Community Support for Independent Readers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if creating a supportive reading community among students and adults would encourage students to read independently more than without the support of a community. The study used a quasi experimental design to determine and compare the independent reading minutes, before, during and after instituting a student reading community during the school day. The intervention consisted of a small group setting of four to five students meeting in homogeneous groups by gender, but heterogeneously grouped by ability. Each group met twice a week for seven weeks. One instrument that was used to collect data was the students’ reading logs, which each student filled out each time they read independently. Another instrument was observation logs, written during the intervention process. The pre-intervention data, number of minutes read independently each week, was collected weekly beginning January 20, 2011. Beginning March 7, 2011, the intervention began and data was collected at the same intervals. May 9, 2011 ended the intervention and post-intervention data was collected till the end of the school year in June, 2011. The results of the study were compared to the pre-intervention data of minutes and to the post-intervention data of minutes. There was significant improvement while the support group intervention was in place. No significant improvement was recorded for the long term effect of intervention. Future research on this area could involve a long term study on the effects of group support that are heterogeneously grouping by gender and ability as well as the effects on writing ability due to increased reading time.