Struggling Readers:

Increasing Reading & Moving Readers

Polyxeni Petratos

Introduction

As public policy analysts you will work in groups to find out whether students’ engagement in reading would increase if more reading materials were made available in our classroom.

Then you will work on finding a solution to increase academic performance levels and meet the standards.

Have you ever imagined a classroom library with a variety of different types of texts available for you to read?

As your teachers, we try very hard to provide you with texts based on your interests. Still students are struggling to perform at approaching / on grade level standards. Before we can see any growth in performance levels, we need to engage our students to enjoy reading throughout their daily lives.

★ Would you read more if you read magazines in class?

★ Would you enjoy reading if you could read books using digital resources?

★ How about reading comics, newspapers, poetry, travel brochures, catalogs or even recipes?

For this unit, you will be working in groups to research and find solutions to help students in our classroom meet grade standard reading levels through text engagement and access to high interest reading materials.

Task

You will be working in groups to find out if students' academic performance in your classroom would increase if they were reading a variety of texts.

In this task you will:

❏ Conduct a student survey - Why students do not enjoy reading.

❏ Your group will research why students in your class are not moving up reading levels.

❏ Your group will research creative ways to use all kinds of print to engage readers.

❏ Your group will orally and digitally (PowerPoint) present a solution to help each other increase reading engagement in our classroom.

Process / Resources

Being a Public Policy Analyst

Your group will create a plan using the PPA to present a solution so that students in our classroom improve academically.

You will begin by reading more about the many kinds of texts that can increase students interest in reading.

As a group in your class, you will work together to read, analyze and find possible solutions to increase interest in reading so that academic levels begin to progress.

Read 15 reading materials that aren't texts

Public Policy Analyst

PPA Steps

★ Step 1: Identify the problem:

Identify the Problem Worksheet

The problem is that students are not reading enough in school because of their low interest in the texts made available to them.

★ Step 2: Gather the evidence. Where is the evidence?

★ Gather Evidence Worksheet

For this step, you will conduct a survey to find out why students are not reading books from the classroom library.

Click to access survey here.

You will also conduct student interviews to find out how many texts per week they would be willing to read if they had access to different types of reading materials and access to their own preference of text topics.

When you have gathered student interviews and completed the surveys, we will have a class discussion to discuss what students think about having a classroom library that holds a variety of different texts.

Class discussion should also consist of how reading engagement will increase and how academic performance will also rise.

★ Step 3: What are the causes?

★ Find the causes of the problem

For Step 3, you will work in groups to find the causes of the problem.

Ask students in our classroom:

What are the causes for low academic performance?

Why are students not interested in reading our classroom library books?

Record your answers.

After researching and gathering the causes of the problem, you will then work in your groups to organize your findings.

★ Step 4: What is the existing policy?

★ Examine the existing policy in place Worksheet

What policy is currently in place to solve the problem?

Read Why Kids Reading Scores are Down

★ Step 5: What policies can you create to solve the problem?

★ Develop Solutions Worksheet

For this step, you will use research to make a plan that will increase low academic performance in our classroom.

You will work together in your group to decide on 3 possible solutions from Step 5 and examine their feasibility and effectiveness.

Read Finding Effective High Interest Texts for Students

Click to read more about the different types of reading materials available.

Read 10 Things for Kids to read besides books

★ Step 6: Effectiveness and Feasibility : What is the best policy to solve the problem?

★ Select Best Solution Worksheet

Watch Helping Struggling Readers

Before you can choose the best policy to help readers in our classroom grow, we must ask ourselves how effective this policy is and how feasible it is. Complete the following chart:

FEASIBILITY (Is this possible?)

Feasibility >>> Effectiveness	High	Medium	Low
Highly Effective
Medium
Low

Evaluation

Rubric

	4 Exceeds Expectations	3 Meets Expectations	2 Developing	1 Below Expectations
Organization	Information is presented in a clear and organized way	Most of my information is presented in a clear and organized way	Although my information is presentable, it is difficult to present and understand.	My information is unorganized and difficult to understand.
Supporting Research and Evidence Collected	Thorough and relevant.	Less thorough but still substantial and relevant.	Relevance is not always made clear.	Insufficient information. Research and Evidence do not correlate.
Content and Details	My content is informative and accurate. My research has many explanations as per the research conducted.	My content is informative and mostly accurate. My project has adequate details.	My content is not related to the topic.	There are many inaccuracies and/or few supporting details.
Presentation Overall and Effort	I worked the entire time on my project and continued to work and strengthen my understanding.	I worked on my project until it was complete. I also pushed myself to continue working.	I put some effort into my project.	I did not put enough effort into my project.

Conclusion

At the end of your WebQuest, you will:

★ Understand how to increase engagement in reading

★ Understand why students are not reading enough in the classroom

★ Explain solutions to the problem: How can we increase reading interest so that students’ fluency and accuracy rates increase.

★ Work collaboratively with your peers to discuss the problem, the causes and possible solutions.

Standards

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.2 Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.3 Describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.1 Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.2 Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.3 Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.

Social Studies Standards

Social Studies Practices

• Gathering, Interpreting and Using Evidence

• Chronological Reasoning and Causation

• Comparison and Contextualization

• Economics and Economic Systems

• Civic Participation