Overall, as a professional I have grown tremendously from this action research. I have learned that my students need multiple exposures and re-teaching to make sure they understand vocabulary words and skills. I have learned that research based intervention techniques are important and helped lead to student success. I also learned that it is essential to build instruction based on students' background knowledge.  It is important to teach using a student's background knowledge because that helps me understand what skills they already know and what skills they still need to learn.  Even if the students are in second grade, they might not have mastered the first grade skills, so I occasionally need to go back and finish teaching those first grade skills.  My students need to have both small and whole group instruction.  They need both small group and large group instruction based off of research findings that both are important for development of vocabulary.  They also need small group instruction because in a whole group setting it is hard for them to learn everything they need to know because they need it at a slower pace with more explicit instruction.  In a small group, they are provided with re-teaching as needed, and I can teach at an instructional pace that matches their learning styles. I learned that not only do my students need to be taught words and their meanings, but also base words, suffixes, and prefixes. When teaching all of these items related to vocabulary instruction, it leads to reading comprehension.

          Through my action research, I was able to find that my students' data showed great growth.  With teaching smaller amounts of words I found that my students all scored above an 80% average on their weekly vocabulary words.  This growth also relates to the research of the students having  multiple exposures to these vocabulary words throughout the week.  Incorporating students' interests is also an important part of the students being motivated to learn and then they were able to be engaged longer.  I know this based on student inventories that I took throughout my intervention.  My students went from not being interested in vocabulary to coming into my room everyday asking if we were going to have vocabulary.  These students were engaged in each lesson because I used their interests and formed those interests to my instruction.  Through my research I found that if explicit vocabulary skills were taught than it would lead to overall reading comprehension.  After reflecting upon my students' MAP Reading, MAP Vocabulary, and Reading Street Scores each student showed growth and improvement in reading and vocabulary.  Data showed that this vocabulary intervention was effective for all three students and the research that I implemented throughout this intervention showed student growth.  Now knowing that this intervention worked for these particular students I plan to share this information with their 3rd grade teacher.  That way this teacher knows that this intervention of both whole group and small group instruction is need for these students.  Knowing that I will be working with these students next year, I plan to implement this intervention moving into 3rd grade to continue increasing their growth in reading.  Also knowing that MAP Data shows specifically what deficit areas my students are struggling with I want to use my research to connect to those deficit areas and build instruction to increase those skills.  Since my students were below 80% at the beginning of the year in 2nd, I am going to give them the baseline 3rd grade reading test.  With these data results I am going to know what specific skills I need to begin teaching right away at the beginning of the year.  I can connect my research to the skills my students need taught.  This way I am beginning an intervention right away.  Therefore, my research can be implemented to create more positive data results in reading comprehension skills.

             As a professional I have grown and become a better educator. I have learned that it is important to implement research based interventions and research based strategies. It is important to keep up with research so that strategies implemented are up to date.  Research gives educators information about what is effective and what strategies work or do not work.  As educators, we should implement effective strategies right away and not spend time implementing strategies that have no research to support them.  It is also important that the most up to date effective strategies are being implemented because those have the most current research stating they are effective for students.  Sharing the research-based interventions with other professionals is essential so that they are aware of strategies as well. My confidence in implementing interventions has grown this year.  Vocabulary interventions I have implemented are as follows: repeated exposures, fewer vocabulary words, prefix and suffix definitions, experiencing words, and hands-on learning activities.  I have also gained confidence in differentiating and teaching to each of my students' individual needs. Meaningful grouping is another area of growth for me professionally.  Based on my reflections, another area of growth I have had is making sure to plan and organize materials in order to maximize instructional time.  I have learned that with differentiating instruction for individual students, materials need to be organized and ready to use at the time of instruction.  This can take extra planning time, but it is most beneficial for each student.

            This instruction has shown me that small group and direct instruction is the most beneficial for my students. My students still need more direct modeling and re-teaching in order to fully understand concepts. When these students have more exposure to vocabulary words and skill, they are more likely to be successful. Building off of students' background knowledge is key to creating growth in student learning. Also, since implementing this intervention I wish I would have started this intervention earlier in the year. I have often wondered if it would lead to even more growth in my students' reading scores. It is also important to teach using my students' interests because then they are more motivated to learn the skills. I also learned that students with behavioral needs struggle to test well academically if they are having an off day. Overall, I learned so much from this research and intervention.

           For my future plans, I want to start instruction earlier in the year instead of when the year is half over.  I also plan to schedule longer intervention time with my students because by the time we transitioned from their general education room to my room we lost instructional time.  Research states that generalizing vocabulary into other content areas is important, so I want to make sure I do a more thorough job with that in my future instruction (Sedita, 2005).  Furthermore, I want to make sure and build on the amount of exposure my students are getting to these words and skills in the general education classroom.  Lastly, I want to make sure to build off of my students' prior knowledge and differentiate so each of them can learn the best way possible.