HISTORY
In my first grade class, I have a total of 21 students. My capstone project was centered around four specific students who were not at grade level for reading at the start of the study. As for this 2019-2020 school year, my elementary school had an enrollment of 413 students. Of the 413 students, 325 students are white. The other 88 students are of other ethnicities. For this school year, 12% of the students were on free and reduced lunch. For first grade sections this year, we have two complete sections (including myself) and a total of 43 first graders. I have five students who are on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), two of which are on an IEP for speech only. There were also five students on an Individual Intervention Plan (IIP) at the beginning of the study. Of the four students in the study, one student had an IIP at this time from Fall Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) scores. This student was required to have an IIP because of the law LB1081. They did not meet Fall MAP scores which meant they were on an Individualized Reading Intervention Plan (IRIP).
NEED
In our Professional Learning Community (PLC) with my principal and instructional coach, reading was depicted as a need for growth for our grade level. Coming from Kindergarten, the students had very low scores on MAP reading. Based on this data, the goal for first grade was to see improvement in MAP scores and guided reading levels. My principal had required that we do first grade planning every two weeks with him as a way to help us plan for what to do with the students, especially in reading. By the end of the first quarter, students are to be at guided reading level E. Coming into the school year, I had three students reading at a level A, B, and C. I also had 14 students reading at either a low D or D guided reading level. The other five students were either at a level E or above. Assessing and entering grades for the end of first quarter, nine students did not meet the required guided reading level E. I have six students still reading at a level D, two at level C, and one at level A. The student at a guided reading level of A does have an IEP. My class also took the MAP test at the beginning of the year. With the law LB1081, the required RIT score was a 154. I had four students that did not make the threshold RIT score. Of the four students, two had IEPs with reading goals. The other two students were required to have an Individual Reading Intervention Plan (IRIP) and IIP for reading goals with RIT scores. When reading with my students, I have observed that the overall struggle for the four students were with blends, digraphs, and sight words. When prompting students to sound out words, phonics skills weren’t fully developed. They will confuse short /e/, short /a/, and short /i/ sounds, and have very little knowledge on any long vowel sounds.
IMPORTANCE
My students' growth in reading was and still is important due to an overall low academic performance in reading as a grade level at the beginning of the study. The goal of the study was to increase their guided reading levels through word work, but I was really working towards getting those guided reading levels at grade level expectation. During this study, I also wanted to gain better knowledge on how to developmentally help this age group of students since I have not worked with this age before. I wanted to better understand necessary skills and word work that could help these students grow as readers. If students are able to connect word work to their reading, they will become better problem solvers when developing good reading skills. Overall, I want to set up my students to be successful lifelong readers. To do this, students need the foundations to be able to build upon and develop themselves as readers. In first grade, we work on the foundation skills through word work. Without that sturdy foundation, or proficient understanding of phonics, students will continue to struggle to develop as readers.
LITERATURE REVIEW
INTRODUCTION
How do children learn to read? This question may seem vague, yet the answer is direct: phonemic awareness. As researcher Linnea Ehri states, “Learning to read words is central to children’s success in attaining reading skill” (Ehri, 2014, p. 18). To become a comprehensible reader, one has to develop strategies that assist in reading the words that come across the page. This is the first stage when learning how to read for children. For early readers, this stage is a crucial part in creating lifelong readers that have the ability to problem solve words on the page. Children need to be able to read the words before being able to understand what those words mean when put altogether. Building phonemic awareness through word work strategies has the potential to increase students’ reading abilities. The process of building phonemic awareness through word study and sight words sets the pathway to successful readers.