Becoming Active Readers & Citing Evidence Using Reading for Meaning
After surveying teachers in our district, we found the most common problem across all grade levels & content areas is that students do not support their thinking with text evidence. We decided that targeting this issue could lead to deeper learning of the content and also have profound effects on KSA and other assessment results. We used the Reading for Meaning tool from ¨Tools for Thoughtful Assessment” by Silver Strong & Associates to target this issue and studied its effects on students becoming active readers, supporting their thinking with text evidence and improving comprehension. We used the tool to test 3 grade levels (3rd grade Reading, 6th grade Science and 11th grade Social Studies. At each level (elementary, middle and high) one group was the experimental group and the other groups were the control groups. With the experimental group, we utilized the Reading for Meaning strategy with all reading content and passages. With the control group we used the same reading content and passages, but not the Reading for Meaning strategy. We gathered data over the course of a whole unit. We measured how well students are able to articulate a deeper understanding of the reading content based on the evidence they used in their oral & written responses. After analyzing our data, we found that the Reading for Meaning tool did work with all grade levels. The evidence from our study proves the tool is an effective strategy that should be used in all grade levels and content areas.
Project Showcase