Action Research Plan

The Use of Anticipation Guides to Improve Vocabulary Development

Procedures

Data Collection

The researcher collected data from a pre-test and post test derived from students’ answers from a Resource class setting and a General Education classroom setting. The pre-test provided information on which vocabulary students were familiar with and the vocabulary students were not familiar with. The pre-test was presented to the students before reading the story. A post test was given after reading the story. Data were collected for two weeks.

Purpose Statement

Teachers often wonder what strategies can be used to assist struggling readers. Struggling readers lack content knowledge and comprehension skills when reading written text. The key to learning content is prior knowledge and vocabulary development. Learning vocabulary helps with comprehension and enables a clear understanding of the text. Anticipation guides were developed by John Readence, Thomas W. Bean and R. Scott Baldwin (1981) to help teachers activate students’ background knowledge and set a purpose for reading.

Background Information

The use of an anticipation guide can be an incredible tool inside of the classroom. Using this tool generally stimulates the curiosity of students. When this tool is implemented, a teacher can gather data on what the students already know and what they need to address for greater content knowledge. Vocabulary is an essential part of reading comprehension, and understanding vocabulary prior to reading can prove to be very significant. Some central question that can be asked on a vocabulary anticipation guide can include: the following questions:

What I think the vocabulary word means,

What perspective of the vocabulary does the story include, and

What students have learned about the vocabulary after reading.

Another way to build an anticipation guide for vocabulary is by creating true and false questions. These strategies address the central issue of how do children increase vocabulary and impact reading fluency in early childhood classrooms.

Tamblyn Roberts, Albany State University

Participants

The students have seventy-five minutes in English-Language Arts instruction daily in a Resource Classroom setting., conducted with Special Education Teacher, Special Education Co-Teacher, SPED Paraprofessional. Fifteen students were involved in the study:4: 6th graders,; 6: 7thgraders, 5: 8th graders. There were 9 males and 6 females.

1% High School

Results

From my research, the researcher determined that using an anticipation guide to improve vocabulary skills is favorable. The ANTICIPATION GUIDE was only given to the TEST GROUP/PARTICIPANTS. The goal of using an anticipation guide was to increase vocabulary and help retain the meaning of the vocabulary set for the given story.

Discussion and Implications for Practice

As a result of the data collected with my experimental group, the students’ grades reflected a higher performance than their peers who did not use an anticipation guide. According to Evan Ortlieb (2013) , who conducted experimental research study to explore the use of an anticipatory reading guide with third grade struggling readers across multiple subject areas. The study findings indicated that the experimental treatment group outperformed the control group by a significant rate on both reading and content area measures.