Ending Data

I spent this morning re-working my baseline and mid data from the Reading and Writing Attitude Surveys, since I had to omit one of my students' results due to a parent changing their mind about consenting. Yesterday and today, I administered the Reading and Writing Attitude Surveys to students. On this post, are the graphs from the results. In summary, this is what I found from mid (Daily Five) to end (Literature Circles) data.

Reading
*More students have positive attitudes about reading during free time.
*More students are happier about starting a new book.
*More students have positive attitudes about starting a new book.
*Students have about the same attitudes about  a teacher asking them questions about what they have read.
*Students are more positive about reading in school.
*Students are more positive about when it is time to read in class.
*Students are more positive about reading stories in class.
*More students have positive attitudes about reading out loud in class.

Writing
*Students feel the same about becoming a better writer and writing about something they have heard/seen.
*Students are happier now if they wrote less in school.
*Students have more positive attitudes about writing about things that have happened in their life.
*Students are more upset about writing more in school.
*Students have less positive attitudes about keeping a journal in class.
*Students are more upset about another student reading something they have written.

I am looking forward to analyzing all of my data completely to start my research report and presentation!

:(

So, I have come across a roadblock with my research. After I have pretty much collected all of  my data except for the final Reading and Writing Attitude Surveys, I have a parent who has changed their mind and will not allow me to use their student's data after all. This is very frustrating because now I need to go back and re-do all of my graphs and re-interpret my data. I feel like I am having to back track a bit, but at least the parent told me at parent conferences now until waiting a couple of weeks from now. Today, I plan to conduct the final Reading and Writing Attitude Surveys. Results of this should be posted tomorrow.

Student Interviews

Today, I interviewed my focal group and asked them "Do you like literature circles or daily 5 better? Why?" I had 1 student who preferred literature circles, 4 who liked them equally, and 2 who preferred the daily 5. Because of my observations and redirection chart, I assumed they would say that they liked the daily 5 better, but this was not exactly what I found. I will do the ending reading and writing attitude surveys on Monday to finish up my research. Above is a photo of my interview notes.

Redirections & Work Samples

One of the reasons I began starting this research is because last year I can remember myself redirecting students constantly when I was with a small group. Therefore, for my research, I have been tallying redirections made for the two weeks of The Daily Five and the first eight days of Literature Circles. The average number of redirections in 40 minutes during The Daily Five was five. Now, with Literature Circles, with eight days of data, the average number of redirections has moved up to six in 40 minutes. With The Daily Five, the most redirections I had in a 40 minute small group time was five. With Literature Circles, I have had a day with eight redirections in 40 minutes. I feel like I am spending a lot of time redirecting them. I am attaching a photo of my chart for a visual.

As far as student work is concerned, I am seeing that they are not close to finishing their work. It is often hard for me to get a sample of work that is complete. Today, their job was to read a chapter in their book and then write connections they have with the story. I am attaching a photo of C's work because I showed his work last time. When comparing his work from the last photo I took, I noticed this time it is messier and the paper is crumpled, as if he did not care about his work. There is also no punctuation and there are spelling mistakes that he could have fixed if he had looked carefully in the book. From looking at student's work, I am making the observation that their work is not as quality with the Literature Circles.

I plan to interview the students tomorrow to find out how the feel about Literature Circles in comparison to The Daily Five. Check back for that tomorrow!

Midpoint Writing Attitude Survey

On Tuesday, I gave students the Writing Attitude Survey and compared the results from the baseline data. Below are the results I found.

·         There are now no students who are highly upset about writing about something they have heard or seen.

·         There is one less student that is happiest about becoming an even better writer than they already are.

·         There is one more student that is highly upset about writing more in school.

·         There is one less student that is happiest about keeping a journal in class.

·         There are less students that are happy about writing about something that has happened in their life and more students who are upset about this.

·         Less students are highly upset about a classmate reading what they wrote.

·         More students are feeling happier if they did not write as much in school.

Like with the Reading Attitude Survey, I am a little surprised about some of the results and would like to talk to the kids about why they chose these answers. I think this will help me better understand their attitudes. 

Midpoint Reading Attitude Survey

My focal group students have moved on from The Daily Five to literature circles, so on Monday, I administered the Reading Attitude Survey and compared the results from the baseline data. I was really surprised with some of the results because they do not really reflect my observations and conversations with students in interviews. Below are the results of the comparison from baseline to mid-research.

·         More students are highly upset about reading a book in school during free time.

·         For baseline data, none of the students were mildly or highly upset about starting a new book. Now, three of my students fit into this category.

·         Students have made more of a concrete determination about whether or not they like reading different kinds of books. For the baseline data, students were more spread in all four categories, now they are mainly in either extreme.

·         More students are very happy about me asking them questions about what they read. There are now no students who are highly upset about this.

·         Students feel the same about reading in school.

·         More students feel happy about starting reading class. There are now no students who are highly upset about this.

·         More students are very upset about the stories they read in reading class.

·         More students are upset about reading out loud in class.

·         More students are happy about taking a reading test. There are now no students who are highly upset about this.

Overall, I really want to talk to students about some of their answers to get justifications. I think this will help me better understand the results.

Reflecting on this Week

This will be the second of two weeks for my focal group to participate in the Daily Five. For the next two weeks, they will be learning and participating in Literature Circles. I am anxious to see the difference between their work quality, engagement, and motivation. Yesterday, students were filling out an AdvancEd survey for our school and the question asked "What do you like best about school?" One of my focal groups wrote that he liked Listen to Reading and Word Work. These are my Daily Five centers! :) This made me really excited. I can tell he is motivated through these centers. 

Below are some pictures and captions that give you a little bit more of a visual of how the Daily Five is run in my classroom. Enjoy!

This chalkboard contains any paperwork students may need for their Daily Five centers. It has their Daily 5 Menus, Weekly Summary, Writing Prompts, Word Ladders, Scrabble Spelling, and How Much is Your Word Worth. The white sheet to the side is updated daily to reflect where students should be going for each rotation that day. Students also have this chart in their Daily Five guide.

This is part of the listening center. I like to have a variety of picture and chapter books for the students to select from. I also have four student computers where students listen to the website Storyline Online. This website has celebrities reading various picture books.

These posters (left) show the expectations for each center. The students can refer to these as needed. The large chart paper also has the learning targets for each of the centers so students can better understand their objective for participating in that center.