How will I analyze my data? Why am I making these choices?

I kind of freaked out when I read this weeks essential question… I had no clue on how I would analyze my data? What did that even mean? I blew off the question for a while because I had to process it for a while. I read my PLN blogs to see what they were doing and I had forgotten about the resources on Anne’s blog. Oh!!! So glad for Stephanie’s reminder!

I have observations, and students’ self-assessments, and a focus group interview to start with. Towards the end of the data collection, I will give my students the self-assessment again and also another focus group. Then I will compare the two pieces and go over the observations.

After reading about Dr. Jones’ data analysis method cheat sheet, I think the best method for me would be to use the case study. I think that I would be able to give a good description of my students and the events. Although, the narrative would also be appropriate for my research study. I think that I would be able to tell my story from my students’ perspective.

Revised Research Proposal

I finally made the revisions for my Research Proposal

and started my data collection. Yay! Feeling good! Research Proposal

Week 8 Reflection

I haven’t collected any data yet. Our school has been on spring break this past week. We start up school again tomorrow. I have read over people’s blogs and found them to be very helpful to me. It has given me a chance to see what I can expect in my classroom. It has also given me ideas on how to change my data collection process to make things more efficient. I have “borrowed” ideas from others and will begin collecting data this week. I’m a little behind on my proposal, and sadly, spring break was the exactly the opposite of what it’s supposed to mean. There is only a few weeks left and I am nervous now… I applied to graduate and the anxiety has become stronger! Whew! Trying to breathe and its time to buckle down and focus to the finish!

Research Proposal

Here is my updated Research Proposal. I couldn’t figure out how to add a link to my paper. So, I copied and pasted. The content is the same, but the formatting changed when I pasted it here.

Rational for the Research
I am currently teaching Kindergarten. My class consists of 11 girls and 14 boys. The majority of my class is Alaskan Native of Tsimshian decent. Most students are from lower-to-middle class income families. There are five students that I am mostly concerned about. In Kindergarten, I try to keep the lessons moving and as engaging as possible, but there are those five that still do not know their letters and sounds or cannot count past 20. It is very difficult to keep their focus when providing whole group instruction, and sometimes during small group instruction. What engagement strategies would work best with these learners?

Literature Review

Student engagement occurs when “students make a psychological investment in learning. They try hard to learn what school offers. They take pride not simply in earning the formal indicators of success (grades), but in understanding the material and incorporating or internalizing it in their lives” (Newmann, 1992). For students to be engaged in learning, they needed to be actively engaged and collaborative. One study showed that students, enlisted in community colleges, that were active and collaborative in their studies showed a link to higher grades and course completions that led to completing degrees (McClenney, 2007). In order to hold their attention, students need to be an active participant. They need to be able to manipulate information physically. Students should be able to work in groups, or be able to discover things on their own. “Keeping students involved and engaged in activities is the very best solution. When students are excited about their learning, they are motivated to pay attention in class” (McDonald, 2013). Keeping students involved and engaged in a lesson is difficult at times. “Because children with low levels of engagement are at risk for disruptive behavior, absenteeism, and eventually dropping out of school (Roderick & Engle 2001), the need to increase engagement is critical to children’s success in school” (Jablon, 2006). Jablon also notes that there is a difference between being engaged and being on task. She quotes a book, Shaking Up the School House, “Engagement is active. It requires that students be attentive as well as in attendance; it requires the student to be committed to the task and find some inherent value in what he or she is being asked to do. The engaged student not only does the task assigned but also does it with enthusiasm and diligence. Moreover, the student performs the task because he or she perceives the task to be associated with a near-term end that he or she values. (2001, 64)” (Jablon, 2006).
Engagement is more than involvement. It requires feelings and making sense of things and being actively involved. Students need to be able to make connections to what is being taught. Memories are made when feelings are involved. Trowler goes into much detail about student engagement and what it is, who is responsible for student engagement, what kind of engagement, and reasons for engagement (Trowler, 2010). One study listed eight different types of engagement. (Taylor & Parsons, 2011) Ways to measure student engagement were discussed as well. These measurements focused on attendance rate, standardized test scores, and truancy rates, which all are quantitative data. Along with these types of engagement the best practices that were recommended were ‘Interaction, Exploration, Relevancy, Multimedia and Instruction’.
What happens if student engagement is not working efficiently? There are many strategies or best practices to keep students engaged in their learning. One study that focused on mathematical number sense showed that activities that focused on the big ideas of number sense as well as explicit instruction, combined with practice, led to improvements in number skills of kindergarten students. “The present study shows preliminary evidence that instruction combining big ideas of number sense and explicit instruction can enhance mathematics competence of kindergarten students” (Sood, 2010). These combined lessons and practice led to improvements in number skills of kindergarten students (Sood, S., & Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2010). There are different strategies for various types of lessons and groups of children. There are strategies that can be used with whole groups, small groups and individuals. “The engagement strategies you choose depend on your purpose, teaching style, and the children in your classroom. Regardless of the strategies selected, effective facilitation is a key to making them work. By facilitation we mean the techniques used to execute a strategy” (Jablon, 2003). Trowler also states that, “Strategies for engagement hinge on one’s understanding and definition of engagement, as well as notions of what would constitute appropriate targets, goals and beneficiaries for engagement strategies” (Trowler, 2010). Deciding student engagement strategies is beyond classroom observation and is more complex as each child is different.
The literature reviewed showed several themes. The first theme is that students need to be active participants and have opportunities for collaboration in order to be engaged in learning. The second theme is that students need to make connections with the content; connections are more than just being involved in learning, they are active, evoke feelings, and create memories. The third theme is that students ultimately determine their own engagement strategies. Individual learners need unique ways to stay engaged and teachers are responsible for facilitating the appropriate engagement strategies.
Some Kindergarten students are not engaged during traditional lessons, nothing specific, because they are generally not engaged in most lessons. Why? The goal of this research is to improve student learning, to get students to be more involved in their learning or get them to have ownership in their learning. Some key factors are: socio-economic conditions, teaching technique or style, and student learning style. The more I think of my students and how many different strategies there are, I am thinking of using self assessment tools. This would be one way for students to have ownership in their learning. How can student engagement strategies help all students take ownership of their learning?

Method
Participants
The participants in my study are four boys and one girl. They are ages five and six. All of the students are chosen because they are all struggling with letter and sound recognition. I believe they are struggling because when it is time for the letter and sound lessons, they are not engaged in the lessons. The focus of this project is to provide different engagement strategies so that they will be able to recognize all letters and sounds by the end of the school year.

Materials
I will be taking observation notes and using a rubric to check student engagement after providing lessons using different strategies. I will use a survey about engagement. I will be taking notes about the observations I have made. The data collection process will be four to five weeks.
Procedure
In my project, I will be meeting with a focus group to determine what student engagement is and why it is important. I will use a rubric, adapted for Kindergarten, to use for my class. I will introduce it to my class and show them how they can place themselves on the rubric to see how they perceive themselves. After two weeks, I will give my students a survey about student engagement (I will do this by using Mimio Voters). After various engagement strategies are introduced, I will use the rubric and observe my class again. I will give the survey to them again and also have another focus group. I will compare the results from the beginning with the results from the end. With my small group of students to introduce lessons. I will give clear explanations and expectations. I will show them a rubric for self-assessment in writing and handwriting. I hope that after showing them the rubric and discussing student engagement that they will be able to take ownership in their learning and that they will use it to help stay engaged in their lessons.
 
References

Jablon, J. R., and Wilkinson, M. (2006). Using Engagement Strategies to Facilitate Children’s Learning and Success.” Beyond the Journal: Young Children on the Web. Retrieved from http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200603/JablonBTJ.pdf
McClenney, K., Marti, C. N., and Adkins, C. (2007). “Student Engagement and Student Outcomes: Key Findings From CCSSE Validation Research.” Community College Survey of Student Engagement.
McDonald, Emma. “How to Involve and Engage Students.” Education World. 2013.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/columnists/mcdonald/mcdonald007.shtml
Newmann, F. (1992) Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools. Teachers College Press. pp. 2–3.
Taylor, L. & Parsons, J. (2011). Improving Student Engagement. Current Issues in Education, 14(1). Retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/
Trowler, V. (2010). Student Engagement Literature Review. The Higher Education Academy. Retrieved from https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/StudentEngagementLiteratureReview_1.pdf

Week 7 Reflection

I’m afraid I haven’t been too helpful this weekend! It looks like everyone is raring to go on his or her data collection. I am a little jealous that people are starting already, but am thankful for this week to get my stuff together.   I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with. I appreciate all the feedback I have received. I have to be honest in saying that I am a little nervous about this process. What if I am not doing it right? What if I miss something? My natural instinct is to go to quantitative data, but after emailing Anne, and reading my PLN’s blogs, I think I am ready for this next step in the process.

How am I preparing for data collection?

Well, I am researching student engagement, and it is very difficult to measure student engagement. So, I have been reading on ways to collect qualitative data. I hadn’t quite understood qualitative data collection and wanted to read more about it. I found a website that helped make it easier to understand. I am the type of person that has to read and reread to make sense of things. This site helped make things clearer to me. http://knowhownonprofit.org/how-to/how-to-collect-qualitative-data-the-easy-way There were links at the bottom of this article that explained how to run a focus group. After emailing Anne, I am planning to use a focus group, but wasn’t quite sure how to use one. I had thought that it was just a case study, but after reading about it, it is a way to gather information before starting the data collection.

I will be making a rubric for student engagement and show students how to place them on it (this will be done after I have defined it and discussed with my class what it looks like). I will also be making a survey about engagement that is kindergarten friendly.

Spring break in our district started today. I will have this whole next week to prepare my data collection, and then hopefully will be able to jump right in the next week.

Research proposal

Here’s my research proposal. Any comments or ideas that I may need to change? I hope this is what I am supposed to do…

Student Engagement Strategies to Improve Student Ownership in their Learning

Rational for the Research
I am currently teaching Kindergarten. My class consists of 11 girls and 14 boys. The majority of my class is Alaskan Native of Tsimshian decent. Most students are from lower-to-middle class income families. There are five students that I am mostly concerned about. In Kindergarten, I try to keep the lessons moving and as engaging as possible, but there are those five that still do not know their letters and sounds or cannot count past 20. It is very difficult to keep their focus when providing whole group instruction, and sometimes during small group instruction. What engagement strategies would work best with these learners?

Literature Review

Student engagement occurs when “students make a psychological investment in learning. They try hard to learn what school offers. They take pride not simply in earning the formal indicators of success (grades), but in understanding the material and incorporating or internalizing it in their lives” (Newmann, 1992). For students to be engaged in learning, they needed to be actively engaged and collaborative. One study showed that students, enlisted in community colleges, that were active and collaborative in their studies showed a link to higher grades and course completions that led to completing degrees (McClenney, 2007). In order to hold their attention, students need to be an active participant. They need to be able to manipulate information physically. Students should be able to work in groups, or be able to discover things on their own. “Keeping students involved and engaged in activities is the very best solution. When students are excited about their learning, they are motivated to pay attention in class” (McDonald, 2013). Keeping students involved and engaged in a lesson is difficult at times. “Because children with low levels of engagement are at risk for disruptive behavior, absenteeism, and eventually dropping out of school (Roderick & Engle 2001), the need to increase engagement is critical to children’s success in school” (Jablon, 2006). Jablon also notes that there is a difference between being engaged and being on task. She quotes a book, Shaking Up the School House, “Engagement is active. It requires that students be attentive as well as in attendance; it requires the student to be committed to the task and find some inherent value in what he or she is being asked to do. The engaged student not only does the task assigned but also does it with enthusiasm and diligence. Moreover, the student performs the task because he or she perceives the task to be associated with a near-term end that he or she values. (2001, 64)” (Jablon, 2006).

Engagement is more than involvement. It requires feelings and making sense of things and being actively involved. Students need to be able to make connections to what is being taught. Memories are made when feelings are involved. Trowler goes into much detail about student engagement and what it is, who is responsible for student engagement, what kind of engagement, and reasons for engagement (Trowler, 2010). One study listed eight different types of engagement. (Taylor & Parsons, 2011) Ways to measure student engagement were discussed as well. These measurements focused on attendance rate, standardized test scores, and truancy rates, which all are quantitative data. Along with these types of engagement the best practices that were recommended were ‘Interaction, Exploration, Relevancy, Multimedia and Instruction’.

What happens if student engagement is not working efficiently? There are many strategies or best practices to keep students engaged in their learning. One study that focused on mathematical number sense showed that activities that focused on the big ideas of number sense as well as explicit instruction, combined with practice, led to improvements in number skills of kindergarten students. “The present study shows preliminary evidence that instruction combining big ideas of number sense and explicit instruction can enhance mathematics competence of kindergarten students” (Sood, 2010). These combined lessons and practice led to improvements in number skills of kindergarten students. (Sood, S., & Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2010). There are different strategies for various types of lessons and groups of children. There are strategies that can be used with whole groups, small groups and individuals. “The engagement strategies you choose depend on your purpose, teaching style, and the children in your classroom. Regardless of the strategies selected, effective facilitation is a key to making them work. By facilitation we mean the techniques used to execute a strategy” (Jablon, 2003). Trowler also states that. “Strategies for engagement hinge on one’s understanding and definition of engagement, as well as notions of what would constitute appropriate targets, goals and beneficiaries for engagement strategies” (Trowler, 2010). Deciding student engagement strategies is beyond classroom observation and is more complex as each child is different.
The literature reviewed showed several themes. The first theme is that students need to be active participants and have opportunities for collaboration in order to be engaged in learning. The second theme is that students need to make connections with the content; connections are more than just being involved in learning, they are active, evoke feelings, and create memories. The third theme is that students ultimately determine their own engagement strategies. Individual learners need unique ways to stay engaged and teachers are responsible for facilitating the appropriate engagement strategies.

Research question:
Some Kindergarten students are not engaged during traditional lessons, nothing specific, because they are generally not engaged in most lessons. Why? The goal of this research is to improve student learning, to get students to be more involved in their learning or get them to have ownership in their learning. Some key factors are: socio-economic conditions, teaching technique or style, and student learning style. The more I think of my students and how many different strategies there are, I am thinking of using self assessment tools. This would be one way for students to have ownership in their learning. How can student engagement strategies help all students take ownership of their learning?

Method

Participants
The participants in my study are four boys and one girl. They are ages five and six. All of the students are chosen because they are all struggling with letter and sound recognition. I believe they are struggling because when it is time for the letter and sound lessons, they are not engaged in the lessons. The focus of this project is to provide different engagement strategies so that they will be able to recognize all letters and sounds by the end of the school year.

Materials
I will be taking observation notes and using a checklist to check student engagement after providing lessons using different strategies. I will use Aimsweb Probes to record letter and sound recognition and fluency at the beginning and will use them to record at the end of the study to see if they have improved. The data collection process will be four to five weeks.

Procedure
In my project, I will be meeting with my small group of students to introduce lessons. I will give clear explanations and expectations. I will show them a rubric for self-assessment in writing and handwriting. I hope that showing them the rubric that they will be able to take ownership in their learning and that they will use it to help stay engaged in their lessons.
 
References

Jablon, J. R., and Wilkinson, M. (2006). Using Engagement Strategies to Facilitate Children’s Learning and Success.” Beyond the Journal: Young Children on the Web. Retrieved from http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200603/JablonBTJ.pdf

McClenney, K., Marti, C. N., and Adkins, C. (2007). “Student Engagement and Student Outcomes: Key Findings From CCSSE Validation Research.” Community College Survey of Student Engagement.

McDonald, Emma. “How to Involve and Engage Students.” Education World. 2013.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/columnists/mcdonald/mcdonald007.shtml

Newmann, F. (1992) Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools. Teachers College Press. pp. 2–3.

Taylor, L. & Parsons, J. (2011). Improving Student Engagement. Current Issues in Education, 14(1). Retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/

Trowler, V. (2010). Student Engagement Literature Review. The Higher Education Academy. Retrieved from https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/StudentEngagementLiteratureReview_1.pdf

Week 6 Reflection

I have been struggling and struggling as what to do for data collection? Is my topic too broad? Not focused enough? I think my question keeps changing as I think of my group of students. Do I focus on the ones I am concerned with, or the classroom as a whole?

While reading through the other blogs, it seemed like most of everyone had a firm plan. I don’t feel that way yet. I am still unsure of my plan. I saw that Cheri is doing student engagement as well, and I had planned on doing observations for my collection. She shared a data collection form that I found very useful and hopefully will be able to adapt for my classroom. I went to the Teachers pay teachers website and I was able to find some other forms that could be useful to me! Thanks Cheri!

Cheri had some concerns about students doing self-assessment. Sometimes I get in the habit of being the “all-seeing eye” in the classroom. What happens is that I get so overwhelmed with having to assess everyone, that I get bogged down with 26 students standing in a line waiting for me to look at their papers. I have learned to let go of that role and have had them check with each other, or check on the white board. For students that I am really worried about, I make sure to see those students. I was able to give Cheri some self-assessment ideas for her kindergarten students.

After reading blogs, I feel much better about data collection. I was unclear of what I needed or wanted to do, but now I am feeling much better and hope that this boost of energy continues to get us through the week!

Another note: Next week there is no school for us. We will be on spring break! Earliest spring break we’ve ever had! I hope this doesn’t cut into too much of our data collection time and that I will have enough information and data to collect.

Week 6 blog

How will data collection ‘look’ for me? What challenges am I anticipating?

I think most of my data collection will be from observations. I will provide different engagement strategies for my students. I also am going to use an observation spreadsheet to record engagement behaviors. This is all I have so far. I have looked and looked and tried to get ideas from the Internet, but haven’t found anything that will help with recording data on student engagement. I see a lot of engagement strategies, but not a lot on how to collect data. I did see that others were using surveys for their classes. I may have to create a kindergarten friendly survey, but not sure how I would incorporate it. This is something that I will have to think about more. I think I’m having a hard time, because there are so many ways for children to show engagement, not all children will show it the same way. So, I’m thinking that I will focus just on the children I have concerns about, make observations about them, and try different strategies to see what fits their learning needs.

Theoretical Framework and Research Question

The literature review showed three themes. The first revealed that for students to be engaged in learning, they needed to be actively engaged and collaborative. Students need to be an active participant in their learning. The second theme is that students need to be more than involved. It requires feelings and making sense of things and being actively involved. Students need to be able to make connections to what is being taught. Memories are made when feelings are involved. The third theme is that each individual student ultimately determines engagement strategies. Each child is different and will require different ways to keep them engaged. It is a teacher’s responsibility to facilitate that strategy and keep the students engaged.

Research question:
Some Kindergarten students are not engaged during traditional lessons, nothing specific, because they are generally not engaged in most lessons. Why? The goal of this research is to improve student learning, to get students to be more involved in their learning or get them to have ownership in their learning.

Some key factors are: socio-economic conditions, teaching technique or style, and student learning style.

The more I think of my students and how many different strategies there are, I am thinking of using self assessment tools. This would be one way for students to have ownership in their learning.

So, my question is: How can self-assessment improve student engagement?