Oral Defense

• Andy and I have been married for 3 years!
• Our son, Ethan, is 15 months old and the joy of our lives!

Playing the Piano
Christmas & Decorating
Craft Projects
Photography

Fixing & cruising around in our Hot Rod
Paris
Disneyland
Traveling
Cayman Islands Cozumel

• Fort Herriman Middle School (2004-Present)
7 th grade science teacher
Science Department Chair
Positive Behavioral Management
Coordinator Consulting Educator – help struggling teachers in district
• South Hills Middle School (2000-2004)
7 th , 8 th , and 9 th grade science teacher
Positive Behavioral Management
Coordinator

• Many students enter the 7 th reading level. grade far below
• The gap is widened, especially in science, where textbooks are full of new vocabulary!
• This leads to academic and behavior problems in classrooms!

• Attitudes about reading will influence ability to read.
• Practice makes perfect. More practice increases scores.
• Prior knowledge helps students make connections between what they are reading to improve comprehension.
• There are many different types of reading strategies that can be used to improve reading scores. Practice at these skills is what will make a difference.

• In order to determine if there was a need for reading strategies to be taught, student reading scores from previous years were analyzed.
• Reading specialists filled out surveys using their expertise, to guide the investigation of how to better help the struggling readers.

• To increase reading scores of struggling students by teaching vocabulary and reading strategies.

• Decode unknown words using surrounding text.
• Use a dictionary to look up unknown words.
• Correctly summarize a paragraph.
• Correctly visualize a paragraph.
• Pass a reading test at grade level.

• Gagne’s Nine Learning Events (Modified)
• Pre-Instructional Strategy
• Content Presentation
• Learner Participation
• Assessments
• Transfer of Learning

• PowerPoint used to introduce and present materials.
• Internet used by students to look up definitions, and take practice assessments.

• Subject Matter Expert
• Rubric
• Interview
• One-on-one
• Assessments
• Interviews
• Small Group
• Assessments
• Surveys

• SME Evaluation Rubric and Interview
• Pre-Assessment: STAR reading test
• Individual Objective Assessments
Using a Dictionary Assessment
Word meaning in Context Assessment
Visualization Strategy Assessment
Summarization Strategy Assessment
• Post-Assessment: STAR reading test
• Surveys – small group
• Interviews – one-on-one

• Recommended a longer unit of instruction.
• Time did not permit to teach the unit for a full quarter.

• 75% of students were able to decode unknown words.
• 100% of students could use the dictionary.
• 75% of students were able to use the summarization strategy.
• 100% of students were able to use the visualization strategy.
• 0% of students read at grade level on the pre-test.
• 50% of students read at grade level on the post-test.
• 100% of students improved their reading scores from the pre-test.

• 53% of students could decode unknown words.
• 97% of students could use a dictionary.
• 77% of students could use the summarization strategy.
• 70% of students could use the visualization strategy.
• 0% of students read at grade level on the pre-test.
• 23% of students read at grade level on the post-test.
• 100% of students improved their reading level.

What I Learned
• I learned how to use backwards design to create new curriculum.
Application to Workplace
• Build curriculum maps around the benchmarks.
• Plan lessons that teach the concepts in the curriculum.
• Create small formative assessments to determine what kids are learning.
• Re-teach if necessary.
• Give the summative assessment.

What I Learned
• Finding research based articles on best practices!
Application to Workplace
• Ability to incorporate new, data based best practices into teaching, and help other teachers do the same.

What I Learned
• How to build a web page
Application to Workplace
• I now have my own school wiki and blog. The wiki contains information about the integrated team that I’m on at school.
There are also links to the team teacher’s blogs so that students can download missing work, and see what we’re doing on a day to day basis.

What I Learned
• How to better analyze data, and to ensure it is valid.
• Formative vs.
Summative Evaluation
Application to Workplace
• We do weekly formative assessments, and then combine those formative assessments into a summative test at the end of a unit. In order to make the results of these tests more valid, we came up with different, but similar questions for the summative assessment.

• This was a great opportunity to sit down and reflect on what is really important in the classroom. This reflection led me to what my capstone project would be, and how best to incorporate good reading strategies into my classroom.
• Overall, student success has increased in my classroom, making this project, and my time at
WGU a great success.