Week 5 Action Research Sleuth #seaccr

Week #5 SEACCR Reflections on Sleuthing

What do I see in new light?  

Several PLN members have emailed me this week with some new insight in my research.  In every case I have chosen to do it.  I am so thankful for my PLN.  I am wondering if we will continue to be connected after our class ends or if we will slowly go our own ways.  This has been invaluable.

This week I shared visual templates for concept mapping and triangulation.  I am such a visual learner, I thought it would perhaps help other people as well.  I shared the APA YouTube site with a student who missed the Twitter session where the site was addressed.  I sent Amanda a list of songs for use in her research for 1st grade (I teach music two mornings per week).  I included several lists of songs and YouTube lists she could also use.   I also completed a 3rd peer review for a peer that needed a reviewer.  Not only is the review process becoming clearer, I am finding that I am connecting the same findings to my own research.  I also included the rubric from Livetext as I think the student is perhaps taking the class via Mooc and might not be able to access the Livetext rubric.

I intended the visual tools to help students think about a new way to consider data collection.  I do not know if anyone is using the templates but I certainly plan to for my own research.  I know the APA sites did help the peer who used them this week to fine tune the proposal section of the research project.  I hope the list of songs I sent to Amanda will be useful in her classroom.  I have not heard back from her to know if she has had the time to listen to them.  I have not yet heard if the peer who I emailed the review and rubric will use the rubric as I recently sent the document.

Next week, I am going to start analyzing data!  I have several completed data collection activities and I will begin to look for themes and threads.  I am changing my method of reading fiction/non-fiction to the 2nd graders and will ask them to talk to me about why they prefer one when I read aloud and another when they read silently.

What did I learn this week?  Costerhout explained how to embed a survey directly into a blog.  Both Jeff and Carollea encouraged me to make my parent survey anonymous, which I did.  I am excited to receive the surveys back next week.    The Twitter session attendance was quite small on  Thursday but I gleaned a ton of ideas for analyzing data.  I learned from my professors to cite connections or differences between my data and literature and new literature.  I learned from Carollea to have a written protocol.  I started documenting my comments in my journal with dates!  I was challenged to ask the boys why they preferred fiction or informational text.  I learned about content analysis and Wordle.  Jeff encouraged me to put information into an Excel sheet to look for themes (I may have to go paper and scissors though for my textile learning quirk).  I learned about Triangulation, and tips on validating and giving credibility to my research.

I must repeat what I wrote last week!  I know the Twitter sessions say, "Optional" but they are the bulk of my learning in this class.  Whew!  Great week.

Have other questions come up?

Yes!  I am wondering why students choose the fiction book overall when I read them aloud, but when they have free choice, why do they choose informational text....hmmm.  I will have to ask them!

Am I seeing any themes emerge?

I am not so sure about this yet.  I certainly and finding new information.  For example, I am finding that my students are becoming literature reviewers!  And I didn't even intentionally teach this concept.  I am excited for my 2nd graders.

Week 5 Action Research Sleuth #seaccr                      

Another week of stretching and growing as a professional teacher and researcher.  Looking at data leads to what?  That is the question I am searching for?  I have some new (and old) tools to help me understand my data.  As of today, I have collected several pieces of data.  I have completed one read-aloud of a fiction and informational text book on the subject.  I have tried to keep the bias at a minimal by reading with a variety of voices and energy.  The students had a card template that had them write their name, choice of book title, and a reason why they chose the book.  I will repeat this process three more times to get more information.  On initial investigation, I am surprised that some of the boys in my class chose the fiction story.  Both stories were quality literature.  

A second test I have run is simply inviting the students to have a free choice reading time and documenting what books they chose.  This time, all the boys chose the informational texts to read.  Interesting.

Another study I have conducted this week is listening to students interact about books.  I have written down many of the conversations.  At one point I had 7 boys crowded onto the couch sharing one book (informational text).

The parent survey is going home tomorrow.  I am hoping to get at least 18 of the 22 parents to fill it out and return next week.

In Science, we are studying mammals and habitats.  We had drawn pictures of a selected animal and put them on the bulletin board.  Today, we wrote Haiku poems using the same animals.  We needed to think in terms of informational text in order to complete the poem.  All but two students were very successful at this project.  We hung them up on the bulletin board next to the habitat picture.  An example of one of the poems formed from informational text:

Mammal

Brown, claws, omnivore

Running, hibernating, parenting

Bolting, hunting

Brown bear

This process required the student to know and understand some basic informational information about the animal they chose.  All students had some success.  This process also made informational text a necessity to student learning.

My survey is complete and I am depending on Survey Monkey to do some work for me.  At first viewing I find that all classroom teachers who responded planned and are integrating much more informational text. 

I have learned to use several new tools during this study.  Below are some template examples of concept mapping which I plan to use with student responses.

I have also learned about triangulation during Thursday's Tweet session.  Here are two samples of this type of template:

I plan to use triangulation to identify themes and threads in my research. After finding some interesting  beginning data, I plan to look again at current literature and see what things I might have in common with studies that have already been made.  I keep reminding myself that this type of analyzing is creative!