A Summary and Review on an Action Research Report

This is an action research project by a group of students taking up Master of Arts in Teaching and Leadership from Saint Francis University in Chicago, Illinois. It focuses on the use of guided reading in the improvement of student’s reading comprehension and fluency as summarized in the title.

Chapter one of the research report begins with a general statement of the problem and focuses on the immediate problem context which are Sites A and B. It describes each school site in terms of its physical structure, profile and salaries of teachers and staff, profile of students, and profile of the district population as well as the profile of its surrounding community.

It also points out the national context of the problem and how teachers of the concerned schools can solve the problem. At this point, the researchers included related studies and related literature on the procedures and benefits of guided reading.

Chapter two presents the documentation of evidences on the problem. It presents a result of a teacher survey which proved the existence of the problem on the students’ reading comprehension and fluency. Research studies on the problem that were conducted by other researchers are revealed. Furthermore, the possible causes of the problem are also discussed.

Chapter three provides the strategy for solving the existing problem and it deliberates the literature review on guided reading. It has specified the procedural details, the persons involved and the time frame of the research project.  It also presents in a table a detailed action plan which includes the objectives, interventions, targeted group behaviour, teacher/ researcher behaviour, materials and time duration. The methods of assessment are also given.

Chapter four imparts the steps that were done to collect data, the results of the project, the conclusions and recommendations and the reflections of the teacher researchers. It concludes “that the guided reading intervention using levelled texts was highly successful in addressing the problem of the reading comprehension and fluency of grades 2 and 4.” Thus, they recommend this reading intervention to those teachers whose students are having problems in reading comprehension and fluency.

The researchers have been impersonal in writing the four chapters. However, it became personal when they wrote their reflections on the end part of the paper. There was an inconsistency in the pronouns used because of the 1st person personal pronoun “we” used on page 31. There are approximately four times more active voice clauses than passive voice clauses in the text. In fact, they are too many to be counted.

The paper has been objective in presenting information whether from the researchers’ data gathering or information from other authors. In reporting facts and data, the writers were neutral in their attitude. Indeed, the text has an average degree of formality. Though, it cannot be highly formal because of the personal nature of its closing part.

The text has used grammatical cohesive devices such as the linking signals: additionally (10), in conclusion (14), the first …, the second…(16), the third… (17), during week two (41), in week four, the following week (42), and many more. It also used substitution such as “this problem” to refer to the below grade level expectancy on reading tasks of students in grades 2 and 4 (1) and “as stated above” to refer to “helping readers develop independent, effective strategies (12).”

A few of the lexical cohesive devices used in the text are the repetition of phrases such as “guided reading” (10-13) and “thirst for reading” (13).