Assignment 5

Teachers are Members of Learning Communities

For a needs assessment I gave each of my students an oral fluency assessment to
determine if they are as fluent as they should be by the spring of their fourth grade school year.
Each student was asked to read the same passage for one minute and I counted their words per
minute (wpm). They were assessed three times and I used the median score. The norm for the
spring of fourth grade 75th percentile is 143, 50th percentile 118, and the 25th percentile 92. There
were 2/21 students in my class that were in the 75th percentile or above. There were 4/21
students in my class that were between the 50th and 74th percentile. There were 15/21 students in
my class that were in the 49th percentile or lower. I did not assess first year in the country ESL
students or students who receive SPED services for reading.
I also sent home a one question survey to their parents asking Do you feel your
child has had enough experiences working with the elderly in our community? with a yes or
no option. I had one survey not returned. Only about 30 percent of the parents I surveyed
responded yes, almost 70 percent responded no.
Table 4: Below are the results from the Oral Fluency Assessment
Student 1
Student 4
Student 5
Student 6
Student 7
Student 9
Student 10
Student 11
Student 12
Student 13
Student 14
Student 15
Student 16
Student 17

114
101
81
134
108
107
118
76
89
132
108
94
150
89

Student 18
Student 19
Student 20
Student 21
Student 22
Student 23
Student 24

117
97
97
126
155
105
49

Table 5: Below are the results from the parent survey I sent home. The question was Do you
feel your child has had enough experiences working with the elderly in our community?
Yes
7

No
16

After completing the needs assessment described above I came to the conclusion
that my students need more opportunities to practice their oral reading skills and more
opportunities to work with the elderly in our community. I decided to have my students check
out a book from the school library and spend two days practicing reading it. After they had time
to practice reading the book we walked to Sunquest Health Care, a nursing home in our
community, and they read their books to the residents.
The project was a huge success! My students enjoyed interacting with the elderly.
Many students sat and talked with the resident they read to for a while after they were done
reading to them. It was great to see them interacting with the elderly in our community with
confidence. According to Fair and Delaplane (2015), intergenerational learning helps students to
synthesize what they learn on a deeper level. I also know we had an impact on the residents and
the nursing home because they submitted it to the local newspaper. My students were so excited
to see our class in the newspaper, we still have the article hanging out our classroom.
One limitation from this project was that it was only a onetime event. If I were to
implement this again I would set it up so we could visit once a quarter so the students would

have the opportunity to build a relationship with the residents. Ideally each student would have
the same resident they read to each time. Another limitation was that it was only my class that
was involved. Because of the results from my needs assessments I would be surprised if this
project met a need that only my class has. I am assuming this is a need for all fourth grade
classrooms. If I have the opportunity to do this again I would invite other classes to participate
in the project as well. It would still work best for each class to attend the nursing home
separately due to logistics, but it would be great if all the classrooms could also attend and
participate in this project.
Sources:
Hasbrouck, J. E., & Tindal, G. (1992). Curriculum-Based Oral Reading Fluency Norms for
Students in Grade 2 Through 5.Teaching Exceptional Children, 24, 42.
Fair, C. D., & Delaplane, E. (2015, January). "It Is Good to Spend Time with Older Adults. You
Can Teach Them, They Can Teach You": Second Grade Students Reflect on
Intergenerational Service Learning. Early Childhood Education Journal, 43(1),
19-26.
Scholastic. (2016). Oral Fluency Assessment Calculator for Grades 3-5. In Teachers.