Jay Leeper's Blog

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Test Data & Strategies

The test scores at my PDS school for the fall, East Dale Elementary, seems to be generally above the state and county level. The lowest levels there are social studies, where only 50.13% are proficient, and 32.62% are below mastery, and 17.22% are novice level. Also, only 8.45% are at the distinguished level. So, a definite learning need at this school is to increase knowledge in the social studies area. One thing I thought about was using music from other cultures in the music classroom to get students interested in learning about other cultures. Specifically, I was thinking about an experience with African drums and dance. I could teach the students about the instruments and dances, and possibly have an African percussion group from FSU or WVU come in and give a performance for the kids. I could also teach the kids about the culture, even using books about African stories and reading them aloud to the class. Reading aloud improves students' vocabulary, improves students' listening comprehension, and allows them to enjoy texts that they may not be able to read. From these activities I would hope to increase not only the student's interest in these kinds of cultures and instruments, but their ability to play rhythms on these types of instruments. For an assessment, I could assess the students' abilities before and after the lesson to repeat a rhythm on a drum.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Action Research

1. What is the title of the project?
Getting Smarter at School: A 7th Grade Class Researches and Reflects on its Discussion Habits

2. What is the problem?
The class's discussions were unfocused and didn't meet the criteria of the speaking and listening standard. Also, the students are expected to use higher-level thinking.

3. Describe the instructional intervention.
The teacher collected research by observing classroom discussion, then presented this research to the class. Individual members of the class changed their behavior to make the discussions better. Later, half of the class observed the other class during discussion, which gave them a perspective on the effectiveness of the class discussions.

4. What kind of strategy is the instructional intervention?
Setting Objectives

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work?
-Instructional goals should not be too specific. When goals are too narrowly focused they can limit learning (Fraser, 1987; Walberg, 1999).
-If students are encouraged to personalize the teacher's goals, then learning increases. Student ownership enhances learning focus. Studies show the benefits of students setting sub-goals derived from the larger teacher-defined goals (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Morgan, 1985).

6. How will data be collected to determine if the strategy will work?
The teacher collected data on the class discussions. She counted the number of students who raised their hands, students who talked out of turn, and the number of side conversations. The teacher did this several times over the year. Later on, half of the class observed and collected data on the other half of the class.

7. How was the data analyzed?
Over the course of the implementation, the teacher took her observations. Then she could compare this data and see how the numbers of hand raising, talking out of turn, and side conversations increased or decreased.

8. What were the results?
Overall, the results were positive. The number of times the students raised their hands increased greatly and the number of side conversations decreased greatly. There was not, however, much of change in the number of students who talked out of turn. Also, it seemed like the attitude and understanding of the students increased greatly, and they became interested in the quality of their discussions.