I teach 135 computer science students. Thirty are tenth graders, fifty are eleventh graders and fifty-five are twelfth graders. Based on some students’ lack of understanding of the concepts and procedures necessary to write computer programs, and based on much repeated complaining and frustration expressed by them, I selected fifteen students who had been unsuccessful even with much repetition and extra time allowances to study as a part of a teacher research project. Another thirty of my students initially demonstrated confusion with programming but understood the concepts over time and eventually completed programs successfully. They had good feelings about their accomplishments but when I taught a new concept or technique, they would demonstrate confusion and lack of connectivity all over again. So, I included those students as well in my project.

Research I completed last year led me to identify reading comprehension as a key factor in determining a student’s level of success in computer science. This year I focused on those students who had the most difficulty understanding concepts and writing programs. First I made an effort to see if their reading comprehension scores were in line with their lack of success in this class, and if so, I wanted to convince them that understanding the textbook and computer vocabulary as well as the logical sequencing is essential in developing a well designed program.

I discovered that some of my most successful students were not reading the text and chose not to do any written problems designed to be stepping stones for them, and yet they were still able to understand new concepts and techniques just from hearing me explain them in class. It appeared that the successful students who were not completing the book assignments were using superior auditory learning skills and were able to learn concepts just from hearing my explanations and by hunting for specific code in the text and handouts as needed. I wanted students who chose not to read the textbook due to poor reading skills to realize that using reading strategies would help them understand written material and therefore would help them understand the concepts of programming.

I collected data on the reading comprehension scores for the targeted students as well as some of my most successful students. Success was based on the students’ ability to quickly understand new concepts and the ability to apply them in new situations. The data was still consistent with last year’s findings that the more successful students had 90+ percentile on their standardized reading comprehension tests. The students who struggled, but eventually were able to grasp and make use of new concepts, generally had reading comprehension scores between 70 and 80%, and those I observed as somewhat or totally unsuccessful at programming, no matter what I did to help, usually had the lowest reading comprehension scores, below 70%.

I administered the same student survey I used last year to get more input from my students regarding the concepts and topics covered in this class. I asked them to indicate what seemed the most difficult to them, what topics they disliked using, what they found easy to use and what skills/abilities they deemed necessary for success in this course. The skills/abilities that were listed were similar for students of all success levels. The most frequently mentioned abilities the students felt were necessary for success were:

• Logical thinking
• Patience
• Ability to understand the computer terms and the text
• A desire and ability to solve challenging problems
• Determination

To assess the reading level of the Computer Science text for this course, I used the Fry readability test (1977, Edward Fry). Using three different sections that explained how the computer ‘rounds decimals’, I determined that the readability level ranged between the fifth through tenth grade reading level.

My goal was to use reading strategies to help students understand the concepts needed to write efficient programs. I focused on intervention or remediation for the fifteen students who had been unsuccessful throughout the first half of the school year.

I focused on the text book chapters that covered rounding decimals, arrays, matrices, and structs.

Using the Cloze Readability formula I determined the level of success each student had reading the class textbook. I needed to determine which students were unable to get meaning from their reading. The cloze procedure shows the interplay between prior knowledge and the language competence of the reader in comprehending the text material. This strategy involved selecting approximately 275 words from the text and leaving the first sentence intact. Starting with the second sentence, I selected at random one of the first five words. I deleted every tenth word, leaving an underlined space for each deleted word, until 50 words words were deleted. I retained the remaining sentence of the selection. I gave the students the cloze reading selection with these directions, "The following is taken from chapter 7 in your text. In the blanks, write the word you think belongs there." Students were to read the selections and supply the missing words. An example section from a Cloze reading assignment from the chapter is:

According to the Fry Cloze Readability Passage directions, students scoring 60% or above were regarded as reading the text competently. A score of 40% to 60% was regarded as challenging, requiring some form of reading guidance. A score of below 40% meant that the passage was probably too difficult and the student would need more suitable material.

I chose the Cloze strategy as a way to get them through the most important concepts in the text because most of my students were not reading the entire chapters in the book. My intention was to expose students to the text material in a way that would help them understand new concepts and to help them make use of the text as a resource. Students did not resist filling in the blanks of the Cloze reading form because they didn’t feel like they were reading the book. It did not seem to be ‘reading’ to them but just an efficient way of reviewing the material and focussing the most important concepts.

In most cases, students’ reading success levels were in line with my perception of their success with programming based on frustration levels and time needed to figure out how to write a program successfully. Two students were a surprise to me. One student scored 60% on the Cloze, falling in the range that indicates competence in reading the text. Yet this student usually needed instructions and explanations repeated to him more than two or three times. Because of these circumstances, I was surprised at how well he did on the Cloze. I spoke to one of his previous teachers and was informed that he had a severe hearing problem. I had not been informed of this by the guidance department because the student and his family did not want special consideration for his hearing problem. I was horrified at the fact that I never knew this. I would have had this student sit closer to me, and I would have understood his need for repeated oral instructions. Due to these extenuating circumstances, I removed him from my target list of students since he did not have a problem reading the text and his difficulty with the course involved his not being able to hear oral discussions and explanations. I was able to accommodate his needs through a better seating arrangement and modified the way I orally communicated with him.

The other student whose score surprised me (he achieved 11% on the Cloze test) was very successful in my class. Scores below 40% indicated the material would probably be too difficult for the student and yet, he processed new information quickly and was immediately able to apply new concepts and programming techniques. This student appeared to have little patience with reading assignments, written exercises, etc. I thought that he had either been compensating for his poor reading ability with his exceptional listening skills or he may have filled in the blanks of the Cloze without much serious thought. However, I discovered later that when he read material that was part of a group presentation, he read as if he were in the first grade and had just learned to read. He often looked for attention and encouraged laughs from the class. I later spoke privately with him and asked if he could read better than what he demonstrated. He said he was just fooling around. I sent my data and observations to his guidance counselor and asked her to review his records and let me know if there was other evidence of reading difficulty. I was later informed that I had made a very significant discovery. This student’s most recent standardized test showed a score in reading comprehension of only 25%. Because of these findings, I added this otherwise successful student to my target group.

In addition to using the Cloze form to determine students' understanding of the text material, the Cloze form also became a teaching tool to get students to refer to material in the text before using new concepts and also to review material before a test. Since the students liked filling in the blanks, I figured I had nothing to lose, and all students would benefit from completion of the Cloze passages. Many students said it helped them remember concepts by forcing them to use the context of the material in order to fill in the missing words. I decided that I wouldn’t grade the Cloze assignments for exact word insertions, as was required when using the Cloze passages and formula to determine readability. Since this was intended as a learning and/or review strategy rather than a readability assessment, I accepted synonyms as correct responses. I had students swap and grade each other’s papers based on their own judgment. Putting students in this situation forced them to look up answers to defend their grading and/or their own responses. Those who had wrong answers based on a classmate’s opinion were fast to confront their classmate, and both were eager to prove that they were right. I was surprised at the result: a room full of students looking things up in the ‘dreaded’ text to defend their answers.

I also used Sequence, Compare and Contrast, and Cause and Effect graphic organizers to help students organize and sequence the steps used in their programs. I heard many "oohs" and "ahs" from the students when they saw me map out the order and branching of the program steps for two programs they had recently completed after much agony. I asked them if they thought laying out the steps visually would have helped them create a better program design. They all said it would have helped. After one or two assignments for which they used diagrams, the students tried to avoid doing them and felt it was ‘busy work.’ I continued to show them flaws in their program design that would have been avoided if they had first laid out the flow of the entire program before they began working on the details.

The following analogies to completing a task helped students relate to diagramming their program and breaking down procedures into small, manageable tasks before writing the program.

A carpenter does not randomly put together supplies as he builds a cabinet. He follows a plan consisting of sequenced steps.

When you put together a bicycle or a barbecue grill, you take out the instructions and follow the sequenced steps , much like using a recipe. Baking ingredients must be combined in a specific order due to chemical reactions.

Everyone said that visual diagrams would have helped them, not realizing that I would require diagramming in future assignments. I decided my students just liked to complain about anything that delayed them from getting to the keyboard. When I would not let anyone turn on a computer until everyone had successfully done a diagram for the program, students began helping each other so they could get to the computers faster. The more successful students were appalled that the steps in their diagrams were not always logically and/or efficiently sequenced. When I explained individually to students what was wrong with their organization, each one understood what to do. Soon, the students actually stopped complaining because they were no longer going crazy at the computer, trying to rearrange functions that had been done without connection to each other and without much logical thought. The diagram maps saved them a lot of programming time.

In addition, I had my students complete a "writing summary" strategy as the students read about array structures in Chapter 8 of their text. I asked every student to participate, and I made a big deal about using the technique to increase understanding of the reading material. As expected, many students thought it was ‘busy’ work and didn’t feel they needed to do it. I reminded them of this over the next few weeks as they struggled to implement arrays in their programs. I kept reminding them that they had never really understood the structure and had not been willing to try and understand the text instructions. As usual, they wanted hands on learning with ‘on the spot’, ‘one to one’ help as needed. I kept trying to convince them that if they were not so reluctant to read and interpret the material in the textbook, they would better understand how to structure the code and would then be able to use it in their programs.

Finally, I used the strategy of having students list terms or code under category headings that I gave them. I followed up on this by having them make Venn diagrams to show that some terms related to more than one category. I had used this strategy often in Geometry classes, but had never thought of doing it in Computer Science. I provided the terms and the headings for these assignments. I designed a lesson in which the students selected computer-related words from a section of the text and then came up with their own category headings. Then, I gave them a test consisting of only headings, and they had to come up with at least five terms to put in each category. They appeared to like doing this type of work. Once again, they did not consider this reading. So I did not tell them they were using reading comprehension strategies.

I am planning to use the Visual Essay technique in the near future. I will give the students a completed Visual Essay consisting of all of the function headings and lines of instruction of a program, in scrambled order. They will have to cut them up and put them in the correct order to create a successful program. All I will tell them is the task of the program. There will be visual cues from the punctuation used, too. In half of the visual essays, I will leave out the internal program documentation (comments that explain the purpose and task of each function). I want to prove to them that without appropriate documentation, someone else will not know what their program is supposed to accomplish. I expect that those who have the essays with the comments will be done before the others. I am anxious to see the results.

After I evaluated the readability level of the Computer Science text and the students’ individual ability to understand the concepts in the text, I explained to them in great detail what I had done and what I determined. When students became more aware of their own learning processes, they did not resist my efforts to help them through reading strategies. They actually needed a reason to do the reading and writing assignments. Up until that point, they viewed reading and writing assignments as busy work that served no purpose. As long as the reading and writing assignments were kept short and provided some opportunity for student interaction, my students did not view the assignments as ‘reading’ and they enjoyed doing them. I had fewer instances of frustrated outbursts from students, and I also noticed that students asked more specific questions about what they could not do. They could better organize the steps of their program and were no longer complaining that they did not ‘get it.’ They were thinking about their learning process and taking the time to follow the problem solving strategies of George Polya, "an eminent mathematician who spent much of his career emphasizing methods and rules of discovery and invention as well as strategies on stripping away irrelevancies and going straight to the heart of the problem." (Princeton Science Library; Abstract of How to Solve It).

Using Polya’s strategies, students would:

• demonstrate their understanding of the problem in a map/diagram.
• create a plan to accomplish the tasks.
• carry out the plan.
• reflect on what they did, looking for alternative solutions or ways to improve their work by being more efficient.

The combination of graphic organizers and the other reading strategies provided my students with very powerful learning tools. Through the findings of this teacher research project, I have learned that using reading strategies truly helped my students grasp the concepts necessary for computer programming. I will introduce reading strategies to my students at the beginning of the next school year in hopes of achieving greater success and less frustration for all students throughout the year.