Literacy Moment Survey Results

At Friday’s faculty meeting, teachers took a brief survey to indicate their initial impressions of the Literacy Moment here at AVHS.  In this month’s newsletter, I’d like to share a few of those results and observations with you.

Of the sixty four teachers with a non-ninth grade class, forty of them returned a literacy survey, which means these findings represent about 63% of the potential teachers who participated in the program. 

In general, teachers were considerably enthusiastic about the program.  All 40 of the respondents indicated that they participated in the literacy moment.  That is a strong response, though, one should be skeptical of a bias since about 20-25 teachers did not complete the survey.  Thus generalizing from this data is more of a broad indicator versus a detailed picture. 

Bringing Books

According to teacher observations, classes varied in their participation.  About 57% of the teachers stated that 75% or more of the students were bringing books of their own to the Literacy Moment.  

Engaged in Reading

Perhaps the most substantial finding of the survey was the number of students that teachers reported “actively reading for most of the twenty minutes.”  In this case, teachers, overwhelming found that students were engaged in the reading process. 

Seventy-two percent of the respondents stated that nearly everyone was reading for the twenty minutes.  A total of 86% stated that three-fourths of their class was actively reading for that time period, while a mere 14% stated that only half of the students were invovled. 

Classroom Libraries

It was also interesting to note that 37 of the 40 teachers had some sort of classroom library, which is about 93% of the sample.  This was also promising since it indicates a school with a print rich environmnent. 

First Impressions

The last question simply asked teachers for a free response indicator of their initial thoughts on the program.  Nearly all of the respondents were positive in their responses.  One indicated how nice it was to have some time to read.  At least three expressed a surprise at either how many students had books of their own, or how many students seemed to willingly participate in the program.  And another three or so indicated a simple, unadulterated enthusiasm for the program.

There were a few comments of concern.  One indicated a fear that we have too many “alternate schedules,” and while the critique was not specifically against the Literacy Moment, it did suggest a general anxiety over the disruption to our normal schedule.  Three teachers felt that we need to bring the entire school on board.  Two said that it seemed counter productive to have students pulled from class for various school appointments during that reading time, suggesting that it didn’t send the right message.  And one respondent mentioned that they didn’t like having to “police the situation just to make students read.” 

In general, it looks like we are off to a good start.  Chad Clemdening stopped me a few weeks back to re-enforce a thought that I had not remembered.  These students have been through rather extensive independent reading (or SSR) programs in middle school. They are well aware of what a “Silent Sustained Reading” experience should look like.  So many of our fears that students either won’t know what to do, are probably unfounded.  It just isn’t new to them.

 

Again, I will re-state that you should find a system that works best for you.  The amount of structure you want to impose on this depends on what you want it to look like.  With that said, based on my own experiences and the responses of teachers here, I do believe that the majority of students would actually enjoy the unstructured opportunity to read for enjoyment, and the more we get out of the way and let them do it, the better the experience.   

Read this month's full newsletter.  It includes monthly reading tips for students, as well as some tools for measuring student engagement during the Literacy Moment.