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With the research and the class work I have learned over these weeks it is evident that reading comprehension is a problem both on and off line for adolescent students. It started with just a line in the book by Willingham that states students need prior knowledge to understand new text. This was an aha moment for me, I had never thought of it that way as being that simple. “Failing to recognize the Internet as a reading comprehension issue leads to the installation of public policies that actually hold back diverse literacy learners in economically challenged school districts. These policies ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in developing the new forms of online reading comprehension required for learning in the 21st century.” Leu 208
I have been the Title One teacher in our building and been given the task of using Study Island to help all the eight grade students increase their ability in language arts skills. I have become increasingly disenchanted by the results. Study Island uses test to evaluate the students present level on the language arts GLCE and if they do not know the material it drops them down a grade level until they are successful and then they need to work their way back up the ladder until they pass their grade level. I have done a variety of things to enhance this but the results are not what I would like them to be. The students make progress that is lost over the summer and often revert to scores lower then the beginning of the previous year for those students in that bottom twenty-five percent. They pass the Study Island test above the state levels and still they do not perform on standardized test effectively.(Diagram 2)
I have been the Title One teacher in our building and been given the task of using Study Island to help all the eight grade students increase their ability in language arts skills. I have become increasingly disenchanted by the results. Study Island uses test to evaluate the students present level on the language arts GLCE and if they do not know the material it drops them down a grade level until they are successful and then they need to work their way back up the ladder until they pass their grade level. I have done a variety of things to enhance this but the results are not what I would like them to be. The students make progress that is lost over the summer and often revert to scores lower then the beginning of the previous year for those students in that bottom twenty-five percent. They pass the Study Island test above the state levels and still they do not perform on standardized test effectively.(Diagram 2)