Elizabeth McRitchie

The Effects of Small Group Intervention on Second Graders’ Reading Comprehension

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Abstract:

Reading comprehension is an essential skill students need in order to be successful. Various skills are needed to be able to fully comprehend a text. These skills include active reading skills, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and reasoning. In my internship I noticed that students struggle with reading comprehension which led me to question why and how I can adjust my teaching practices to overcome it. Was the difficulty comprehending text due to a lack of vocabulary knowledge? To gain a better understanding of students and reading and vocabulary knowledge in general students were given an interest survey to assess students’ interests, attitudes, strengths, and areas for improvement. Students will also be given a Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI) and vocabulary knowledge survey (VKS) to determine their group for the intervention of small groups. The QRI assesses word recognition and comprehension skills. The VKS allows students to define a variety of words they may or may not know. Students will be placed in small groups for a more individualized instruction focus on vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. Near the end of the intervention students were again given the QRI and VKS assessments to show if any changes occurred during the intervention.

After analyzing the data collected from the assessment, very few students showed changes in reading comprehension or vocabulary knowledge. One of the contributing factors to these static results was that small groups were only able to meet for a very limited amount of time. Observations during small groups lead to the discovery that many students struggled with blending words, which can also be a cause of the struggle with reading comprehension. In conclusion, vocabulary knowledge does not appear to be the leading cause of reading comprehension difficulties for this class and there are other contributing factors.