Phase II: Action & Assessment Plan
After encountering a number of unforeseen challenges in Phase I, I decided to use what I learned from my students and go in another direction with Phase II. Instead of focusing on QAR question types, individual work, and formulaic writing, I wanted to get back to the heart of my research question. I chose to put a heavier focus on student-initiated discussion during our reading time, while staying with evidence-based questions and answers. This followed from both the students’ feedback and from my observations in Phase I. To compliment this goal of more discussion time, I also decided it was necessary to slim down the lessons and have minimal instruction.
Action Plan
Like Phase I, the Phase II plan called for three lessons, and more if time permitted. However, in Phase II I moved away from the students’ reading textbook and pulled grade-level passages from other teacher sources. Reading stories from the textbook took most or all of the lesson time, and since the schedule was still limited, I needed something shorter to allow time for dialogue. I continued to focus on language arts, but opted for short stories or even folktales to give the students more time to explore and discuss.
Each lesson in Phase II followed the same general outline:
Action Plan
Like Phase I, the Phase II plan called for three lessons, and more if time permitted. However, in Phase II I moved away from the students’ reading textbook and pulled grade-level passages from other teacher sources. Reading stories from the textbook took most or all of the lesson time, and since the schedule was still limited, I needed something shorter to allow time for dialogue. I continued to focus on language arts, but opted for short stories or even folktales to give the students more time to explore and discuss.
Each lesson in Phase II followed the same general outline:
- Anticipatory set/activation of prior knowledge. Focus on moving from QAR/Phase I procedure to more partner-based, discussion procedure.
- Instruction. Introduce the new short story worksheets, consisting of a short reading passage followed by a few comprehension questions and space for students to compose their own questions. Figures 15 and 16 show samples of the short story worksheets.
3. Guided Practice. Look at first question as a class. Discuss one or two examples of good questions (i.e.,
based on the text).
4. Independent practice. Students proceed using the following basic plan:
final comprehension question on the passage (written on the board and answered on the back of the
worksheets). An example final question was, “What kind of person do you think the narrator is? Give
examples from the story.”
based on the text).
4. Independent practice. Students proceed using the following basic plan:
- Read the passage.
- Answer the comprehension questions individually. Highlight or underline the information (whatever each student finds useful).
- Compose two questions based on the passage (i.e., something another student could answer after reading the story).
- Meet with one or two other students, share questions, and discuss answers and opinions, referring to examples in the story to support each point.
final comprehension question on the passage (written on the board and answered on the back of the
worksheets). An example final question was, “What kind of person do you think the narrator is? Give
examples from the story.”
I used the short (half-page) reading worksheets because the passages were grade-level and the questions were written on the same sheet of paper. This let the students easily refer back to what they had read and find evidence for their answers. The page also contained space for the students to write their own questions, which worked well since this was one of my main goals for Phase II.
By meeting in pre-determined partners or teams of three, the students will have a chance to talk about the story with their classmates. I realized at the end of Phase I that this discussion time could be very valuable, and since the students were clearly interested in it, I wanted to make sure that these Phase II interventions remained centered on what was best for the students. These dialogues were student-centered and student-driven; the students were the ones moving the conversation along through their observations and questions. As the teacher, I assigned parenters and then simply monitored the conversations as necessary. I monitored them to make sure everyone a chance to speak and listen. My goal was to help the students deepen their comprehension while forming good habits of communicating and collaborating with their peers.
To ensure each student could contribute effectively to the team discussions, I asked them to complete their reading worksheets prior to joining with their partners. Their questions were to be based on evidence from the story, so that the team could continue to gain experience with supporting answers with all of the relevant facts. Since they were already familiar with the QAR questions types, I encouraged them to move beyond asking simple “Right There” questions in their dialogues. I suggested that they think of the discussions as a game or a way to challenge themselves and their partners with more subtle questions from the story. For example, asking what color shirt the main character wears might be evidence-based, but it is not a very challenging question. Asking what caused the main character to act a certain way can be evidence-based and is deep enough to prompt a real discussion.
After the team discussion time, we shared out briefly with a class as time permitted. This gave the students the opportunity to hear what their classmates discussed without taking time away from the small group dialogues. Following this, students had designated time to answer the final comprehension question about the reading using examples or evidence from the story.
Assessment Plan
To assess the effectiveness of my Phase II interventions, I collected information on the students’ progress using the following tools:
I assessed the effectiveness of my Phase II lessons based on the following criteria:
By meeting in pre-determined partners or teams of three, the students will have a chance to talk about the story with their classmates. I realized at the end of Phase I that this discussion time could be very valuable, and since the students were clearly interested in it, I wanted to make sure that these Phase II interventions remained centered on what was best for the students. These dialogues were student-centered and student-driven; the students were the ones moving the conversation along through their observations and questions. As the teacher, I assigned parenters and then simply monitored the conversations as necessary. I monitored them to make sure everyone a chance to speak and listen. My goal was to help the students deepen their comprehension while forming good habits of communicating and collaborating with their peers.
To ensure each student could contribute effectively to the team discussions, I asked them to complete their reading worksheets prior to joining with their partners. Their questions were to be based on evidence from the story, so that the team could continue to gain experience with supporting answers with all of the relevant facts. Since they were already familiar with the QAR questions types, I encouraged them to move beyond asking simple “Right There” questions in their dialogues. I suggested that they think of the discussions as a game or a way to challenge themselves and their partners with more subtle questions from the story. For example, asking what color shirt the main character wears might be evidence-based, but it is not a very challenging question. Asking what caused the main character to act a certain way can be evidence-based and is deep enough to prompt a real discussion.
After the team discussion time, we shared out briefly with a class as time permitted. This gave the students the opportunity to hear what their classmates discussed without taking time away from the small group dialogues. Following this, students had designated time to answer the final comprehension question about the reading using examples or evidence from the story.
Assessment Plan
To assess the effectiveness of my Phase II interventions, I collected information on the students’ progress using the following tools:
- Short story worksheets. These worksheets were ideal to collect and review, since they included any markings the student made to the passage (e.g., highlighting), responses to the comprehension questions, and the student-generated questions.
- Final comprehension questions. Each final question called for deeper comprehension, higher-order thinking skills such as synthesis, and the application of evidence from the text. These final questions allowed me to monitor the level of the students understanding by the end of each lesson.
- Teacher observation journal. As in Phase I, I kept a daily journal to record my anecdotal notes, observations, reflections, and any changes I made to the lessons. This journal supplemented the other tools by including notes about specific students’ strengths, needs, progress, etc. both during and after each lesson. This was particularly useful since I planned to conduct regular, informal check-ins with each of the discussion teams during and after the lesson.
I assessed the effectiveness of my Phase II lessons based on the following criteria:
- Whether the student provided an appropriate answer to each comprehension question on the worksheet. Answers were considered appropriate if they contained the correct information from the text or an answer was supported by an example from the text.
- Whether the student composed at least two original, evidence questions. Questions were considered original as long as they did not repeat or restate one of the given comprehension questions. Questions were considered evidence-based if they could be answered by reading the story alone without additional information.
- Whether the student provided an appropriate answer to the final comprehension question. Answers were considered appropriate if they brought in relevant information from the story and used examples or quotations in support.
- Whether the student used proper writing conventions, including capitalization, complete sentences, and punctuation.