This document outlines a classroom project to create a reading guide to improve reading competence among 6th grade students at Mercedes Abrego's School. It identifies low reading scores on national tests as a problem and sets an objective to teach reading skills. A literature review discusses principles of reading instruction. Research methods include student surveys to identify weaknesses, teacher interviews, and developing activities for a reading guide. Data collection found most students rated their reading a 1 or 2 on a scale, and resources created include surveys, guides, and websites with materials. The goal is to help 6th graders improve their reading ability.

1. CLASSROOM PROJECT
Reading Guide to improve the Reading Competence in 6th grade students at
Mercedes Abrego’s School.
Practicum 2
Arnol Espitaleta Sierra
Esp. Marisela Restrepo Ruiz
Cartagena de Indias, May 31st 2019

2. Table of Contents
1. Title of the research
2. Problem description and justification
3. Research Question
4. General Objective of the Research
5. Background and theorical framework
6. Aims
7. Research Design
- Type of Research
- Population
- Sample
- Instrument
8. Data Collection
References

3. 1. Reading Guide to improve the Reading Competence in 6th grade students
at Mercedes Abrego’s School.

4. 2. Problem description and justification.
Mercedes Abrego School is a very important public institution in Cartagena, with high
grades at ICFES with all quality of teachers working at this school.
In observation classes during the stage, it was identified a situation to improve the
results in English at ICFES which is reading. Reading is a very important competence
and with this National Test in which all the questions are related to match the correct
question, multiple choice questions, from simple activities until a complex one with the
result that the 11th
grade students don-t have very good results at ICFES School
National Test.
So, the question for this project is Why the 6th grade students at Mercedes Abrego’s
School have to improve the Reading Competence? This question was intended to
become a project because 6th
grade students at Mercedes Abrego School are not good at
reading in English.
Any public school at Cartagena starts with the intermediate level, students at 6th
grade
starts to learn English like babies. And the main goal become to create a Reading Guide
to improve the Reading competence in 6th grade students at Mercedes Abrego’s School.
This project is very important because 6th grade students at Mercedes Abrego’s School
need to learn how to read in English since the beginner to get a better English result at
ICFES School National Test.

5. 3. Research question
Why the 6th grade students at Mercedes Abrego’s School have to improve the
Reading Competence?

6. 4. General Objective of the Research
Identify the importance of teaching the Reading competence in 6th grade
students at Mercedes Abrego’s School.

7. 5. Background and theorical framework.
Teach our students how to read in English is really important and if it’s as earlier as better.
Finding out that students can understand something like stories, news, or other things in
English it’s like a satisfactory experience. But the question is how to teach reading in 6th
grade students at Mercedes Abrego? Why is it important for them?
Authors such as Jarmer J (2009) in the book How to teach English explains that reading
provides the opportunity to write. We can, otherwise, teach grammar, vocabulary or
punctuation rules by reading. We can find 2 ways of reading: extensive reading and
intensive reading. The first one is about pleasure, it’s some book, or novel, etc, and the
second is when you read to learn something. This second way of reading is useful at
school, universities.
For lower level students is important to encourage them reading using simplified or
graded text which are audiobooks or books adequate for levels because if we use
extensive texts it won’t become in extensive reading. Students will hate it instead of
pleasure.
In reading, there are 2 skills: scan and skim. Scan means just find out a specific
information in a text. For example, reading to find out a telephone number and skin is
reading to find put a general idea. Students can use both depending of the text, and what
a reader wants of it.
In addition, we have other skill which is reading for detailed comprehension, it’s
picking out particular information, examples like esthetic’s, health, etc.
In Harmer J (2009) gives some reading principles I think it’s important to mention in
this project:

8. Principle 1. Encourage students to read as often and as much as possible.
Principle 2. Students need to be engaged with what they are reading.
Principle 3. Encourage students to respond to the content of a text (and explore
their feelings about it), not just concentrate on its construction.
Principle 4. Prediction is a major factor in reading.
Principle 5. Match the task to the topic when using intensive reading texts.
Principle 6. Good teachers exploit reading texts to the full
Harmer J (2009). How to teach English, Longman. P. 101-102.

9. 6. Aims
To interview the teacher with questions, focus to improve the Reading
competence in 6th grade students.
To create a Reading guide with activities to improve the Reading competence in
6th grade students at Mercedes Abrego’s school.

10. 7. Research design
- Type of research. Participatory Action Research.
- Population. The population is the public institution, Mercedes Abrego’s
School.
- Sample. A group of 6th
grade students
- Instrument. A group of 6th
grade students.
- Observation. The lack of reading tasks in class.
- Results analysis plan. Students must receive more English classes to improve
this language. In addition, they must receive in class more kind of reading
activities even in their low English level because this will help them to
improve reading and writing,
- Ethical considerations
Name of the
book
How to teach English.
Summary This book offers many strategies about how to teach
any skill like speaking, writing, reading and listening.
Main categories
and concepts
Curriiculum, Pedagogy.
References Harmer, J (2007). How to teach English. Pearson,
Longman
Ideas Curriculum
Name of the
book
Sustaining Strategic Readers: Techniques for
Supporting Content Literacy in Grades 6–12.
Summary It’s a book that offers highly effective strategies and
techniques for teaching Reading skills like word
study, fluency, vocabulary.

11. Main categories
and concepts
Education. Teaching Methods and Materials.
Reading and phonics.
References Elery. V. (2011) Sustaining Strategic Readers:
Techniques for Supporting Content Literacy in
Grades 6–1. International Reading Association
Ideas Assessment focus on literacy.
Name of the
book
Creating Strategic Readers: Techniques for
Developing Competency in Phonemic Awareness,
Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension.
Summary This book gives strategies to teach how to read using
literacy and it’s focus on understanding.
Main categories
and concepts
Education. Teaching Methods and Materials.
Reading and phonics.
References Elery. V. (2009) Creating Strategic Readers:
Techniques for Developing Competency in Phonemic
Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and
Comprehension. International Reading Association
Ideas Assessment focus on literacy.
Research application schedule
Activities Months
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Create surveys and
give them to 6th grade
students to find their
weakness in Reading
Comprehension
Apr
2 To interview the
teacher with questions to
improve the Reading
May

12. Comprehension
competence in 6th grade
students
3 Create a Reading
Guide with activities to
improve the Reading
comprehension
competence in 6th grade
students at Mercedes
Abrego’s School.
May
4 Present the Reading
guide to students and
University
Jun

13. 8. Data collection
There were different tools applied to the sample of 38 students of sixth grade at inseam,
everyone identify there were several difficulties in the reading skill, most of them told
that because it was a new transition between 5th
grade and the new one in high school.
For the question about how good are you reading in a scale from 1 to 5?
Eight students answer 1, twenty-four students answer 2, and finally 4 students answer 3.
Here is the link that support the last activity where is presented to me about the creative
books which involve everything they were using along the course or the most of the
material, done by them and putting on practice about:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kdqSd1iJ-
LcmOfT2qmuJ66ul7WwFG1TS?usp=sharing
and
https://p2aes.000webhostapp.com/research-project

14. 9. References
• Harmer, J (2009). How to teach English. Pearson, Longman
• Elery. V. (2011) Sustaining Strategic Readers: Techniques for Supporting
Content Literacy in Grades 6–1. International Reading Association
• Elery. V. (2009) Creating Strategic Readers: Techniques for Developing
Competency in Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and
Comprehension. International Reading Association
• MEN, 2010, Estándares curriculares en lengua extranjera. Available in:
http://www.colombiaaprende.edu.co/html/mediateca/1607/articles-
115375_archivo.pdf