripts (with a subscription...but well worth it) that my students loved practicing and performing.

Needless to say, I saw such a great increase in their reading fluency that their comprehension levels went up as a result! When I decide to loop up with my class to third grade I knew I had to continue the success in reading growth by continuing the use of these scripts in conjunction with other fluency strategies.

I've continued to see a HUGE growth in my students' reading abilities and their confidence! Where I once had 16 of 26 students below grade level I'm now proud to say that, of my current class of 25, 19 are reading at or well above grade level expectations :)