Whitney Sorensen and Professor Deborah Dean

Main Text

This study sought to discover and analyze what students do as they read, and whether or not classroom instruction could help them read better. The initial survey, called a “Reading Road Map”, was given to the students to record what they thought and did as they read an article provided by the researcher. This initial survey was then contrasted with a secondary survey, another “Reading Road Map”, in order to discover if the thoughts and actions done by students while they read changed at all as a result of instruction. The instruction in the classroom was given after the initial survey and taught students a few useful reading strategies that they could use to help read and comprehend the text in the article that they were given. These reading strategies are: the use of text features to help students understand and make meaning from text, using word parts (such as prefixes and suffixes), using context clues to discover the meaning of a word, and annotating the text.

These specific reading strategies were taught so that students could experience more “flow” as they read. Flow is a concept first defined by psychologist Csikszentmihalyi as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter”(Wilhelm 28). This flow experience can take place in reading, and for most people it is a state where they are actively thinking and engaging with the text they are reading. Students often describe a flow experience as being able to “see a movie in my head” while they are reading. This flow experience or state is the ultimate goal for students as they read, because when they experience flow they are learning something or making meaning with the text as they read. The reading strategies that were taught to the students in this study aim to help students achieve that flow state, or a reading experience from which they can learn, interpret, connect with, react to, and make meaning from a text.

The results of this study show a few interesting things with regards to students experiencing flow. First, distraction occurred very frequently while students read. Based on what students recorded on their “Reading Road Map” as they read, the initial survey shows that students were distracted an average six times while reading a two page article. Many students were even distracted up to 12 or 16 times while reading. These distractions include siblings, eating meals, sleeping, music, social networking, phone calls, friends, texting, television, dancing, haircuts, bathroom breaks, pets, parents, and more. However, students with more distractions also recorded more instances of not understanding a word or paragraph in the text. This contrasts greatly with the second survey taken, where students on average were distracted two times while reading and had fewer instances of not understanding a word or part of the text. This shows that students were able to implement reading strategies in order to understand the text better, and so were less easily distracted. Many had more of a flow experience because of the effectiveness of the reading strategies.

The results of this study also showed that appearance matters. Students often based their reading actions on things such as text size or type of font. Small text size and regular font was less appealing, and led to students skipping or skimming text. However, the presence of certain text features helped to students to make meaning from the text. Sometimes the font size indicated an important part of the text, and so helped students to understand a word. Often the presence of a picture followed by a caption not only made the text more interesting, but also allowed students to understand what a new word meant. Interpreting text features was a strategy taught in the classroom, and was effective in helping students achieve flow and understanding.

Likewise, skipping and skimming occurred not only when students made judgments on text appearance, but also when re-reading the text to understand a word or sentence did not prove useful. Re-reading was a strategy already in place in the classroom and present in the initial survey, but it was not always effective. After the initial survey, during instruction time, re-reading was taught as part of using context clues and word parts. Being able to break down a sentence or word to understand meaning proved successful, and made re-reading the sentence or word more worthwhile. There were no instances of students using context clues or word parts in their reading in the initial survey; however the second survey showed many more students using it successfully to make meaning from the text.

Annotation was another strategy taught in the classroom, however it did not prove to be useful to the students. Only three students out of the 75 in the initial survey did any kind of annotating (highlighting, circling, underlining, writing notes in the margin, etc.), and the secondary survey showed that only 12 out of the 75 did any kind of annotating. Annotating was taught in order to help students interact with the physical text more so that they could make meaning and connections with the text. However, the 12 students that annotated the text in various fashions did so in order to identify a word that they did not know, either by underlining, highlighting, or writing a question mark by the word. After that point, they used context clues or word parts to determine the meaning of the word, or else just skipped it entirely.

In conclusion, the reading strategies that were taught were effective when taught in the classroom, but only when they are connected to pre-existing student behaviors. Appearance is already examined by students, but when they are also taught to use text features as part of examining appearance they make more meaning from the text. Students will skip or skim text when re-reading does not work, but when they are able to use context clues and word parts as they re-read, they can experience more flow. Overall, students are constantly distracted, but when they use reading strategies taught in the classroom, they achieve more flow. Annotation was not successful because it didn’t connect to any pre-existing behavior when reading a text and thus was not effective in increasing the flow experience while reading.

References

• Smith, Michael and Jeffrey Wilhelm. Reading Don’t Fix No Chevy’s. Heinemann, 2002, Portsmouth NH. Print.

NOTE: This study could not have been completed without the guidance and mentoring from Dr. Deborah Dean of the English Education Department at BYU, and Elisabeth Thomas, English Department Chair at Elk Ridge Middle School.