Sunday, October 17, 2010

Final Decision

I met with my site supervisor, Susan Fambrough, this past week to discuss my ideas for an action research project. She is a wealth of knowledge and ideas so I was very excited to meet with her to discuss my ideas. Here were two ideas for action research that I presented:

1. Second grade student’s math fact recall - What are students, teachers, and parents doing help learn math facts? What teaching strategies are they using? Are they using any at all? What prior knowledge of math facts are the students entering second grade with? Why are the students not retaining these facts then they move up to third grade?

2. Second grade Developmental Reading Assessments (DRA) scores - I want to utilize the CAFÉ book study to work with my team to implement effective strategies in the classroom and among the grade level to improve DRA scores. Why are students not meeting grade level DRA scores at the end of the year? What reading strategies are teachers using to help their struggling readers?

Immediately when I presented these two ideas, she told me she really liked both topics because they were all practical to for me to research and apply in my current classroom and grade level. We talked through each one. I expressed that my first idea, student math fact recall, has been a weak area for second grade every year. It is brought up as an area to improve in but then nothing more is actually done to improve student learning. I told her this was something I was very passionate about because I love to learn and teach math. It is very frustrating as a teacher to see my students not be successful in this area.

The second idea came from previously viewing district DRA data from previous years. My site supervisor asked why I would choose this topic. I told her it was because I was very shocked and disappointed in the low scores our grade level at our school produced. It was honestly embarrassing. We talked about how my team is already on board to use some PLC time to do a book study to go more in depth in using the Daily 5 program that we currently use in our classrooms. I told her this was not one of my favorites out of the three ideas. She asked how I was going to go about doing this as an action research project. I could not really give her a detailed step-by-step answer so she suggested that I maybe not pick this topic.

I was really glad that I was meeting with her because I had struggled to come up with a third idea for an action research project and asked for her help. Here was her suggestion:

3. Effective Team Planning and helping my team to become a professional learning community -When or how often to other teams plan? How do other teams plan? What should we be doing to make the most out of our planning times? How can I bring my team together? What does my team want to focus on to become a stronger PLC? When can we have PLC time?

First of all, I liked the idea of this but to me it was so abstract I could not wrap my mind around how I would complete the entire action research process. I am a very visual person. Visually I did not see this working out and how I could collect data or what data I would use. As my site supervisor was talking she realized by the look on my face that I was not crazy about this idea, even though it was a good one. I told her I did not see myself being passionate about completing the action research if this was my topic. I told her that I learned if you are not passionate about what you are researching then it ultimately was a waste. She agreed and so we went back to the two original ideas I had come in with.

I really expressed to her however every time I go back to the idea of picking one topic for action research, I always go back to the student math fact recall. It is something that is presently on my mind. I feel passionate about it the project. I feel my students would immediately receive the benefits from choosing this as my action research project. I told her my only hesitation would be my ability to get everyone on my team on board if I ever needed their help in the research process. She immediately told me not to worry about that and she could help with that if it comes down to that. She is on board to help me out in anyway she can. She really liked the fact that the end result of me doing this action research would benefit our school in so many ways. She has suggested to also use our campus instructional coach as a resource (if needed) as well, which was a good reminder for me. In the end, it was decided that I would do my action research project on second grade student’s math fact recall.

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