Denise Thornton
April 28, 2011
Current Research Question:
1. How do I bring progressivist methodology into the classroom?
- connect curriculum/content to student lives
- engaging students by letting them state opinions about techniques used in class and make suggestions
Key Data Sources:
| Data Source | Significance | Remaining Questions |
| Student Journals - all my students in both my math class and science classes have journals for warm-ups, exit questions, notes, class activities, etc. | This allows me to introduce literacy into my math and science classes on a daily basis. It also gives me a way to have my students express their opinions without having them have to state them to the whole class. They can be more open and in turn I learn more about my students which enables me to create lessons that will connect with their background knowledge and their lives. | How do I more effectively use the journals? What makes students use their journals as a study tool, or even better, proactively use their journal as a learning tool (developing their own ways to effectively use their journal for class)? |
| LEA Classroom Activity - had math students write story problems involving a recursive routine and then read it out loud to the class. I then picked two problems for students to solve in their journals. | This activity had the students fully engaged. Not only did they get to infuse their own personality into the story problem, they also paid attention to hear what everyone else had written. It even extended into the practice work of solving the problems. It was the highest level of engagement I had during my work sample. | How can I convert/change/use LEA activities to use it more often in class? How can I get this level of interest/engagement in more of my lessons? |
| Math TV Exercise | This was an activity where the students watched a downloads of different instructors teaching the same equation. They then circled which instructor was the easiest to understand and which instructor was the hardest. The students used two different colors to circle the easiest and hardest to understand. This allowed me to not only see what type of instruction the students preferred, but the students explained why they thought it was easier to understand. | How do I get the students to communicate to me when I my instruction is easy or difficult to understand? Should I have students rate each different technique I use? If I let students rate the techniques will I get valid information? |
| Smiley/Straight/Frown Face Evaluation | This is a quick way I can tell in class if students understand a concept. My students responded well to this. I think this was because when we did a show of hands to see who had which face they weren’t stating I don’t know this, they were telling me what kind of face they had drawn. | Why do students respond to this better than the typical, “Does everyone understand this?” or “Does anyone have any questions?” What other ways can I have the students voice their level of understanding that they will want to use? |
| Unit Student Self-Evaluation | This is a bar graph self-evaluation that the students fill in through out the unit so I can see their comfort level and understanding of each content objective. It is great because I can see what areas the majority of the class is still not understanding, and I can also see what I need to work on with individuals so they don’t get behind. | How do I develop student voice? How so I turn student voice into students taking responsibility for their own learning, even at a middle school level? |
Literature I have read:
Carrier, Karen A. (2005). Supporting Science Learning through Science Literacy Objectives for English Language Learners. Science Activities: Classroom Projects and Curriculum Ideas, 42, 5-11.
Dusterhoff, Marilane. (1995). Why Write in Mathematics? Teaching PreK-8, 25, 48-49.
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model. Boston, MA; Pearson Education, Inc.
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for Teaching Mathematics to English Learners. Boston, MA; Pearson Education, Inc.
Hines, V. A. (1972). Progressivism in Practice. Part Two: The Classroom. ASCD Yearbook, 118-164. Retrieved January 13, 2011 from ERIC Database.
Knapp, C. E. (1994, August). Progressivism Never Died, It Just Moved Outside: What Can Experiential Educators Learn from the Past? Journal of Experiential Education, v17 n2, 8-12. Retrieved January 13, 2011 from ERIC Database.
Leo-Nyquist, D. (2001, Spring). Recovering a Tradition of Rural Progressivism in American Public Education. Journal of Research in Rural Education, v17 n1, 27-40. Retrieved January 13, 2011 from ERIC Database.
Loucks, K. & Gangloff, K. (2006, October). Reinforcing Math Skills. Phi Delta Kappan, v88 n2, C3. Retrieved January 11, 2011 from ERIC Database.
Moran, S., Kornhaber, M., & Gardner, H. (2006). Orchestrating Multiple Intelligences. Educational Leadership, 64, 22-27.
Osgood, R. L. (2010). Laggards, Morons, Human Clinkers, and Other Peculiar Kids: Progressivism and Student Difference in Shaping Public Education in the United States. Philosophical Studies in Education, 41, 1-10. Retrieved January 13, 2011 from ERIC Database.
Silcock, P. (1996, June). Three Principles for a New Progressivism. Oxford Review of Education, v22 n2, 199-216. Retrieved January 11, 2011 from ERIC Database.
Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2011). The SIOP Model for Teaching Science to English Learners. Boston, MA; Pearson Education, Inc.
Tomlinson, Carol Ann. (2008). The Goals of Differentiation. Educational Leadership, 66, 26-30.
Ward, Robin & Muller, David. (2006). Algebra and Art. Mathematics Teaching Incorporating Micromath, 198, 22-26
Significant Literature:
| Significant Literature | Relates to Learning | Remaining Questions |
| The Goals of Differentiation Carol Ann Tomlinson 2008 | This article identified four areas that help students take control over their learning and their lives: building trust, ensuring fit, strengthening voice, and developing awareness. This has helped shape my research as I am starting to work on letting the students have a voice about how well they understand content objectives, what kinds of review they think help them the most for tests, quizzes, etc., and how they like to review homework. | Develop student voice and see if there is direct correlation to student buy-in and/or students taking on responsibility for their own learning. How can I take my lessons and differentiate them even further? Developing a system of assessment that shows if a lesson had good levels of differentiation or not. |
| Orchestrating Multiple Intelligences. Moran, S., Kornhaber, M., & Gardner, H. 2006 | This article talked about multiple intelligences and how to target different students during a lesson. This fit into my work sample for multiple reasons, but most importantly because I was teaching an ESOL Sheltered Content class. After my second observation, my supervisor and I talked about the need for me to differentiate my lessons more than what I was currently doing. With the help of this article, I tried to incorporate at least the following intelligences in each lesson: visual/verbal/linguistic/intrapersonal/interpersonal. | How can I pull the intelligences that are harder to use into my classroom? (music, movement) How do I continue to use techniques that work well without them getting boring and/or old to the students? What intelligence does a student feel most comfortable communicating in - to class, to me, to each other - not just learning in? |
| Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model. Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. 2008 | Various techniques and assessments targeting ESOL, but beneficial to the whole class. (Graphic organizers, manipulatives, color, verbal activities, etc.) | Do SIOP techniques help students connect with background knowledge better? Does SIOP help students understand content objectives as life skills that can be used all throughout their lives? |
Dialogical Analysis Posts:
| Dialogical Analysis Post | Relates to Learning |
| Friday, March 25: Differentiated Learning | This is the week where I started to focus on building student voice and using it to help me assess my class. It is where I started to look harder at differentiation and what that actually means and how to differentiate more successfully in my lessons. |
| Sunday, March 6: Multiple Intelligences | This is the two weeks when I started using self-evaluation techniques in my class. This is when I started to realize the importance of student voice, and how powerful it can be for both my students’s learning and my learning/teaching |
| Saturday, February 19: Things Start Ramping Up | I talk about the LEA that I used in Math and how great the kids reacted to this. Looking back, this is the first time I had the students use their voice in my class and I did not even realize it until right now. I remember that this was the most engaged the entire class had been since I started teaching them. The only time I have gotten close to that level of engagement is when I did the warm-up self evaluation (student voice) and when I use manipulatives (angle wedges, flip books, etc.). |
Codes:
SV = Student Voice
L = Literacy
DL = Differentiated Learning
Themes:
Student Voice - developing student voice in the classroom
Literacy - using literacy in a math classroom
Differentiated Learning - differentiated learning helps students connect content objectives to their own life, become responsible for their own learning, and develop skills that they will use throughout their lives.
What do these themes tell you about your teaching and your students? What insights are you gaining from the themes?
When I first started teaching my question revolved around a progressivist classroom and to see if making the material relevant to the students would help them retain the information so they could use it throughout their education and the rest of their lives. This basic question is still in tact, but it has evolved into how do I use differentiation in my lesson planning to create student voice and develop a student’s responsibility for their own learning. I think there is a direct link between giving the student an opportunity to be a part of the learning process (by stating opinions, knowing how to track their own progress, etc.) and their retention of content objectives. If they are involved, they have more buy-in or engagement. I think it develops a feeling of ownership in the student.
Also, I think using differentiated instruction, hitting on multiple intelligences as much as possible, and allowing the students to have a voice (the themes listed above) is progressivist in its nature as the students are learning not only content knowledge but tools they can use throughout their lives. And by making the connection to content objectives through something they are helping create, the retention level should be higher. They are learning instead of memorizing.
Finally, literacy in the classroom helps the students learn at a higher level because it forces them to look at content objectives from different perspectives. It forces them to think, to use their background knowledge to develop their own ideas about content objectives. Not their own misconceptions, but their own opinions about what they are learning and how it fits into their individual lives.
