As Researchers, Rapid City Teachers Excel

Does the learning environment change when the classroom teacher is also a researcher and a student herself? Judging from the research reports presented over the last several years by Rapid City teachers enrolled in the University of Sioux Falls’ masters degree program in Literacy, the answer is overwhelmingly yes. Tomorrow night, educators and community members interested in seeing Rapid City teachers in a different light will have the opportunity to hear teachers present the results of their own research at the third annual Literacy Research Symposium.

The symposium is the culminating experience for teachers enrolled in the University of Sioux Falls’ Masters Degree program in Literacy. Seventeen teacher/students will present the results of their investigations related to reading, writing and self-assessment. The public is invited to the event, which will be held at the Ramkota Inn from 4:30-7:30 p.m. with a public reception sponsored by Rapid City Area Schools, Highmark Federal Credit Union and The University of Sioux Falls.

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Rebecca Aker Focuses on Fluency

Rebecca Aker leans in towards the two girls and two boys participating in her reader’s theater: “How do you think the salesman will sound?”  

Undistracted by the activity of other students around her, third grader Hannah responds, “They shouldn’t be that trustworthy. They need to sound like someone trying to convince someone.”

“Exactly,” Aker smiles, and the students continue reading parts from a play about a bald emperor who is talked into a fairy tale potion to re-grow his hair.

 Aker has been teaching at Grandview Elementary for four years. She will graduate next month from the University of Sioux Falls with a Master of Leadership in Reading degree. To earn that degree, she had to formulate a research question, study what other researchers had learned related to the problem and then design her own investigation.

 Aker was interested in whether reading fluency could be improved by giving students more opportunities to focus on reading with expression as a way to increase comprehension and speed. She developed some targeted lessons and identified both an experimental group and a control group for the research. Hannah and her classmates took part in that research. Keeping track of progress with test scores, Aker was able to reach a limited conclusion that focusing more on expression enables students to achieve higher fluency overall.

 Aker says her research “has made me more reflective in the classroom. I think more about what I’m doing and why,” she says. She also asks herself more questions and thinks more about how she, as a researcher, would investigate those problems. By thinking more about theory, she has also taught her students to think about concepts – particularly the idea of fluency. 

On this day the students are writing an advice column for a mother who is concerned that “her son sounds like a robot” when he reads out loud. They offer advice on how to avoid sounding “choppy” and how to let the punctuation tell him how to change his voice. Asked by Aker to explain the idea of fluency, their responses are clear and show immediately that they understand the concept. When a girl named Kendall asks to share her letter out loud, she reads: “You should send your son to third grade with Ms. Aker. She’ll teach him all about fluency.”

Rebecca Aker will present her thesis on expression and fluency in the Needles Room at the Ramkota Inn at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21.

Kayla Gahagan also has an excellent article on the University of Sioux Falls program and the Literacy Research Symposium on the Rapid City Journal’s website.