1. The problem that is being addressed in this action research project is the focusing of students learning rhyming words and word families in text.
2. The rational of this student explained by her is that knowing rhyming words and word families is an important skill to have to learn and make sense of a language. She feels that it would be in the students best interest to gain better skills in these areas so that future learning will come easier and that they may become more successful.
3. A heavy use of games will be used to help the students skills in rhyming and word families. Strategies I see include 'Thematic Instruction', by the use of the rhyming being the theme, and I also see 'Identifying Similarities and Differences', by grouping rhyming and word families together.
4. The question is 'Will the rhyming strategies change student attitudes about reading instruction?'
5. Evidence that she presents included; quoted statistics from researchers such as Wylie and Durrell, who stated that use of rhyming instead of decoding help children learn words more easily. And another quote also states that use of rhyming and word families enable students to decode new and difficult words in text. (Allen, 1998).
6. She plans on gathering data through pre and post test, visually observing student behavior, and through student example work. She also said that she would keep all of these notes and observations in her teacher journal.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Analysis of Action Research #1
1. The title of this Action Research project is, 'Evidence of Understanding in an 8th Grade Classroom'.
2. The main question of the research focuses on, 'How do we know students are learning?'
4. The learning strategy that is being implemented (I see more than one), is Setting Objectives. I see this in his lesson particularly when he speaks about challenging the students to show him and their classmates, their understanding of the assignment given in a variety of ways and giving feedback to the students. Also another implemented learning strategy, of 'Providing Feedback'.
5. The evidence presented was when the students were able to provide the products that allowed for classroom feedback and applied to the content at hand. In this case these products could have been poems, comic strips, written discussions that the group had together, reading response outlines, or annotation of the text.
6. The data was collected from the students work and then the student classroom discussions about each others work. Students were asked questions about their work and how well they can see if their fellow classmates understood the story and the objective. The example piece used was a poem and student comments were recorded answering whether or not the particular student met the standards set at the beginning of the assignment.
7. The data was analyzed by taking the results of the classroom discussion and using it as a reflective tool for how he implemented this lesson. He, as I said before, recorded all of the students feedback and matched it to the standards that were discussed before the students started their projects.
8. The results found were that he realized students should be active in their learning and understanding and not passive. And by being active they found more purpose and drive in completing their objectives. Students were also able to produce more quality work because of the variety of choice they had to express their understandings.
9. These results can inform teacher practice by showing that there is more than one way for students to understand content and that they all do not process the content the same way. This also shows us that when students are given responsibility of their own learning more quality work is produced and students can actually more efficiently learn from one another.
2. The main question of the research focuses on, 'How do we know students are learning?'
4. The learning strategy that is being implemented (I see more than one), is Setting Objectives. I see this in his lesson particularly when he speaks about challenging the students to show him and their classmates, their understanding of the assignment given in a variety of ways and giving feedback to the students. Also another implemented learning strategy, of 'Providing Feedback'.
5. The evidence presented was when the students were able to provide the products that allowed for classroom feedback and applied to the content at hand. In this case these products could have been poems, comic strips, written discussions that the group had together, reading response outlines, or annotation of the text.
6. The data was collected from the students work and then the student classroom discussions about each others work. Students were asked questions about their work and how well they can see if their fellow classmates understood the story and the objective. The example piece used was a poem and student comments were recorded answering whether or not the particular student met the standards set at the beginning of the assignment.
7. The data was analyzed by taking the results of the classroom discussion and using it as a reflective tool for how he implemented this lesson. He, as I said before, recorded all of the students feedback and matched it to the standards that were discussed before the students started their projects.
8. The results found were that he realized students should be active in their learning and understanding and not passive. And by being active they found more purpose and drive in completing their objectives. Students were also able to produce more quality work because of the variety of choice they had to express their understandings.
9. These results can inform teacher practice by showing that there is more than one way for students to understand content and that they all do not process the content the same way. This also shows us that when students are given responsibility of their own learning more quality work is produced and students can actually more efficiently learn from one another.
Verbatim Questions
My 75 hour clinical was done in the art room. Some of the questions asked by the teacher to the students included:
What is cubism?
Does anyone know who Picasso is?
What are geometric shapes?
Answers by the students included many 'I do not Know', 'Squares, rectangles, triangles.'
Questions from students included:
How do I do this?
Is this good or right?
And one that I found very curious was, What color do we color the water if water is clear?
I feel that the answer the teacher gave could have lead to a learning experience about the idea of the artists and the artists process, but instead it was simply answered and discarded.
What is cubism?
Does anyone know who Picasso is?
What are geometric shapes?
Answers by the students included many 'I do not Know', 'Squares, rectangles, triangles.'
Questions from students included:
How do I do this?
Is this good or right?
And one that I found very curious was, What color do we color the water if water is clear?
I feel that the answer the teacher gave could have lead to a learning experience about the idea of the artists and the artists process, but instead it was simply answered and discarded.
Struggling Student - Fall 2011
In my 75 hour clinical I designed and implemented a PBL that dealt with one of my struggling students issues (staying seated, and moving around during class). My PBL and lessons were all focused on the students use of movement and being out of their seats; there were a few lessons that required students to be seated for lectures but I made them interactive asking and engaging students in the learning process.
For the short time I was able to implement this PBL, students were able to gather some of the main content I was teaching. My struggling student still had some problems but was able to make also make proper connections with the lessons and the content. I feel with more time and a stronger foundation of the principles of my lesson that even stronger connections could have been made. From my observations I didn't see a decline in learning but there was evidence of engagement of the PBL.
Again, I feel with more time and implementation of learning styles the struggling student, I feel would have made more and maybe even different connections to real world experiences.
For the short time I was able to implement this PBL, students were able to gather some of the main content I was teaching. My struggling student still had some problems but was able to make also make proper connections with the lessons and the content. I feel with more time and a stronger foundation of the principles of my lesson that even stronger connections could have been made. From my observations I didn't see a decline in learning but there was evidence of engagement of the PBL.
Again, I feel with more time and implementation of learning styles the struggling student, I feel would have made more and maybe even different connections to real world experiences.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Student Survey Learning Styles
This graph shows the collected results of the 7th grade art class that I am working with. I was told that they did an ealier test of learning styles at the beginning of the year that measured them in three categories: Visual, Kinesthetic, and auditory. The survey I used measured them in 8 categories of Learning styles, it was given to one class of 23 students, and the data in graph is the results of the students top 3 styles the students scored in.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Double Entry #13
1. Read the Introduction. What "dominant paradigm" is showing signs of wear?
The traditional teacher centered style of teaching. Educators are now trying to implement styles of learning that brings back the spark and path of true learning. By giving students relevant problems that exist in their world and having them work as cooperating teams. There for engaging them into the material in a more productive way that they can then retain more of the content that was introduced.
2. According to the research, how does Project-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.
PBL's support better learning by:
Project based focuses on an end product that students must create using and researching knowledge and content to come to their end product. Where as problem based learning focuses more on answering a question and coming up with possible solutions to an enduring question. And learning by design has the students actually diving into the making and creating, learning and solving by making mistakes and revisions.
6. In your opinion, what is the most important benefit to learning that is common across the three types of inquiry-based learning approaches?
In my opinion having higher thinking skills and cooperating groups are the most important because students will be able to retain the information and instead of asking why they have to do the work, it may have relevance in their lives and are able to connect to their world. students will also be able to make longer lasting connections to the content and will benefit from the social skills they gain throughout their group work.
The traditional teacher centered style of teaching. Educators are now trying to implement styles of learning that brings back the spark and path of true learning. By giving students relevant problems that exist in their world and having them work as cooperating teams. There for engaging them into the material in a more productive way that they can then retain more of the content that was introduced.
2. According to the research, how does Project-Based Learning support student learning better than traditional approaches? Describe three benefits and cite the studies.
PBL's support better learning by:
- Giving students better critical thinking skills, according to Edutopia article Shepard (1998) showed us this through his study of fourth and fifth graders, who were confronted with the enduring question of how to solve the housing shortage problems in other countries.
- The next example given was a longitudinal study of 2 British schools. This study by Boaler (1997, 1998) took the two schools and had one perform traditional teacher centered teaching and the other school was to implement PBL. After three years the schools were compared on their learning styles through a pre and post test. The results found that even though there were similar gains in factual knowledge the PBL students did better on the conceptual questions.
- The final example given talks about students who were given the assignment to make brochures about homeless students, (Penuel, Means, & Simkins, 2000) using multimedia. When these students were tested their results showed that they had higher marks in content master, sensitivity to audience, and coherent design.
- This approach has been found to be better, though, in supporting flexible problem sovling, application of knowledge, and hypothesis generation. (Dochy, Segers, Van den Bossche, and Gijbels, 2003).
- Additional studies have demonstrated that students who participate in problem-based experiences are better able to generate accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations (Hmelo, 1998b; Schmidt et al., 1996) and to support their claims with well reasoned arguments (stepien et al., 1993).
- They also experiance larger gain in conceptual understanding in science (Williams, Hemstreet, Liu, and Smith, 1998).
- In one such study, however, Hmelo, Holton, and Kolodner (2000) asked sixth-grade students to design a set of artificial lungs and build a partially working model of the respiratory system. They found that the design project led to better learning outcomes than the traditional approach to instruction.
- Fortus and colleagues (2004) conducted a study with 92 students that tracked their learning across three design-based science units that included designing a structure for extreme environments, designing environmentally friendly batteries, and designing safer cell phones. Each unit contained multiple design and learning cycles. the research team found that both higher and lower achieving students showed strong evidence of progress in learning the targeted science concepts and students were able to apply key concepts in their design work.
- Design activity supports revisions and redesign their work product. The complexity of the work often dictates the need for collaboration and specific roles for different students, providing them with the opportunity to become "experts" in a particular area.
Project based focuses on an end product that students must create using and researching knowledge and content to come to their end product. Where as problem based learning focuses more on answering a question and coming up with possible solutions to an enduring question. And learning by design has the students actually diving into the making and creating, learning and solving by making mistakes and revisions.
6. In your opinion, what is the most important benefit to learning that is common across the three types of inquiry-based learning approaches?
In my opinion having higher thinking skills and cooperating groups are the most important because students will be able to retain the information and instead of asking why they have to do the work, it may have relevance in their lives and are able to connect to their world. students will also be able to make longer lasting connections to the content and will benefit from the social skills they gain throughout their group work.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Double Entry #12
3 Things I have Learned...
1. The first thing that I learned or really actually realized was that verbal communication in the classroom can easily set up a hierarchy were the enviroment can easily be turned into teacher centered learning through IRE and subordinace of students. Realizing this will make me think even harder now how I engage students in verbal communication in the classroom.
2. I also didnt realized that questioning time was a factor, I think that students should be given time to answer a question, but i never thought about the time factor on which they try to answer. Thinking about this brings my attention to the idea that if a student gets the answer from an inpatient teacher then why should the student even try to answer the question.
3. A third idea presented in this aricle that created an awareness for me was the idea that its okay if every question does not have a 'right answer', and that it is okay for students to discuss ideas and possiblitlies leading into furthur questioning that can go deeper than the initial question asked.
2 Things I found interesting...
1. I found the break down of communication very interesting and how they found that from the start of the classroom that the way you commicate with your students will dertermine how they function and learn in the classroom.
2. I also liked how in the article they kept comparing the IRE way of teaching in paraelle to a more student centered learning enviorment.
1 Question I have...
1. How do you as a teacher know when to implement student centered teaching, does teacher centered need to be covered first so students have the tools to focus on a project or question at hand?
By asking an essential question, students must at first rely on their 'Funds of Knowlede' about the subject. Then they must engage other students to disscuss these ideas and collaborate why this effects them. I think that by giving students an opportunity to answer big questions can improve their ideas of self, and if implemented right they can learn how to talk and reflect with one another in a respectable way. By giving these students power in the classroom they can then become more engaged in their learning and can apply the content to themselves and their enviorment. This also gives them a chance to see how adults communicate in the real world, and that they are not islands unto themselves but a collaborative group that is learing and growing with one another.
1. The first thing that I learned or really actually realized was that verbal communication in the classroom can easily set up a hierarchy were the enviroment can easily be turned into teacher centered learning through IRE and subordinace of students. Realizing this will make me think even harder now how I engage students in verbal communication in the classroom.
2. I also didnt realized that questioning time was a factor, I think that students should be given time to answer a question, but i never thought about the time factor on which they try to answer. Thinking about this brings my attention to the idea that if a student gets the answer from an inpatient teacher then why should the student even try to answer the question.
3. A third idea presented in this aricle that created an awareness for me was the idea that its okay if every question does not have a 'right answer', and that it is okay for students to discuss ideas and possiblitlies leading into furthur questioning that can go deeper than the initial question asked.
2 Things I found interesting...
1. I found the break down of communication very interesting and how they found that from the start of the classroom that the way you commicate with your students will dertermine how they function and learn in the classroom.
2. I also liked how in the article they kept comparing the IRE way of teaching in paraelle to a more student centered learning enviorment.
1 Question I have...
1. How do you as a teacher know when to implement student centered teaching, does teacher centered need to be covered first so students have the tools to focus on a project or question at hand?
By asking an essential question, students must at first rely on their 'Funds of Knowlede' about the subject. Then they must engage other students to disscuss these ideas and collaborate why this effects them. I think that by giving students an opportunity to answer big questions can improve their ideas of self, and if implemented right they can learn how to talk and reflect with one another in a respectable way. By giving these students power in the classroom they can then become more engaged in their learning and can apply the content to themselves and their enviorment. This also gives them a chance to see how adults communicate in the real world, and that they are not islands unto themselves but a collaborative group that is learing and growing with one another.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)