My preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge

Findings #1:  According to asttle, there are varying levels of reading abilities in my classroom and all the students who are level 2 are boys!.  When compared to their writing posts conducted in class (which shows their understanding of their reading) their writing ability depends on their reading abilities.  Students can’t write a summary if they don’t understand what they are reading. They struggle with the vocab and do not have enough time to 'dig deep' into text. This is supported by further evidence in the next finding. Please click on the document linked to find out more.

Findings #2: That students who struggle on average do not like reading or spend less time reading in or out of school.  These are the same students who struggle to write and have said that they need extra help and support when it came to writing. They are not motivated to read and struggle to engage with text that they can not relate to or are not interested in.

Findings #3: Writing a summary requires clear structures and scaffolding for the lower ability learners. Students think they know what a good summary looks like but acknowledge that getting there is a struggle and that many of them need help to get there. They also want more practice in writing them within a framework and need support in using key words to show their learning.

Findings #4: Although my focus is writing and reading, students wanted to the chance to talk about the context first. Having the ability to talk about the context in pairs and groups may allow for the text to be more relatable for the students who like to engage with the texts in this way. The gap between reading and writing might be shortened by talking about the text.

Next steps: I want to look at approaches and models that I could use as interventions. This will be in my next blog.