I called this lesson study cycle Leaning in to Literacy because that is what my students literacy skills have forced me to do. My concern about my students' literacy skills first arose at the beginning of the winter semester when I discovered that  30 out of 50 of my students MAP test scores showed they were 3 - 5 grades levels behind in reading. I searched through the materials I was giving during my teacher prep program and nothing told me how to address middle school level comprehension skills. I felt woefully under-prepared and iil-equipped to do my job. As a result I made a lot of noise around school about the crisis in reading levels I was seeing play out right under my nose. This noise resulted in a number of collaborative conversations amongst the 9th grade staff at school with the Chief Learning Officer of the network and the implementation of NewsELA as a learning resource across lower high school humanities.  In learning about the NewsELA platform, I discovered that the content and quizzes pre-created on the platform were already aligned to grade level standards. I strongly felt that access to NewsELA in combination with the opportunity to thoroughly investigate middle school comprehension strategies with partners from other grade levels across the High Tech High Network in a lesson study process was a unique opportunity to really move the needle on my students literacy skills. 

My lesson study team and I approached this first by looking at research how reading skills developed. Initially we explored the idea of teaching basic level phonics across our 5th, 7th and 9th grade classrooms.  After some discussion and reflection on previous interventions each of us had tried and how they had worked in each of our classrooms we decided we needed to focus on a skill that had application across each of these grade levels. In pursuing research about how reading skill develops beyond the ability to decode and sound out words we learned that the next skill in comprehension is developing the ability to put together meanings in words from their parts and that the academic name for this skill is morphology. 

Further details on the research we did can be found in my annotated bibliography, an article I wrote for the High Tech High publication UnBoxed and Memorialisation Document linked below.

Annotated Bibliography

Unboxed Article

Lesson Study Memorialisation Document

Read 1; Ask 1; Reflect

Read 1; Read 2: Reflect

To our surprise there was not a lot of research out there on how implementing morphological routines impacts students reading levels. We did however find one article that laid out a framework and process that the researchers had found increased students comprehension skills. As this process was so comprehensive we decided to implement it and stick with it.  The process was as follows: 

1. Teach students the basic rules of morphology and the vocabulary involved. Some terms they need to know include:

• A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language, think “ girls “ and the two units of meaning “girl” referring to a young female human and the ‘s” indicating that there are multiple in this instance. ( Kieffer, 2007)

• Morphemes can be bound ( i.e. they have no meaning when not combined with another morpheme i.e. ‘s” in girls - s has no meaning without the girl component, or free they have meaning in themselves i.e. girl)

• Morphemes generally appear as prefixes, suffixes or root words

  • The root word is the main unit of meaning in the word

  • A prefix is the morpheme that comes before the root word

  • A suffix comes after a root word. 

  • Root words can have different linguistic origins ( English, Latin, Greek, French) 

  • Words can be simple or compound. A compound word is where two free words are put together to make a word with a different meaning i.e. “bookcase” is a combination of “book” and “case”.

2. Create anchor charts for common root words, prefixes and suffixes around the classroom to reduce students cognitive load while they are learning the routine.

My three students have the following learning profiles:

Focus Student 1

He is a cheerful, kind and helpful young man. He is extremely hard-working when he feels successful at what he is doing. He has an audio processing disorder.  According to NWEA MAP his vocabulary of 193 or a 1st grade level. Over the course of fall semester his reading score grew from 177 to 193. He thinks reading is important and reads every day. If he does not know a word he says he just skips it. 

Focus Student 2

This student is well liked among her peers and friendly and respectful towards teachers. She has a phonological processing disorder. As a result of her demeanour and positive attitude she flies under the radar.  She is absent quite a lot and so I did not get a chance to do an empathy interview with her.  This focus student scored 215 for vocabulary. Her overall reading scores on the NWEA MAP assessment grew from 209 - 213. 

Focus Student 3

This student a moved to the US 6 years ago from Ethiopia and is a hard worker. She learned English on arrival and has received no formal English instruction. She enjoys reading comics and thinks of herself as a slow reader. When she does not know a words she Googles it.  Her vocabulary was measured at 211 on the NWEA MAP. Her reading level between Fall and Winter semesters stayed consistent at 207. 

For our first PDSA cycle we decided to implement the Word Their Way Upper Elementary Spelling Inventory.  This spelling inventory involved reading a specifically chosen list of 31 words out to students to understand what their understanding of phonemes were and where their word struggles lay. The data showed that as words contained more morphemes or were grounded in Greek or Latin roots that student struggles more. For instance 34 out of 46 students could not spell the word 'circumference.'  This process also helped us determine whether we had picked the right focus students. In our selection of focus students we were keen to make sure we were selecting a reader whose reading and spelling ability demonstrated that they needed explicit word breakdown instruction.  Data for my focus students was as follows.:

Focus student 1: 2/31

Focus student 2: 1/31

Focus student 3: 3/31

Looking at this data I felt confident that I had selected focus students that would benefit from learning these routines.

As explained above, Kieffer et al  (2007) had developed a peer reviewed process for implementing morphological routines in classrooms. We decided to implement this exactly as it was set out.If they had conducted peer reviewed research which showed this process worked there was no reason to change what they did.  So after we read our chapter of Demon Copperhead for the day students produced an index card on which they wrote a word they did not know, broke it down by morphemes and made a guess at the meaning. This routine produced the following data:

Student who implemented the routine correctly and made a sensible guess at the meaning based on the morpheme  ( mastery of the routine)- 19

Students who approached mastery -9

Students  who had not mastered the routine - 11

Lesson Study Research Theme

We will use morphological processes to enhance comprehension of complex text. 

Content Goal

Students will understand  the meanings of words through morphological analysis  in order to comprehend a 12th grade level text on opioid addiction and take a comprehension quiz.

Grounding in Research

As mentioned above, this lesson implements a process found in a peer reviewed article for developing student morphological awareness in order to enhance text comprehension.                                      

Lesson Flow

The lesson will begin with reading Demon Copperhead. While students read they will notes on an index cards students will - identify word unsure of, breakdown morphemes, use sounds and context clues and guess the meaning.

Then students will read a 12th grade level article on NewsELA article on the opioid crisis. While they read they will make as many annotations as they need to ensure they understand the words in the article. I will set an expectation of 1 - 3 words. I will also offered a boost grade for students who show growth in their comprehension score over the last quiz they did. 

Finally, students will work on a found poem for exhibition. 

Observations:

Focus students 1 and 3 were present for the lesson study lesson.  

Observation of Focal Student 1:

• Engaged in distraction activities to start the lesson ( charging phone, going to the bathroom)

• Tracked the text for thirty minutes

• Responded to comprehension questions multiple times

• Did not write on the index  card, but immediately started filling it out 

• During work time did not engage with peers who was trying to pull him out of focusing on his work.

• Approached me with work that did not meet the standard, and with two prompts returned to the task and the visual supports provided around the room.

• Took a break during break time

• Opened the article, got up after I finished talking and another student asked him what does she mean if I better my score, and he only shrugged in response and began fidgeting with his computer .

• Focal Student declined offer to read in Spanish. Demonstrated overwhelm by the amount of paragraphs needing to be read. 

• Focal Student stared into space and the fell asleep. Focal student has demonstrated this overwhelm shut down behavior previously. 

• On prompting by me, responded verbally but did not think work. 

• I offered him a break and he took it. 

Observation of Focal Student 3:

• Student is having a conversation about Cardi B. with people at her table, but jumps in when another student claims to not be able to walk. 

• Student verbally replies each time and is playing with mascara and lip gloss over her open book. 

• As I explain the routine and student silently mouths a conversation with another table. 

• Student asks another student if they read the previous chapter in class and asks what happened in it. 

• Student appears to be following along and reading quietly. 

• Student responds to a question about the events in the previous chapter.

• I give context as to what has happened and the student verbally explains “oohhh.” 

• Student is reading and engaged.

This data demonstrates that this routine is half working for these particular focus students. I will provide commentary on my hypotheses for why in the reflection section below. They are however approaching competency in terms of how it gets them to a sense of what the word might mean.

The routine is working for my students of the 19 students present the index cards showed the following:

• 8 out of 19 met the expectations of the routine (as defined above).

• 11 out of 19 approached meeting the expectations of the routine.

• 0 out of 19 did not meet the expectations of the routine.

Clearly there is work still to be done and this routine will need to be implemented regularly so that students continue to grow in familiarity with root words and breaking words down to find meaning. For the two focal students highlighted above, English was their second language and it became clear to me through implementing this routine 6 or 7 times that without a base level of vocabulary knowledge students struggle to break down words to find meaning. It emphasised to me how important providing anchor vocabulary in the students first language and also them having exposure to similar words previously. It also showed me that if a student simply has a small vocabulary because they are at a 1st or 2nd grade reading level this is not a support that meets their needs. This is the situation Focus Student 1 was in and accounts for his shut down during the independent reading activity. Fortunately, I have arranged to have him supported with his phonemic awareness and decoding through a program called Lexia which he completes at home. 

Overall this has been a valuable exercise in teaching students functional comprehension skills and this morphological routine will be something I implement in my Humanities curriculum as I progress through my career.