Discussion of Instructional Problem While reading involves many skills and strategies, elementary students need to make sense of what they are reading which will ultimately deepen their understanding and lead them towards being independent readers. The students are expected to transfer and apply all they have learned about comprehending, analyzing, synthesizing and interpreting across texts. In order for learners to grow, various aspects of interpretive reading must be assessed, such as determining a theme. Some students have difficulty differentiating between the main idea versus the theme. Fourth grade students in Anna C. Scott Elementary School have difficulty identifying the theme in fiction texts. They will be able to determine the big …show more content…
While the students are reading, they need to synthesize the elements of fiction stories. Then, they need to infer in order to make an interpretation by making connections about what they know and what the author is stating. In addition, the students must identify parts in the beginning of the text about how the character reacts to situations and also later on in the text that show a a turning point for the character. By analyzing a character and the character’s traits, this will lead to to the students figuring out how parts of the story fit within the whole text. After the students think of a possible theme, they must cite evidence from the text to support their …show more content…
A second instrument used to collect data was questions that students answered about the familiar text, “Fireflies“ by Julie Brinckloe. The students answered four open ended questions (see Table 2) that asked the students to identify the character trait using details from the text, asked how the character is different from the beginning of the story, asked why a part of the story is important and identify the theme of the story using details to support your answer. Their responses were scored using a rubic from Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.
Discussion of Sources of Data Students in fourth grade in Reading were given the open ended questions to complete