CHALLENGES One of my biggest challenges was having to deal with student absences. Throughout the seven weeks I never had all 33 of my students in class at the same time. On every given day I had at least 3-5 students gone. Additionally, it was never the same students that were gone. The absences were due to sickness, truancy, or suspension. I found that during our Romeo and Juliet unit it was very hard to catch people up. For example, if a student was gone on Monday, when they returned they had no idea where we were at in the play or what happened while they were gone. Furthermore, if students were gone on a day that there was instruction over the main idea or summaries, their exit tickets and formatives looked drastically different than the students that were present.
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SUCCESSESAs an English teacher it is my goal to engage students in the reading and writing that we do in the classroom. This is what I saw during this 7 week period. Prior to beginning this unit, I felt as though students were dragging through the material. However, they thoroughly enjoyed Romeo and Juliet. I know this because of the conversations that I heard and the success that I saw with their work and engagement. I believe that their enjoyment was due to the practices that I put in to place during my study. With the summarizing strategies, students were making meaning out of their reading. The implications of this are an increase in reading comprehension. When students understand what they are reading, they are more likely to enjoy it.
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FINDINGS
Through this study I found what sort of impact implementing summarizing strategies really had. It seems like such a small thing to have students complete, but it had such a large impact on their learning. In order for the summarizing strategies to be successful it is important that they were explicitly taught. I attempted to implement one strategy very briefly. After receiving students' exit tickets, it was clear that there was some confusion as to what the expectation was. I knew that I needed to go back and do a better job at my instruction and modeling process the next day. After I did this, they had a better understanding of how to complete the summary and their exit ticket proficiency improved. Furthermore, I found that my students did better with strategies that had less structure. The Somebody Wanted But So Then strategy required students to go through each step and fill in the blanks to make a summary sentence. They didn't do very well with this because they were overthinking what should go in the blanks. For this reason, the GIST strategy was better suited for my students due to having less structure. Additionally, I found how effective exit tickets were. In my classes there were some issues with students turning in their work. However, with my data collection methods I chose to collect everything as they were exiting the classroom. I made sure that they were aware of the exit ticket expectations so they knew they needed to hand me something in order to leave the classroom. If they didn't have something to hand me, I had a brief conversation with them before they could head to their next class. Due to these expectations, all students that were present always had an exit ticket to turn in.
IMPACT
As an educator this study impacted how I view assessment. It truly is about the students' learning. Furthermore, in order to know that students are truly learning, data needs to be collected and numbers need to be reviewed. Being able to look at the trends of student work is really beneficial to being able to adapt instruction to student need. It has also impacted my teaching because it makes me realize that it is important to make assessments intentional. The things that we do in the classroom should be rooted in research. When we do our research, we become better teachers by doing what is proven to work.
CHANGEIf I were to go back and do this again I think I would try to do more group work within the unit. I think that it could have been good for students to see their fellow classmates' summaries and main idea formatives. I think that this would have been good because they all had a different way of thinking about things. I could have grouped students up based on how they were doing with the material. From this I could have even pulled a small group aside in order to provide them with some additional instruction. Additionally, I would have liked to add more visuals for students. This could include creating anchor charts in order to support their understanding of summarizing and main idea.
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MOVING FORWARDMoving forward I will be utilizing exit tickets more regularly. I saw the impact that they had on student achievement. Furthermore, they are just a great way to wrap up the day's lesson and are a tool to use to guide the next day's teaching. Additionally, I will collect data more often. Through this study I enjoyed looking at the numbers and creating visuals for student learning. I think that looking at these things are impactful because they provide a way for analysis which can then guide my teaching. Analysis can really help me make learning more intentional. I think that it would also be great to share this data with the students. Having them look at the data and then having them reflect on why or why they didn't grow would be a great way for them to take some ownership over their learning. Lastly, I will continue to use summary in my classroom. From this study it is clear that it has a positive impact on student learning, so it will continue to play a part in my classes.
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