Independent Recreational Reading: Frequency Equals Fluency 2
My students need a wider variety of young adult novels added to their classroom library to promote independent and recreational reading. Frequency equals fluency!
My students are 125 of 2500 students who attend the largest high school in the second largest city in our state. They are currently challenged with a vocabulary grade level score of 9.33 and a reading comprehension grade level score of 10.33 and are working diligently with the teacher to increase both scores to their current grade level of 11.75. They currently have a buy-in with their teacher regarding this goal because they understand the necessity of being ready for the 12th grade level upon this school year's completion in June of 2014. They all work on activities to increase their vocabulary every Monday by building sentences with assigned vocabulary words that contain context clues to help their classmates determine proper meanings. On Fridays, they work together on exercises to increase their reading comprehension in groups and as a class. The teacher recently discovered the students' enjoyment of being read to through reading aloud sessions and practicing active reading.
Our students begin each class by writing in their daily journeys a common theme found and discussed in class by relating it to their own individual personal journeys in groups as a class.
They continually look forward to comparing and contrasting themselves with other characters in other books.
My Project
Our students will use the books to read individually and independently to further develop their comparing and contrasting skills to characters within the same piece of literature and characters in other pieces of literature. They then take what they have learned about the characters and relate those characteristics to their own personal experiences. While there will be an assigned number to students who will act as classroom librarians to earn themselves community service hours, all students will be able to sign books out of the classroom library and return them at their leisure. We are hoping that promoting independent reading will increase the students' vocabulary and reading comprehension performance. Frequency in reading will most definitely increase fluency in reading.
We are hoping this initiative will assist our students to appreciate books and reading and help promote their own desire to read recreationally beyond the teaching and learning setting within our school.
The books will help further the idea of having books readily available to students at all times, whether it be for the classes taking place within said classroom, or other classrooms throughout the building. As we earn further points, we would like to further our efforts to grow our library.
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