Internship Week 3

Once again, a week has passed and I don't know where it went! This placement is so fast-paced and I really love it.  I feel like I am at the school for maybe 30 minutes a day.  I like the fact that in a resource room you are constantly discussing different areas of a subject with different students.  It is never the same thing.  For example, during reading, one student was working on ending sounds, another on writing a paragraph, another on sounding out/spelling words, another on rhyming, etc.  

It was from this that I discovered the topic I wanted to research for my Action Research project.  This was not something I was particularly looking for.  I sort of stumbled across it.  I saw a student struggling with reading words in isolation.  I thought to myself, "if words in isolation are a struggle, I wonder how this student does with reading fluency and comprehension?" Immediately, I realized that this is certainly an interest of mine.  How can I improve fluency for my students? This is a skill they are going to need in life, especially for their future schooling.  From there, I began researching different strategies to improve reading fluency for students.  I am still narrowing my subject down, however.  Do I want to see how one particular strategy influences reader fluency? Or do I want to try different strategies each day throughout the week to see if it improves reader fluency? There is a lot to be done, but I certainly feel up for the challenge! 

I always liked reading time as an elementary student, and I feel that I developed positive feelings toward reading because of that.  I want to help my students so they do not have a negative connotation with reading.  Perhaps focusing a lot of my time with this area will give my students the confidence and tools they need to take chances with reading and conquer it.  I am very excited to do so and I can't wait to see what this study produces.