How will an individualized and flexible literacy plan in third grade affect student engagement and achievement in literacy?

Seminar Title

How will an individualized and flexible literacy plan in third grade affect student engagement and achievement in literacy?

Student engagement in Literacy

3rd Grade

Elementary

Reading

Reading

Do you find yourself grumbling and groaning, as much as your students, when it’s time for reading? Is the tedium of a monotonous curriculum pulling you down? As much as I love reading, I found that none of us were getting much out of the worksheets and repetitive readings of weekly texts. I wanted to find out what would drive my students to read more and engage them in their literacy learning. My main motivation was finding ways to engage students in their reading, while focusing on their individual learning needs and my research applies to most grade levels. If you are looking for ways to increase engagement in literacy, this is the place for you!

Within my classroom, I felt that literacy was a struggle. Though I jumped through all the standards hoops, individualized reading goals for students, and strove to engage each of them, it still seemed that when working independently my students lacked engagement. How could I make my students RACE towards literacy? How could I engage all students in becoming successful readers, while focusing on the standards and individual needs of each student? I began by looking at the Best Practices in Literacy Instruction. Gambrell and Morrow (2015) created a book using many educators’ research to break down the Ten Evidence-Based Best Practice for Comprehensive Literacy Instruction. Within all of my other sources, the Ten Best Practices continued to pop up. It appears that a classroom environment that nurtures literacy motivation includes choice, technology, time for self-selected reading, discussions about what we read, collaboration, and relevancy of what we read, including multiple disciplines. By combining elements of Daily 5 and Readers Workshop along with embracing curiosity and technology I felt I could create an environment that embraced all the individual needs of my students and keep them engaged in reading. The question I continued to ask myself as I traveled on this literacy journey was: How does an individualized, flexible literacy plan in 3rd grade affect student engagement and achievement in literacy? By observing student behavior, individual and large group discussion, STAR assessments, and Flynt and Cooter’s Reading Inventory I was able to assess my flexible, literacy plan for both academic success and active engagement. My research has shown that student achievement has increased an average of approximately two reading levels (using the Flynt and Cooter Reading Inventory) and through communication and observations with my students I have found that they prefer rotation days to non-rotation days. The flexibility of large group days within the week have worked very well for presentation of language and reading strategies. There continues to be some adjustments needed in regard to maintaining student concentration when changes have occurred to the schedule, but classroom regulators such as a visual chart showing all students on task, have seemed to help with these disruptions. Also, some brainstorming with the students corrected struggles that were occurring with Write to Self. I enjoy watching my students help one another during Partner Work, as they continue to climb toward their reading goals. Small groups are still pretty new to me and I find myself doing a lot of close reading, reviewing of large group strategies and just now trying out book club type groups. I hope to find ways to address more accurately the strategies specific to each small group and possibly find ways to make these groups more fluid. I will continue to research and find answers on small group learning.