Continue building a bridge between your practice, your action research and what you are learning. Muse about anything that inspires you, observations, reflections, experiences, connections, dilemmas....what’s innovative about what you’re planning to do this semester? How are you thinking “outside the box”?
In my action research last semester, my driving question sought to find the correlation between student self-perception and actual reading achievement. My biggest takeaway was that students in intensive reading interventions need more frequent feedback. My goal this semester has been to find a digital tool that will allow students to enter in all of their monthly reading scores from several different assessments which will produce a visual for them to print out so they can see their own progress (or lack of progress) . I connected Crazy Eddie’s video “Smart Failure from a Fast Changing World” with my DQ when he said that learning stays flat when the “pace of change overtakes the pace of learning.” My students sometimes made such amazing reading gains, but they just can’t see it. When I did a Google search for the key terms “visual” “reading” “progress”, it led me to many paper/pencil charts that can be used to help kids track their progress. Lots of cutesy Pinterest pictures, but not what I was looking for. When I added the search terms “digital” and “survey” all of the cutesy images disappeared, but I was left with results that didn’t match what I was looking for. I was inspired by Baggio’s urging to create clean and simple visuals. “Don’t Make Me Think” (pg 156) seems counterintuitive to teachers, but the point is that we can only think one thought at a time so we need to reduce their cognitive load by keeping the visuals clear. I think I am on a quasi-innovative track with trying to create a digital tool for students since my search came up with very few hits. I did stumble upon a math graphing site for kids called “Kids Create a Graph” that I am very excited about playing around with. It easily helps them create a bar graph, but I also wanted a survey that would capture their written reflections about their current monthly reading data and what their next steps are. Can I easily combine these 2 aspects somehow? I am also considering John Hattie’s Visible Learning for Teachers which shows that “Educating students to have high, challenging, appropriate expectations is among the most powerful influence in enhancing student achievement”. This concept of “personal bests” in goal setting has always been important to me to share with my students. Lots of ideas swirling around right now- just trying to get focused and clear!
4 Comments
Lori
11/12/2016 02:05:23 pm
Dana, I know what you mean about visible feedback. We use a reading program called Kids A to Z, in which kids are assigned letters as reading levels, and then get access to a library of online books at their level. They know their level because they see it every time they read. Their progress through a level is constantly visible...they can see how many books they've read and accrue "stars" based on this. And they know when they're progressing because I bump them to the next level and send an email home to their parents. They love seeing their progress and moving through the levels!
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Kris Drew
11/12/2016 07:12:50 pm
Dana-
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Kris
11/12/2016 07:37:23 pm
Dana- just looked at the Kids Create A graph site- that you linked- that is fabulous! I hope that your students find it easy to use- any exposure to this online graphing will really help them!!
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I have struggled with the notion of timely feedback. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to give my students more frequent feedback, but as a secondary teacher with 160 students it's almost impossible for me to ever really do that. So I'm always looking for ways to build that feedback into their own work or collaboration with their classmates.
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Dana HandI teach Read 180 at Northwood Elementary School and I am passionate about reading (obviously!) In my "free time" I love hanging out with my 2 teenagers and taking our two dogs for long walks. Archives
March 2017
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