A quick recap on what we have been working on..
Therefore, this term we worked extremely hard on vocabulary! The students in my focus group worked on follow up tasks that were vocabulary rich, we did a huge focus on synonyms and had in depth discussions during reading about the new vocab in the stories. We worked on strategies for solving unfamiliar vocabulary as well. I stuck new vocab from our stories on the windows and hung colourful synonyms in places where my focus group could refer back to them at any time. I also did a big push on the use of new and exciting vocabulary during writing time for my focus group.
The Success!
At the end of this term, I did running records on my focus group. It was a success! As you can see in the table, anywhere that is coloured green, shows improvement (whether that be improvement in decoding or comprehension). 6/8 of the focus group made an improvement in comprehension and 4/8 of the group passed the test. One student actually passed comprehension but didn't pass the test as she is working on decoding strategies.
Where to next?
The problem now is retaining the vocabulary. I keep reminding myself that 'if you don't use it, you lose it'. I've noticed that my students are quickly forgetting the new vocabulary that they have been learning. My question now is, how can they retain it?
My other challenge is, there are 2 students in the focus group that made no improvement in their comprehension between the May and September running records. They both really struggle to understand the stories that they are reading. I will be working very hard with these two this term in the hopes of helping them to make progress in their reading by the end of the year.
