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.

Today's Daily Five Happenings

My kiddos were super engaged during my observations with The Daily Five today! I had to be pulled out in the hallway to discuss another student with the principal, so I left the door cracked as the students worked on their Daily Five activities. When I walked back into the room, ALL of the students were quiet, engaged, and doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. This makes me excited because it shows me they really are motivated to complete their Daily Five. :) I also made some observation notes while my focal group was working. Five out of my six focal group students were writing with complete sentences and appropriate conventions and spelling. I drew attention to the one student that was not using conventions and she quickly fixed her mistake and later I noticed she was consistently using such conventions in her writing. However, all six of the students were engaged in their writing task. Yay for my kids! :)

Thick Descriptions

I have been making a lot of informal observations of my focal group students with The Daily Five and have found the concept of thick descriptions to be especially helpful in fully describing and making sense of my observations. Below are a couple of thick descriptions I created from my thin description in my field notes.

C's work from the Writing center of The Daily Five (see thick description below)

It is 12:40 and student have just returned from recess and restroom break. C is completing the Writing portion of The Daily Five. He walks to the folder at the back of the room with ideas for writing prompts, one of which asks about their favorite pet. C decides on this one and begins writing about how dogs are great animals and then goes into describing his dog. C stays focused on his work and generates 7 sentences and begins on the 8th sentence when I call for the groups to change. I have inserted a picture of his work in this post. After analyzing his work, it is apparent he is using quality work expectations including writing complete sentences with a subject and predicate and using appropriate capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. It is obvious this is his best work and he has put a lot of effort into his writing. He smiles as he turns his work into me at the end of his writing time.

It is 9:55 on Monday, September 17 and students are completing The Daily Five at a different time than normal because of a special event.  E is completing the Word Work portion of The Daily Five. He immediately gets out his Daily Five guide, which is a helpful tool I created to help students remember the expectations and options for each of the five rotations. He decides on the bumpy words activity and gets a piece of paper, a crayon, and the bumpy sheet (intended for use with crocheting). As I walk by, I notice him struggling writing his spelling word "about". It is not that he cannot spell the word, but he does not like the way his letters are looking with the bumpy texture. He turns and notices I am behind him and then says, "I don't know what to do." I reply with, "You are exactly on the right track. It looks great." He keeps going with another word, but is frowning, as he still does not like the result of what his bumpy words look like. He then says, "I can't do this." I reply to him, "You're doing exactly what you should be doing. It looks like it is supposed to. Keep it up!" Then, I walked away and noticed he continued to work without the frown this time. E was very engaged throughout the process because he was being very meticulous about what his work looks like. Looking back in my student interviews, E said he liked all parts of The Daily Five. I am anxious to see if E does bumpy words again as part of Word Work.

Student Interviews

On Tuesday, I interviewed student in my focal group. I asked them, "What do you think of the Daily Five?" I am excited to report that all of the students really have positive attitudes toward the five rotations as their first impressions. A couple of the students are really pumped about it all because they said they like everything about it! Word work definitely was the students' favorite rotation that they mentioned. I am curious to make further observations about whether they are more motivated and engaged just in the centers they mentioned they liked the best. I will be careful to make those sort of observations in the future for my data.

Writing Attitude Survey

Monday, I administered the Writing Attitude Survey to my focal group for more baseline data about their attitudes toward writing. This survey had 28 questions, but had a lot of questions that did not relate really to what I would be able to measure through my research or were repetitive. Therefore, I chose seven of the best fitting questions for my research. Since it is difficult to see what each color represents, I am listing it here: Blue-Happiest Garfield; Red-Slightly smiling Garfield; Green-Mildly upset Garfield; Purple-Very upset Garfield. All of my focal group students were very happy about becoming a better writer and keeping a journal for class. Most of them also felt very good about writing about something they have heard/seen or something that has happened to them. Most of the students were also very upset about not writing as much in school. The question about how they would feel if they could write more in school was more varied. There were two students at each happiest, slightly smiling, and mildly upset, and then one student at very upset. This is some very important information because even though the other questions tend to lean toward the fact they have positive attitudes toward writing now, about half of these students would have less positive attitudes if they wrote more. Asking the group how they would feel if a classmate read something they wrote also had varied answers. Most of the student felt very happy or happy about this, but two were very upset. This is also very interesting to me because one of the portions of the Writing Daily 5 is a part where they can write in a class themed journal and then have other students read what they wrote. Overall, I have collected some great baseline data about attitudes. I have also done some interviews with students this week, collected student work/made interpretations of their work, and made some notes about their engagement in The Daily Five. I will post more on this later in the week. 

Elementary Reading Attitude Survey

Last week, I administered the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey to my focal group for my baseline data before beginning The Daily Five or literature circles. It was made up of twenty questions, but there were a lot of repetitive questions, so I just chose nine questions to focus my data on. I then made pie charts based on student responses for these nine questions. Since it is difficult to see what each color represents, here it is: Blue-Happiest Garfield; Red-Slightly smiling Garfield; Green-Mildly upset Garfield; Purple-Very upset Garfield. The students have positive attitudes about starting a new book and reading in school. The students also had mostly positive attitudes about reading different kinds of books and reading in class, but there were also a few students who had very upset attitudes about these questions. The students had mostly very upset attitudes about reading out loud in class and taking a reading test. The responses to the last three questions were much more varied. This gives me really good baseline data so I can better understand the students' attitudes toward various aspects of reading. Check back in a couple of days to read more about my baseline Writing Attitude Survey, which I will administer hopefully on Monday, if all goes as planned.

Focal Group Information

I submitted my IRB materials a week from today and am still waiting on approval, so I thought it may be helpful to learn more about my focal group I will be working with. We just took our Reading MAP, so here are their levels based on this assessment. The group is composed of 7 students. 4 of these students are below 3rd grade level and 3 are above 3rd grade level. I am still looking and waiting for approval from IRB so that I can go ahead and send home consent forms. I am looking forward to working with the students for this research project!

Preparation

Dr. Bowers-Campbell has approved my documents and now I am waiting for them to be approved by the IRB. I submitted my materials Wednesday and I am really anxious to get started with the research. I have identified my focal group of students I will be using and have located my two surveys that I will use at the beginning, middle, and end of my research for quantitative data. Below is a brief description of each survey and a link to the actual survey.

Elementary Reading Attitude Survey
http://www.professorgarfield.org/parents_teachers/printables/pdfs/reading/readingsurvey.pdf
This survey is designed to measure students' attitudes toward reading. It is very student friendly, as it has pictures of Garfield for them to choose from when answering the statements. There are twenty statements and students choose the Garfield that describes how the statement makes them feel. Once students have answered, there is a scoring sheet that totals students' attitudes for recreational and academic reading.

Writing Attitude Survey
http://literacyreferencelem.pbworks.com/f/Writing+Attitude+Survey.pdf
This survey is very similar to the reading survey mentioned above, except it measures students' attitudes toward writing. Again, there are twenty statements about writing and the students choose the Garfield that describes how the statement makes them feel.

Now, I am just waiting to hear from the IRB, so I can get my permission forms out to students and parents and then begin using these surveys to collect my beginning quantitative data!

Introduction to my Action Research

      My research question is "What is the best structure for independent reading work for students to be motivated and produce quality work?” I chose this project because I have had difficulty with students in the past having positive attitudes and completing quality work during the independent reading time. Based on my literature review, I will be using The Daily Five structure for independent reading. This is a structure for the literacy block. There are five rotations that are literacy focused These stations include read to self, read to someone, work on writing, listen to reading, and working with words. The project will be 6 weeks long and the subjects will be one of my small groups from my Reading block, which is 7 students. For 3 weeks, the focal group will participate in The Daily Five. For the remaining 3 weeks, the focal group will participate in the independent reading activities I have done in years past—literature circles activity, answering reading response questions, and completing a main idea and detail booklet.  This will help me gauge students’ attitudes and quality work when they participate in each structure for 3 weeks.