Student Interviews

Student interviews were administered to each of the students in the group. I wanted to talk with them more about their experiences in reading class and how they felt about themselves as a reader. The student survey asked the students to create their "dream" reading class and they were asked to share what they would do and who would be in it. I found it interesting that on the survey, the students from the class of struggling readers all included students from the advanced class and the students from the advanced class all included students from the advanced class in their hypothetical class. This made me want to continue our conversation about this and I wanted to see how the struggling readers would feel if they were grouped with more advanced readers and I also wanted to see what the advanced readers thought about this. I asked all students the same questions but often times, the questions led to other questions that were not discussed with all students. I conducted the interviews in hopes to get a better understanding of certain students more so than others. There were some comments made on the survey that I wanted to discuss further.

Over all, the results of the survey again yielded that almost all students felt comfortable with where they were at in class and who was in their class. Some knew they were better readers than others and some knew they struggled more than others but this didn't seem to bother any of them in regards to their confidence. I asked every single one of them how they would feel if they were in different classes where there was a mixture of students with different abilities. I came right out and named several students from both groups intentionally because I wanted to see their reaction. Here is were I sensed some resistance and some negative feelings from both types of readers. The struggling readers were very apprehensive about this as were the advanced readers. This led me to wonder if we are not preparing our students for the real world. They all voiced concerns about having to work with someone better/worse than them which makes me think that we are doing our students a disservice for the real world. The advanced readers were actually even more apprehensive than the struggling readers. The struggling readers were okay with the groupings once they found out that kids like them would be in the class as well.

I have seen time and time again, students who are grouped with like students, strive only to be like those they are around. I can only feel that we aren't pushing these students enough by putting them with others different than themselves.