Action Research Study Amy Hanzlicek

Medford Elementary Four 5th Grade Students Homeroom teachers flagged these students for low fluency scores from their STAR READING ASSESSMENT Additional support to prepare for MCA testing. Five consecutive days for forty minutes each day

Does repetitive oral reading activities improve reading fluency in 5th Grade students? INTERVENTIONS USED “Facilitating Fluency in Your Reading Groups.” DECODING. “Structuring Repeated Oral Reading Activities Using Prosody as an Indicator of Text Comprehension.” FLUENCY. 40 Reading Intervention Strategies for K-6 Students: Research-based Support for RTI. SAFER fluency lesson format: Successful Anxiety-Free, Engaged Reading. FORI method: Fluency Oriented Reading Instruction. GOAL: FLUENCY ACCURACY OF 97% INCREASED WPM

Overview Day 1 – DIBELS ASSESSMENT/”A Surprising Discovery” as a COLD READ. I read A Surprising Discovery to students correctly. Student choral read story and I highlighted struggling words. Day 2 - Students partner read A Surprising Discovery with a partner one time. I highlighted words that were said incorrectly or was struggling to properly decode specific words on Day 1 and we worked through each word as a group. PROCESS: I wrote a word on whiteboard, and I had the students find any word part they see in shaving cream with their eyes closed. They then opened their eyes and compared the parts each one had written. This was a segway into how we can break words down differently. We continued doing this with a variety of words, alternating finding specific prefixes/suffixes/root words. I would make them close their eyes, picture the word, and then write the whole word in shaving cream. Day 3 – Students individually read out loud “A Surprising Discovery” to reinforce the repetitive reading. We Choral read Story 2 and I did the same FORI and SAFER methods with the new story. Day 4 – We choral read A Surprising Discovery as a group. Continued working on decoding words and word parts. Day 5 – DIBELS post assessment/”A Surprising Discovery” as a HOT READ.

Data collection PRE ASSESSMENT POST ASSESSMENT *OBSERVATION*

INDIVIDUAL RESULTS - AVA POSTER CHILD! Enjoyed the intervention, worked hard, and showed growth. Well below grade level, but showed growth. Recommend continuing a fluency/decoding intervention.

Individual Results – Bailee Struggled with sight words. Post assessment showed growth, but through observation, it was from memorization from repetitive reading, not from learning different ways to decode words. Recommended intervention for sight words and continuing interventions for decoding.

Individual Results - donny Pre-assessment showed high fluency rates. Observed he was able to properly decode words by prefix/suffix/root words/syllables. Recommended further assessment for “Comprehension” rather than fluency.

Individual results - henry Intervention was beneficial. He was successfully able to decode words by the end of intervention. Red flag! Reading words out of order. “I would much rather milk a snake than a cow” “I would much rather milk a cow than a snake” “In fact, tickets for most events are gone.” “In fact, most tickets for the event are gone.” - - Recommended further assessment for sentence structure and comprehension.

Intervention Study CONCLUSION Overall, all students met the 97% goal. YAH! I was able to provide additional strategies for the students to do on their own when reading independently. Intervention Lessons Learned Support to students who are not meeting grade level standards but do not qualify for SPED. Assess own teaching strategies and be aware of each student’s needs. Further assessments can unfold other underlying learning disabilities.