*This improvement initiative was under the supervision of TAMAM coaches in Sultan Qaboos University and in the ministry of Education.
TAMAM team includes six members (the principal of the school, senior teacher of mathematics, teacher of learning resources center, special education teacher and kindergarten teacher). They joined the team because they have a strong desire to change and improve their skills. They are also very keen to raise the level of students’ achievements based on the vision and the mission of Al Mashariq school. Moreover, they have a strong desire to solve school issues in a scientific way, which is based on action research in order to find solutions for the challenges occurring in the school.
The need was identified after several meetings the TAMAM team held for brainstorming. The team collected various identified needs from the teachers and the administration of the school. It has been decided to choose reading comprehension in science for grade three as a developmental need because of students’ low level of achievement in international tests that require higher order thinking such as TIMSS.
The TAMAM team collected data was collected and identified their need by conducting interviews with both teachers and parents. In addition, the TAMAM team conducted two types of tests for students. The first type contains direct questions (questions that do not require higher order thinking or an in-depth reading comprehension). The questions of the second type were rephrased in order to be indirect, so they require higher order thinking and understanding the questions of written form in depth.
To implement TAMAM team’s plan for intervention, the science teacher was trained on reading comprehension strategies. In addition, a meeting with the parents of the experimental group was held in order to contribute to the plan to develop students’ abilities to solve indirect questions that require reading comprehension and thinking processes. After the completion of the procedures, the students were assessed through the activities and the final test. The team found that there were statistical significant differences between the experimental group and the control group, in favor of the experimental group. The most important decisions made by the team were to follow up with the science teachers on the use of these strategies, which depend on reading comprehension and higher order thinking from the students and to further expose students to get used to it while teachers apply the strategies in teaching.
