Strategies and materials teachers can use to help resent immigrant students to read, improve fluency and comprehension in less than a year

Strategies and materials teachers can use to help resent immigrant students to read, improve fluency and comprehension in less than a year.

Rosa H. Roque

Dr. Américo Paredes Elementary

Needs Assessment

                           The contexts of my school, as well as many other schools in the district, are receiving many students from Mexico in the last years.  The reason is that we are located close to the Rio Grande River and many people are coming due the social insecurities that exist in Mexico today. We have 756 students, where as 99% Hispanic, 90% at risk. In addition, many of those students can not read fluently or at all.  According with the Act No Child Left Behind no student is exempt from STAAR and TELPAS test; therefore, some of these students have never gone to school in Mexico. Academically they are low but they are placed in a grade level according with their age.

Objectives and vision of the action research project

                           The purpose of this action research is to investigate how teachers can give the appropriate help to close learning gaps to students from Mexico in less than a year.  Also, this action research project is to gather effective materials and strategies from other teachers that help students to reach their grade level academically.

Review the Literature and Action Research Strategy

                           The need to help recent immigrant students to close reading learning gaps is urgent. With the Act 2001 No Child Left Behind, all students have the same rights to be educated with high standards. In addition, all students need to take the new STAAR test and there are not wavers for any student. Nevertheless, teachers that have recent immigrant students with learning gaps feel that they are alone.  According with Beth Lewis today teachers are having pressure from all sides and that is true. We feel pressure from the state, the district and principals because students are expected to pass their STAAR and TELPAS tests.  Teachers are afraid because it is difficult for them to work with 10% of the class 2 or 3 grade levels. In addition to this, there is no Spanish reading strategist to get extra help for those students. Moreover, this cause frustration to those grade teachers because how can they help those students to learn to read, reach their academical level, and don’t stay behind with their regular class?

Articulate the Vision

                           I met with my administrators, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th teachers and explained them my action research project. We spoke about the necessity to make an action research project about how we can help recent immigrant students to close reading gaps. They were all agree and supportive and were looking forward to the results. Also we met with parents and students looking for support at home and collaboration.

Manage the organization

                           I met with administrators and teachers to discuss the action research project to implement it. First of all, we agree to use the TORF (Test of Reading Fluency) to determine the reading fluency and gave us a true picture of how well the students are reading at grade level. We also discuss dates and made charts to monitor reading. I am responsible for supervise charts, analyze materials, give feed back and support to teachers. 

Manage operations

                           We all agree to meet biweekly after each reading monitoring to discuss the progress. After the reading placement and fluency test and according with the results we discuss the necessity of a Spanish reading strategist. She will pull up lower students at least half an hour every day. Teachers are good implementing reading fluency every two weeks. Students keep track of their reading with the help of a reading chart, this help to motivate them to advance every time they take the reading fluency test. We also met and discuss students’ exams DMAC results every six weeks. Teachers that get best results, share strategies with the others teachers and some times they go to observe them working. 

Respond to Community Interest and Needs

                           I will post all my findings in my blog to help those who want to follow along. I know that there could be many teachers having the same problem and I need more data collection and analysis to help teachers and students that are bilingual. In addition, recent immigrant students are going to receive the appropriate help because teachers are going to be prepared. Such Aida Walki said in her article Strategies for Success: Engaging Immigrant Students in Secondary Schools, teachers need to be prepared to understand and help recent immigrant students and programs must be compassionate. This project has been a key to learn that we are not along, there are many people conducting researches. I am sure that identifying effective strategies and materials that bilingual teachers can use will improve the reading achievement of recent immigrant students.

References

Lewis Beth. (2012). The Buildup of Standardized Testing Pressure. Retrieve from                            http://k6educators.about.com/cs/professionaldevel/a/standtests.htm

Walki Aida. (2010). Strategies for Success: Engaging Immigrant Students in Secondary Schools.           Retrieve from http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/0003strategies.html

Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. (2012). No Child Left Behind Act. Retrieve from                            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act#Children_with_disabi                           lities_in_No_Child_Left_Behind.

 

Week 5 Reflection

This course has been interesting and informative for me. I have learned from the whole course readings, assignments, lectures, videos-interviews, etc. Nevertheless, the most important is that I am learning how to work with technology. Last course was the TK20 and web conferences, now I am learning how to create and work with blogs. At the beginning I was scared, but teachers and partners from the discussion board have been supportive to me with this matter.

I enjoy the discussion board because we interact and receive advice for our projects. All people from the discussion board respect each other including our professors. All feedbacks are respectable and valuable for me and their comments encourage us to continue with our work.

The weekly videos are an important part of the course because introduce the topic. Many times with interesting and pedagogical interviews, I love it because we can play it the times we need it. At the same time the interviewers give us appropriate advices and point out data and instructions.

The books that we used for this course were essential for our action research project. Without our books, our professors words have been chosen carefully to provide help and support. If we read the assignments first then we feel lost, but once we read the books we understand what we are doing. Such as our professors they guide as to build step by step our project.

Reflecting on what we have done these five weeks has been challenging, but everything I have learned is important for my future administrative work. All kids are technology experts and we have to go parallel with them. It is important how the internet helps us do our work easily, but most important is to know how to use this important tool to help students and teachers succeed. 

 I am happy because my action research has generated greatest interest on some of my partners and my supervisor. I know that this project will help many teachers and students. Thanks to this course and my professors, I learned how to start and conduct my project. I like the way how our professors help us to learn and do our work to improve our projects. I feel that all the action researches that we are conducting are going to impact us because they are aligned to help improve education. 

Week 4 Changes to my Plan

I met with my supervisor Mrs. Gonzalez to review my action research plan, she recommended me to be more specific on the action steps. The reason is that these records have confidential information. For example;

Step 1 Specify what part of the Perm Records.

Step 2 Specify what kind of data from perm records.

Step 3Write the questions for interviews.

Step 5 She just said to add the word effective

She is happy and excited like me to hear that this project will help many bilingual teachers.

Action Research Plan Week 3

GOAL: Identify effective strategies and materials that teachers can use to improve the reading achievement of recent immigrant students.
Action Step(s)             Person(s)                Timeline:                Needed                                   Responsible              Start/End               Resources       Evaluation
1. I will go to collect recent immigrant students’ data from Perm Records	Rosa Roque	4/30/2012 5/4/2012	Perm Records	List of recent immigrant students
2. Conduct a DMAC study to analyze data	Rosa Roque	5/7/2012 5/11/2012	Computer	State test results
3. Conduct interviews with teacher of recent immigrant students	Rosa Roque Mr. Cesar Limas Alondra Galvan	5/14/2012 5/25/2012	Meeting time Conference room	List of potential strategies and materials used
4. Review interventions Plans	Rosa Roque Counselor-  Mrs. Briseada Gonzalez	6/11/2012 6/15/2012	Meeting time Copies of Interventions	List of potential strategies and materials used
5. Gather strategies used by teachers	Rosa Roque Sylvia Joseph Alondra Galvan	08/13/2012 08/17/2012	Meeting time Conference room	List of potential strategies and materials used
6. Present report to my supervisor, discuss effective/ineffective strategies and materials and make recommendations	Rosa Roque	08/27/2012 08/31/2012	Final report	Minutes of meeting

Week 2 Reflection

My reflections of the intereviews:

It is true, in real life there are infinity of problems that principals have to face, but it is good to know that there are many solutions out there that we can use that way we don’t have to re-create the wheel. Knowing what others leaders are doing today can help students and teachers provide security. We just have to “Google” it like Dr. Briseno said.

Both on the necessity and the benefit of using research to the students’ success. It was very important for me to watch these videos by experts because they pointed out aspects about data that could be used by us carefully leaders focus. 


My Action Research topics:

I choose topic number two, six and fifteen from my intern plan number two says: Create a reading plan for struggle students to increase motivation for reading, number six says: Create a collaboration group and participate in decision making to improve test scores, and number fifteen says: Meet with a current leader involved in implementing a district/school change. Find out why the change was made and what steps were taken the change. My supervisor agreed with my topics and we decided to go with the one about creating a reading plan for struggle students to increase motivation for reading.

Blogs for Educational Leaders

Since many teachers are using face book, twitters, e-mails, etc., educational leaders might have teachers create their own blog to share classroom experiences. This way they can interact with each other about  advice and techniques that are working for their students.

Action Research is...

I learned that action research is a tool that I need to use to grow professionally.  These research actions are based on intentional studies with real problems about teachers and principals real actions.  Through research we can capture problem areas to study and develop a way to improve it. There are several forms to do research, but the most important way is that we are not alone; principals and teachers can meet to identify areas of worry to us in the classrooms. Then we can meet periodically to share experiences, reflect and change according with our own necessities through researches.  Now I will be able to make my own research with classroom experiences, principals’ advice and course’ partners interactions.  I will create my own Blog to share my research with my course partners. I am sure that I will learn from other teachers’ techniques and strategies that they are using in the real world of teachers.  I will now prefer to do action research because it is based on daily occurrences in my own classroom rather than reading about what somebody else did in theirs.  I can have my colleagues input as well on what improvements I can make in the classroom.