Action Research Proposal

1) What is the problem?
Kindergarten students have difficulties with rhyming words and word families

2) What is the rational for the project?
Research shows that implementing a range of rhyming games can help students improve their recognition of rhyme and word families in text

3) What strategy will be used to the address the problem?
Rhyming games will be used throughout the project to help students improve and recognize rhyme and word families in text.

4) What is the question?
How can I use a variety of rhyming games to help my students recognize rhyme and word families in text?
Will the rhyming strategies change student attitudes about reading instruction?

5) What evidence is presented that the strategy will work?
"Wylie and Durrell reported that their studies of early literacy development revealed that children learn words more easily by the the use of "rhyming phonographs" as opposed to learning complicated decoding rules that have many exceptions."

6) How will the data be collected?
*Pre-test (highlighting rhyming words in a a passage)
*Performance checklists
*Observations/teacher journal
* Work Samples

Teacher Action Research Project

1. What is the title of the project?
- Using Reader's Theatre to Show off Good Reading

2. What is the Question?
- How can I effectively utilize reader’s theater to improve the fluency and reading comprehension skills of my students?

4. What strategy is being used to address?
- The strategy being used is reader’s theater.

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work?
- "The National Reading Panel in 2000 identified fluency as a key ingredient to successful reading instruction because of its effect on students’ reading efficiency and comprehension. Identifying the impact of readers theater on my students’ fluency levels and comprehension is important because third grade is considered a benchmark grade in my district, and promotional criteria is based on reading at or above a designated reading percentile as measured by our annual standardized testing. Evaluating the impact of readers theater and noting the patterns I discover in my students’ performance will help me effectively implement an instructional program to meet students’ individual needs."

6. How will data be collected to determine if the strategy will work?
- Data will be collected by surveys, observations, taped reader’s theater performances, and student fluency assessments.

7. How was the data analyzed?
- To determine changes in fluency and comprehension

8. What were the results?
- It did not improve or hurt the high achieving students since they were already good readers. It did however improve reading rate, fluency, comprehension and reading with expression for the general education students. It did not help comprehension with the special needs students but this is probably because they lack vocabulary needed for comprehension.

9. How do the results inform teacher practice?
- The teacher could incorporate reader’s theater in her curriculum. This is a fun and engaging way for students to better their fluency, comprehension, and reading skills.