Context, Population, and Setting

What effect does the reading comprehension strategy T.O.R.T.A.S. have on the student acquisition of reading comprehensions skills and student performance?

There are many strategies developed and practices in hopes of improving student comprehension and performance. In reading, there are 5 different reading strategies being used in my school for performance assessments. The issue that I am finding is that students get strategy overload as they are promoted and there is a lack of consistency in any one method. In one grade they are being taught to read questions first, the others taught to write book or brain over the question, another method asks the students to read each passage 4 times. In order to adequate analyze student performance data we should help to eliminate some of the variables. Finding an effective strategy that can be used across the school can bring uniformity and structure to student assessments by identify a strategy to be used for reading comprehension on state assessments. What I hope to do is to research the effectiveness of one of those strategies that is practiced in my school.

My target population will be the 5th graders. There will be 3 classes for a estimate of 75 students total. All the 5th graders will participate and their assessments will be reported by their reading teacher. I selected 5th graders because our 5th grade test is similarity in format and assess skills across grade levels change. However 5th grade reading assessments are the most similar to other grade levels reading assessments in skill. 4th grade has a writing component that wouldn’t provide as much data as I would like as a strict reading assessment. 6th, 7th, and 8th grade reading assessments in format are similar aside from requiring higher levels of thinking. 5th grade is a good foundational level to begin to researching on. My school goes from grade levels K-8th.

My research will be over a 12 week period. There will be 4 assessments given during this period. Two of the assessments will be without use of the given strategy, and two will be with the use of T.O.R.T.A.S.. Those scores may be averaged to lessen any discrepancy in the data. There will be a diagnostic assessment that will serve as the base line data. Another assessment will be given without the use of T.O.R.T.A.S.. After that data has been taken then two assessment will be given after several mini lessons on T.O.R.T.A.S is given.