Improving Language Arts Skills through the Use of Modeling and Grade Appropriate Comprehension Activities.

This report describes a program for increasing students' language arts skills by,incorporating modeling and grade appropriate comprehension activities. The targeted population consisted of Kindergarten, 4th, and 6th grade students in a rural middle class community located in central Illinois. The problems with language arts skills were documented through motivational student surveys, comprehension assessment tools, and teacher checklists for literacy development. Literature review of solutions name reading strategies and instructional methods as ways to create solutions to the existing problems. Researchers focused on teaching students about reading logs, structural analysis, listening activities, predictions, context clues, comparisons, main ideas, using background knowledge and sequencing events. The researchers also included the use of guest readers, weekly visits to the library, and daily oral reading to motivate student interest in reading. The researchers collected data from students to reveal that this was an existing problem at the research sites. Students were given a Motivational Interest Survey and a Checklist for Assessing Literacy Development at the onset of the research in order to reveal how students felt about their language arts abilities. Students kept a reading log and completed weekly comprehension activities to show their progress and growth throughout the intervention period. At the end of the research project, students were given the motivational survey and assessed on their growth by the Motivational Interest Survey and a Checklist for Assessing Literacy Development. The post intervention data indicated an increase in student motivation to read and grade appropriate comprehension skills. Appendixes contain survey instruments, checklists, a comprehension assessment rubric, and a reading log rubric. (Contains 27 references and 27 figures of data.) (Author/RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document: