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Study Overview...
While obtaining my Masters of Reading Education degree at East Carolina University, I had the opportunity to plan, implement, and carry out an action research project with two fifth grade classes involving their PYP Unit of Inquiry, Ecosystems. There was a total of 33 students that participated in this action research study. The Intervention class received the the read-aloud with the preview-review method while the Control class did not receive the preview-review method. The purpose of this study was to discover if using read-alouds with the preview-review method in a Spanish class would increase Spanish vocabulary. I was also interested in learning if this intervention would improve student interest. The preview-review method consisted of building background knowledge first (in English). This allowed me to make sure the students knew what we would be reading and what things would be important to understand first. We did this in English so everyone would understand the discussion. After building background knowledge, I read the text aloud in Spanish. Once the read-aloud was finished, we then reviewed the information I read, in English. This type of lesson was repeated three times for this same class. At the conclusion of the study, I learned that this type of strategy did, in fact, help students learn Spanish vocabulary words as well as increase their interest of reading.
While obtaining my Masters of Reading Education degree at East Carolina University, I had the opportunity to plan, implement, and carry out an action research project with two fifth grade classes involving their PYP Unit of Inquiry, Ecosystems. There was a total of 33 students that participated in this action research study. The Intervention class received the the read-aloud with the preview-review method while the Control class did not receive the preview-review method. The purpose of this study was to discover if using read-alouds with the preview-review method in a Spanish class would increase Spanish vocabulary. I was also interested in learning if this intervention would improve student interest. The preview-review method consisted of building background knowledge first (in English). This allowed me to make sure the students knew what we would be reading and what things would be important to understand first. We did this in English so everyone would understand the discussion. After building background knowledge, I read the text aloud in Spanish. Once the read-aloud was finished, we then reviewed the information I read, in English. This type of lesson was repeated three times for this same class. At the conclusion of the study, I learned that this type of strategy did, in fact, help students learn Spanish vocabulary words as well as increase their interest of reading.
Read-Alouds...
- allow students to focus on the actual content rather than decoding.
- help students create a mental image while they are listening to the story.
- teach students new concepts.
- help students learn and become "literate."
- fill the gap of limited vocabulary, by exposing children to book language (Kindle, 2009).
The Preview-Review Method...
- builds background knowledge for students in their primary language (English)
- allows students to acquire a second language (Spanish).
- reviews the content in their primary language (English).
- allows students to acquire a second language while they are also learning the material being taught (Ulanoff & Pucci, 1999).
- allows for connections to be made between the students' first and second language to facilitate new learning (Ulanoff & Pucci, 1999).
- can be used with any topic or read-aloud!
Throughout this study, fifth grade students learned about Ecosystems. Click on the word Ecosystems to find what types of information fifth graders learned!
The Results...
After 4 weeks of the intervention, fifth grade students were tested based on the vocabulary words that they were learning over the 3 repeated readings. The intervention class made a mean gain of 1.53 points while the control class made a mean gain of 0.31 points on the Vocabulary Acquisition Assessment. Although both classes acquired new Spanish vocabulary, the Intervention class made the most growth compared to the Control class (see graph below). That means that both classes learned new Spanish vocabulary words with and without the preview-review method. Check out a few facts below.
Intervention Class Facts:
Control Class Facts:
After 4 weeks of the intervention, fifth grade students were tested based on the vocabulary words that they were learning over the 3 repeated readings. The intervention class made a mean gain of 1.53 points while the control class made a mean gain of 0.31 points on the Vocabulary Acquisition Assessment. Although both classes acquired new Spanish vocabulary, the Intervention class made the most growth compared to the Control class (see graph below). That means that both classes learned new Spanish vocabulary words with and without the preview-review method. Check out a few facts below.
Intervention Class Facts:
- Consisted of 17 students.
- Had 6 students that previously spoke Spanish (35% of the class).
- 76% of the class made growth!
- Enjoyed being read to in Spanish/English the most (check out the graph below)!
Control Class Facts:
- Consisted of 16 students.
- Had 9 students that previously spoke Spanish (56% of the class).
- 56% of the class made growth!
Implications for Educators...
These results provide a new strategy for educators teaching a second language to use in their classrooms. The repeated read-aloud is a strategy that can be implemented into any type of content lesson, including a Spanish class (Lin, 2014). The preview-review method is a strategy that can be used in the higher elementary grades to build background knowledge when teaching a second language while reviewing it in their native language (Ulanoff & Pucci, 1999). This type of strategy would also be beneficial for regular education teachers. Allowing the students to hear a story more than once allows them to have a better understanding of the content being learned, in case they didn’t during the first reading.
Click here to learn about Karen Kindle's book, Using Read-Alouds to Teach Vocabulary and how this text could be used in your classroom!
These results provide a new strategy for educators teaching a second language to use in their classrooms. The repeated read-aloud is a strategy that can be implemented into any type of content lesson, including a Spanish class (Lin, 2014). The preview-review method is a strategy that can be used in the higher elementary grades to build background knowledge when teaching a second language while reviewing it in their native language (Ulanoff & Pucci, 1999). This type of strategy would also be beneficial for regular education teachers. Allowing the students to hear a story more than once allows them to have a better understanding of the content being learned, in case they didn’t during the first reading.
Click here to learn about Karen Kindle's book, Using Read-Alouds to Teach Vocabulary and how this text could be used in your classroom!
Information for Parents...
Read-alouds are essential! Reading to children not only gives you something to talk about, but it also allows you to teach your child something new! Check out what a community in Guatemala had to say about reading aloud to children! |
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Check out some resources that you could use to learn about Ecosystems! Click here!
***To protect confidentiality, pseudonyms were used for students mentioned on this website.