Finally Back in the Groove!

The ACT, A/B schedule, and snow days have absolutely wreaked havoc on my study, and I am really freaking out that I don't have many journal entries at this point.  Spring break is only 7 days away, and I will only see these students 4 times during those days.  In addition, last week, I missed Monday due to a family situation, and on Wednesday, we had to STAR test, which took up nearly the whole block.  Our writing journals have suffered, and I am growing more and more concerned and upset about how my eventual findings will turn out. Ugh. So frustrating.

Yesterday, Tuesday, March 17th, we finally were able to spend time with our reading journals.  I decided to allow students to read a book or magazine of their choice and have them practice the skill of summarizing.  This is a skill that we have been working on all year to help with comprehension so they are familiar with doing this and know what is expected.  I then thought that it would be useful to know if students would read more thoughtfully if they knew that they would be expected to retain what they'd read for the purpose of writing a summary.

Before reading time began, I explained what they were going to do when it was finished by saying, "Read with the intention of summarizing when we are finished."  They then read for 15 minutes.

When reading time was complete, they were asked to summarize.  I gave them about 7 minutes to do so.  Some students finished very quickly and some took the entire time. I observed three students look back at their reading material for details.

Once the summaries were complete I posed the following question:  "Do you think you read more effectively having known that you were going to be asked to write a summary at the end of the reading session?"  They simply had to respond with a YES or NO.

53% NO

47% YES

.

I find this to be very interesting because I assumed that most students would read more intentionally, and I am going to ask a follow-up question on Friday as to why they did not read with more intention.  I am so curious as to whether this is apathy, lack of interest, or something that I am not thinking of...