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!