School Name: Harford Community College, Bel Air, MD
Course Name: Reading and Understanding College Textbooks (upper-level developmental reading)
Course Format: Lab-based
Key Results After fully integrating MyReadingLab into class time, students’ post-test averages increased from 66 to 74 percent, and completion rates increased from 91 to 98 percent. Based on these results, all sections of upper-level developmental reading will meet in a computer lab starting in fall 2015.
Course materials Reading and Understanding College Textbooks, a custom text with MyReadingLab
Submitted by Gina Williams and Elizabeth Holmes
Setting
Harford Community College is a suburban, two-year institution 35 miles outside of Baltimore that enrolls 10,000
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Students meet for three hours a week for 15-weeks.
Reading and Understanding College Textbooks emphasizes improvement of the reading process and study skills necessary for understanding and learning college-level material; it focuses on strengthening reading comprehension and encourages critical reading skills that are necessary for successful completion of college courses. Students learn a variety of strategies to assist them in improving vocabulary, comprehension, test-taking abilities, and flexibility in reading.
Challenges and Goals
We chose to implement MyReadingLab beginning in fall 2013 due to a number of challenges we had been facing. Previously, students had to take division exams on an internal web portal in our tutoring and testing center. If students did not receive an 80 percent, they would have to work with a tutor in the computer lab to improve their skills before taking the exam a second time. We experienced high volumes of paperwork and grading errors, and students were not getting what they needed to succeed.
MyReadingLab offers students a flexible, convenient way to remediate wherever and whenever they choose. It provides instructors with all the necessary content in one location and the ability to ensure consistency of topic mastery across sections. It has been a goal of ours to tweak our MyReadingLab implementation each semester to improve student results and
Tyner’s Small-Group Differentiated Reading Model builds on each individual component and supports each of the other components. Each lesson of the model introduces new text for the students to read, interpret, comprehend, and synthesize. The re-reading of the text increases fluency, identification of sight words and their meanings, and comprehension
Before using a social studies textbook, a deep analysis of its contents will be required. How the book covers the topics in comparison to the definition of, social studies bring forth the relevance of the book in effective planning and instruction. Whether or not the book conveys separate classroom activities for class participation and a chance to form a deeper understanding of the lesson is desirable. Furthermore, the book should integrate other subjects such as writing to incorporate a deeper interest in social studies. The textbook
(Counselors Affecting Reading Everyday). My plan would involve developing one-on-one counseling sessions where the students would start off by taking a learning style inventory as well as a reading interest inventory. The purpose of the learning style inventory would be to help the students as well as their teachers to understand how each individual child learns and processes information. The reading interest inventory would serve the purpose of helping the students to find a particular type of text that they may enjoy reading. Upon completion of the learning style inventory and reading interest inventory, the students would begin meeting with the counselor to receive one-on-one reading opportunities using books that students self-select based on their interest. This one-on-one meeting will serve to meet the needs of those students who stated that they did not have anyone at home to read with. The students will utilize the school’s Accelerated Reading program to take quizzes on the books they read with the counselor. After earning their first five Accelerated Reading points, a book will be purchased for the student based on their interest. This incentive plan will serve as a means to provide personal books for those students that do not own any as well as attempting to help them to get over the fear or taking reading tests. During these weekly meetings, the counselor will provide a variety of reading text (based on student
Our local ROE recently offered a two-day professional development workshop focused on the new Illinois learning standards for English Language Arts. This workshop provided an overview of nine ELA shift kits. These kits are provided by ISBE to aid classroom teachers in the shift to the CCSS. For this evaluation of a reading program, I have chosen to evaluate the usefulness of these ELA shift kits and my school’s familiarity with these ELA shifts.
“To Dumb for Complex Texts?”, an essay by Mark Bauerlein, states high schools are at fault for students inability to comprehend complex texts. Bauerlein starts by noting students who enter college are not as prepared as they should be, evidenced by their placement exam scores. Bauerlein goes on to state the lack of readiness is due to high schools increasing focus on digital reading, rather than the physical form. Additionally Bauerlein writes that complex reading is not thoroughly integrated in to student curriculum. Bauerlein believes that because of the high schools simple literature curriculum, students beginning college have not been properly exposed to complex texts, and as a result cannot properly comprehend the readings assigned in
Hagerstown Community College (HCC) is a public, not for profit, two-year college located in Washington County Maryland. HCC is one of the first colleges in Maryland that started by offering mostly evening classes. Today, the campus offers over 100 programs of study on its 319-acre campus consisting of associate degrees, certifications, and non-credit continuing education courses. HCC reaches out to four states for recruitment purposes: Maryland (specifically Washington County), Pennsylvania (mostly Franklin and Fulton Counties), West Virginia (Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson Counties), and Virginia (mostly the Winchester area). The campus serves more than 6,000 credit students, 9,000 non-credit students, and 800 high school students.
READ 180 Next Generation is designed around common core and the rigor that comes with the Common Core initiative (Scholastic, 2014). In 2011 READ 180 was used by more than one million students every day, largely students from schools who have written in READ 180 to their school improvement documents (“Scholastic launches”, 2011). The program’s recommendations are to use READ 180 during a 90 minute reading block (Scholastic, 2014). According to Scholastic the program begins with whole group instruction for twenty minutes. Teachers are to begin the class using reading skills and strategies, academic vocabulary, writing, and grammar to the whole class. Students then work on the READ 180 software on computers where they follow a learning path, which allows them to work
Moreover, I have learned from this class that while reading a book to write out the meaning of major events on the side of the book. So, when I need to refer to the book over something, I would not have to reread the whole book or essay, over again. Moreover, I have also learned to use a dictionary while reading in case I don’t understand the meaning of a certain word. In addition, I have learned that while reading a book that have questions, it might help to read the questions first before reading the essay. This will help you read a little bit faster and you will have an idea of the main points in the
For the reasons stated in another post I made, with all the reading and writing that is required as a college student, added to the necessity of remembering everything just to get a passing grade in the classes, the last thing I want to do is read something heavy that requires thinking. For the near future anyway, I don't think I will find myself actually analyzing the stories I choose to read. There is enough other things I will be reading during my college years to have to analyze that I honestly don't see myself consciously changing my method of
Once the basic skills of reading are learned, like vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency, there is rarely any more practice being done and most of the time is dedicated to the writing process. At the college level, professors have limited time to talk about everything, therefore reading instruction unintentionally yet easily gets ignored when professors want to move on and talk about other material. The article “Not Just for Writing Anymore: What WAC Can Teach Us About Reading to Learn” by Mary Lou Odom discusses the importance of reading to learn and how many students and faculty struggle with this concept. Odom emphasizes that students receive little to no additional instruction in reading once they have mastered the skills taught at
I also believed the teacher’s manual for this textbook was helping for not only the teacher, but also the student in being able to get the information across to the student that might have difficulty understanding the reading material. The teacher’s manual provided activities and experiments for each chapter in the book to help both teacher and student.
The ability to read allows for education, enjoyment, imagination, and understanding. With literacy you can go anywhere: the correct path on the highway, a made up kingdom, or the center of an atom. Reading is not in jeopardy, but rather will remain an essential part of our lives for the next several decades, if not centuries. Reading has proved to be a durable form of entertainment for centuries, however there will likely be some adjustments to how we approach the activity in the near future.
The other day, someone asked me if I ever cheated on assignments in college. My answer to them was confusing: "Well, I'm not really sure"
Should students have to pay for their college textbooks? Some like to save breaking the bank and resort to other options where they have to pay little to nothing for the same content. Others say that it's a requirement for the class and it boils down to responsibility as a new adult. Yet in reality it should come down to choice with your money. Students are beginning to get fed up extra expenses. Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok k ok ok ok ok ok ok
Schoology and Actively Learn can be used in classrooms from the elementary level to higher education. Schoology has a built in portfolio file that allows students to access material from previous years in order to grow and build on for future learning. Actively Learn features an annotation component that facilitates students’ understanding of text. Notes and annotations can be classified into the various fundamentals of reading, as well as personalized categories. This allows students at the early stages of education to begin to understand the importance of organizing their thoughts. Students at