29th Annual Student Research Conference
Increasing Student Achievement with Frequent Nonfiction Reading and Skill Practice
Grace M. Cripps♦
Dr. Wendy Miner, Dr. Rebecca Dierking, and Dr. Barbara Price, Faculty Mentors
Does frequent practice in the classroom necessarily result in student success? How can frequent practice with identifying main ideas, identifying details, and making inferences with a nonfiction text impact student mastery? My hypothesis was that students would improve their skills and thus their success on frequent quizzes with new readings because of both the repeated practice and the direct instruction of those skills over an eight-week period. The quizzes were designed to consistently provide students practice with those skills on nonfiction texts regarding a variety of topics and assess the students? skills with each reading. Some statistical significance was found showing increases and decreases in student performance. The findings from the research indicate that frequent practice does not necessarily increase student mastery of identifying main ideas, identifying details, and making inferences and may in fact lead to a decrease in student scores for those skills in future assessments.
Keywords: frequent practice, direct instruction, student mastery, nonfiction texts, main ideas, details, inferences
Topic(s):Education
English
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: -3
Location: VH 1224
Time: 8:30