Inferencing Strategies

Reflection

 

Upon the completion of my action research and data collection, I have been able to reflect on my teaching practices, student results, and future ideas for teaching the strategy for inferring. The first thing that I have reflected on is how I taught the three strategies of visualizing, questioning, and making connections. I believe that I provided many tools and strategies for working on the specific  skill. As a result, the students were extremely capable of completing each task. However, something that I believe I failed to do an adequate job of was teaching students to continuously use those skills and use more than one at a time. I say this because students did much better on the SRI than the district assessment. I think this was because we had just finished practicing these skills during the SRI testing window. To the contrary, we had completed these strategies roughly two weeks before the district test. As a result, I believe that could have been why students did better on the former rather than the latter. If I could reteach it, I would teach it as  an "always" skill rather than just a one time during instruction skill.  I will explore ways to build students' transfer of skills ability through additional research. Students need to realize that skills are not learned in isolation, rather, they should automatically use skills for any and all tasks.

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I also looked at student results on both the SRI and the district assessments. Not all students did well on the test in relation to the standard for inferencing. I have come to the conclusion, through data analysis, that students who went down on the SRI were students who made large gains throughout the year. As a result, the test started at the high end of their skill ability and any misses resulted in a drop of score, making it very difficult for them to show large growth. I also noticed that it was my advanced students who grew the least. This was a result of the fact that they were already highly skilled at this standard and as a result stayed roughly the same. Another area to research might be to look at differentiating my instruction to address the gaps in students' needs and abilities.

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As for the students who grew tremendously, I believe that was a reflection of learning an entirely new skill. Many students were not visualizing as they read, or they didn't think the stories pertained in any way to their lives. By teaching these strategies, they felt reading was more personal and applicable which increased their ability to place themselves in the characters' shoes. As a result, they could draw many more conclusions. Visualizing and making connections encouraged them to engage more actively with their reading.  Their engagement and enjoyment increased as well.

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If I could repeated this action plan again, I would use the graphic organizers continuously and interchangeably with one another. Instead of one skill at a time, I would piggy back each of them off one another. This is exactly what I plan to do next year. I also plan to implement it with analogies as well so that students can make deeper connections. By taking this route I will help align my teaching to the Five Core Propositions of Teaching. It will allow me to truly know my content as well as teach it in a confident well-known way. After all it is my responsibility to learn from my experience and adapt to to help increase student achievement. 

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Overall, the skill of inferencing applies so greatly to classroom standards and 21st century learning in all content areas.  This strategy teaches inductive and deductive reasoning, which will always be essential both inside the classroom and beyond. Not only is inferencing a great 21st century skill, it also aligns with standards at both the national and district level. It is an essential skill students need to be able to do in order to truly gain all the information possible from the text. 

From this experience I have learned that in order to teach effectively, I need to be aware of best practices that are supported by research. By being aware of strong instructional strategies, I can best help my students. Once I have gained insight into these strategies, I need to incorporate them throughout the school year so that they have a continuous impact on student achievement.