Week 7: What are the most important things to remember when observing your students? This list could include many other significant points, but I chose the ones that seemed developmentally appropriate for my age group. When observing 2nd graders, noticing their behavior and trends can answer many questions or show why the data is one way or the other. A teacher who is observing should be very organized. This includes the way the class is set up, what the students are doing, the frequency of observation, data collection, and analyzing data. It can be easy to create bias during observations so I believe the more organized a teacher is prior, during, and after the observation will reduce generalizations. A bad time to do observations is when students aren't set up for success. If the goal of the observation is to notice trends, then the teacher wants to make sure the environment is optimal during each observation. It is important that students are doing independent work or understand all aspects of the assignment so that the teacher can be focused on the observations rather than helping students. Bigelow, M. 2014. Observing students as an assessment. Retrieved from http://nstacommunities.org/blog/2014/02/28/observing-students-as-an-assessment/
Observing Students. 2017. Informal Strategies for Effective Assessment. Retrieved from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/observing-students/ Linsen, M. 2014. Why You Should Observe Your Students More. Retrieved from https://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2012/12/15/why-you-should-observe-your-students-more/
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What are the most important things to remember in conducting interviews?
For my research project, I will be sending home a survey to parents about their experience using Seesaw in their child's education. The only problem I foresee is asking questions that aren't biased or trying to get them to answer a certain way. I am no statistical genius, so I am sure my questions will be written in ways that may skew an answer-- but I will be aware of this as much as possible. I will also give my students a survey about how much they liked Seesaw or not. Right now, the main issue I have is that there are just a few 4 consistent kids who use Seesaw to upload the work. My goal is to target at least 6 kids and increase their use. Hopefully, when I give the students their survey they will have enough experience using Seesaw to give good answers. Researching more about interviews and survey's as part of research helped guide my thoughts. The following suggestions were the most common ideas across many blogs and articles about leading a quality interview. Thanks to Virgil's comment I realize I never did outright explain Seesaw and how I will be using it. Here is an informative video about Seesaw: I found it helpful reading other people's blogs to see how they plan to collect data. Mariah mentioned her worry was if she will even get enough data, and I can relate. I have already started the documenting part, however is it quality data? Will it prove anything in the end? These are questions that keep coming up as I get further into this research project.
How will data collection ‘look’ for me? The action research project I am focusing on is student engagement using a digital portfolio. The question I am trying to answer is, “Does student engagement/motivation increase when implementing a digital portfolio?” I have been using the program called Seesaw that is very student friendly and allows my 2nd graders to document their best work. My data will be collected by doing observations. I will sort it into three columns: I will take photo evidence and do written observations of their work. This will reflect their level of engagement and motivation to create quality work. What challenges am I anticipating? I have been implementing Seesaw in my classroom since the beginning of the year and I have about 5 or 6 students who love to use it. There are 11 other kids who haven’t found it to be very useful. These are the students I am really going to focus on and try to increase their motivation in class. This is a challenge in itself because of various factors such as, time constraints, inability to complete assignments, or lack of interest. Another challenge with my data collection will be getting a wide variety of students and accurately documenting their progress. My goal is to get my lowest students interested in documenting their work, not just my above grade level kids. This data will be subjective and very qualitative. The quantitative data I can include would be how many times student X uses Seesaw in one week. This week, reading other people’s blogs didn’t quite make a huge impact on my research or questions that I had. We are all researching different topics, so I felt like their information was not very relevant for me. However, I was reminded by Josie that using videos (and then I thought of Podcasts) was a good starting point and could have some great resources out there.
Erika is researching parent communication using apps, so some articles she posted were ones that I could actually find some beneficial information from, such as, http://digitalpromise.org/2014/09/17/using-technology-for-effective-parent-teacher-communication/ And http://www.nea.org/tools/63615.htm I am glad this week’s post, though tedious, was sooner rather than later. One of the hardest parts of a research project is the references and citing credible sources. Doing the work beforehand will make the actual written project much easier. |
Author2nd Grade teacher at Keet Gooshi Heen in Sitka, Alaska Archives
December 2017
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