Läsning på mellanstadiet : En studie med fokus på elevers läsförmåga

Sammanfattning: This study describes the reading ability of 26 middle school students, and the ways in which their reading development is supported in two different classrooms. In order to scrutinize results of students at different reading levels, three focus students were selected.This thesis has four aims. One is to use tests to examine the students’ reading ability as regards their decoding skills and reading comprehension as well as to study other cognitive skills related to reading ability. Another is to describe the students’ reading ability and attitudes towards reading from their own as well as their teachers’ perspectives. A third aim is to analyze how the results of different parts of the study are related to one another. The fourth and final aim is to analyze the classroom activities with a special focus on how reading ability is supported.The study combines quantitative analyses of the students’ reading ability with qualitative analyses of classroom activities. The quantitative sections of the study include various reading tests as well as the teachers’ assessment of the students’ reading development and their answers to selected questions in a student questionnaire concerning their view on reading.The results reveal that several of these students haven´t automated their decoding ability in Grade 4, but that nevertheless most of the students attain their grade level in a reading comprehension test in Grade 4 as well as the goals of a national reading test in Grade 5. However, most of the questions in these two tests require answers that can be explicitly found in the text and do not require any deeper reading comprehension such as inference making for instance. The results also show that these students are unable to assess whether reading is easy for them, but can assess their own reading ability if the purpose is to compare their reading skills with their classmates. The classroom observations indicate that despite quite extensive text work in the classrooms, students who need to develop their decoding abilities receive little support, and that although classroom work focusing on text comprehension is quite frequent, this does not often include deeper levels such as inference making.