Introduction
As technology becomes an integral part of the classroom, new challenges arise. Educators are spending hours on research and application of new programs, apps, and devices to supplement curriculum. It is key that as educators, we keep in mind the skills that students should develop, even if the medium used is different from previous generations. In the current classroom I am in, technology has evolved student products and student resources. After the first weeks of establishing routines and expectations, it became apparent that students struggle with manipulating resources to synthesize information. The purpose of this action research is to answer the following driving question:
What role does student choice learning projects play in supporting upper elementary students’ research skills?
Most often, student choice learning projects are used to increase student engagement and motivation. For the purpose of this research, I will be examining how student choice learning projects play a role in the development of student research skills. I will be targeting three specific reading and writing research skills for students. Each skill was identified in the common core anchor skills for language arts. Students will be asked to read nonfiction text to identify main ideas and supporting details. Along with reading for meaning in nonfiction text, students will be asked to rank, rate and discriminate information that they may come across in their research. Additionally, there are research skills that students will need to conduct through student choice learning projects. The research skills identified for this study were related to topics of time management, data collection, and manipulating technologic resources during a research project.
Currently, this action research will permit me to several learning opportunities. I am interested in learning how to facilitate student-choice learning projects. There are many aspects of student-choice project that cause me to rethink my position in the classroom. In student choice learning projects, the teacher’s role is to facilitate and challenge. My focus is to provide direct instruction in a series of mini-lessons that teach research skills while using conferencing as a way to facilitate student research. I will need to create rubrics and design a curricular map to guide the projects. In addition, I have to learn to manage and track a large number of individual projects. Moving from a teacher-centered instruction to student-centered instruction poses new challenges to myself. Understanding the shift in my classroom role is critical since my own education has been in a teacher-centered environment. My role as teacher-researcher is a challenging one. Understanding to collect, analyze, and interpret data in a daunting new task for myself. Yet, I am eager to understand unbiased practices of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data for improvement of my practice.
Lastly, my action research is centered to a topic that forms my philosophy of education. I want students to be able to become independent learners. From this research, the ultimate goal is to give students the opportunity to take charge of their learning. Students should be able to develop research skills that could be applied at any point of their life. My action research is focused on analyzing the relationship between student choice projects and research skills. The goal is to equip students with research skills, so that when they are confronted with an unknown, they have the necessary tools to investigate.
Needs Assessment
The group studied was a fourth and fifth grade combination class. There are a total of thirty-three students. Seventy-three percent of the students are fourth graders and twenty-seven percent are fifth graders. The master teacher is characterized as a driving force in the school’s implementation of technology. He manages all the school social media sites and brings in programs for the school to pilot. Working with my master teacher, I have been able to quickly learn the various computer programs that are implemented at this school site. The school is located in southern California and is the second smallest school in the school district. There are approximately 600 students at this site from grades kindergarten to eight. Sixty-six percent of the student population is classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged. From the students at the school site 20.7 percent are classified as English Language Learners through CELDT and 7.2 percent of the student body has a documented Individualize Education Plan. The school site spends a total of $7,154 per pupil each year. (SARC, 2013)
From the mission statement, the school focus is using project-based learning and incorporating technology. In several years, before this project teachers collaborated to write grants. The school received several grants that gave access to technology to the majority of the school. There are in-computing stations and netbooks in some upper-elementary classrooms. Some primary grades use touch-screen iPods to learn technology skills. Most of the students are exposed to some technology as a daily resource for performance or fluency tasks. The school has piloted several computer programs, such as, edmodo, dreambox, and roovy. There is a big emphasis for teachers to collaborate and work in teams to design curricular goals and lessons. The majority of teachers have personalized professional development plans, in which, they focus on a strategy, discipline, resource or methodology that they want to develop. Most teachers attend and present at conferences through out the year.
It became evident to me that students were struggling with synthesizing information during a social studies project. The project consisted of the students creating an itinerary with detailed descriptions of each location. I collected data through conferences, teacher observations and final project rubric. The rubric consisted a 1 – 4 scale labeled below standard, approaching standard, at standard and above standard. Conferences occurred during student research and presentation development. Each conference lasted between two to ten minutes depending on student need. From conferences and teacher observations, 94% of students were not able to categorize information for their research. After a week of online and library research 82% of students could not recall the location of their sites. Some students were lost with the overload of information from online search engine results. For instance, they would click on advertisements rather than websites. Only 11% of students used notes or graphic organizers to collect information. I was able to conference with students and 97% reported that copying and pasting was a form of note taking. Other students were not able to create products from information they researched. From the four-week social studies project timeline only 50% of projects were completed. Finally, the final rubric scores show that 88% of students receive an average score of 1 or below standard. On the other hand, my teacher observations and conferences indicated a 94% student engagement rate throughout the project. Students worked in partnerships to Google information and exchanged information via a learning management system called edmodo. Additionally, from my observations 82% of students collaborated to find a platform to create a final product. Conferences revealed that students spent the 3 to 5 days of project timeline testing various applications to create a presentation. This project gave students two main areas for choice. Students had to develop their own itinerary based on locations of their personal interest and were allowed to create a final product of their choice. Students could develop an online or hard copy product. The final products completed were websites, paper books, PIXIE electronic book, Microsoft power point, Pixton comics and posters. From the data collected it evident that student engagement was driven by student choice. Yet, student choice did not lead to retention or learning in social studies project. Data indicates student research and technology skills are not fully developed for self-regulated learning to occur in this project-based learning classroom. Thus, the intervention of Genius Hour will allow me to use an intervention that is student-centered and creates authentic learning experiences for student research and technology skills.
What role does student choice learning projects play in supporting upper elementary students’ research skills?
Most often, student choice learning projects are used to increase student engagement and motivation. For the purpose of this research, I will be examining how student choice learning projects play a role in the development of student research skills. I will be targeting three specific reading and writing research skills for students. Each skill was identified in the common core anchor skills for language arts. Students will be asked to read nonfiction text to identify main ideas and supporting details. Along with reading for meaning in nonfiction text, students will be asked to rank, rate and discriminate information that they may come across in their research. Additionally, there are research skills that students will need to conduct through student choice learning projects. The research skills identified for this study were related to topics of time management, data collection, and manipulating technologic resources during a research project.
Currently, this action research will permit me to several learning opportunities. I am interested in learning how to facilitate student-choice learning projects. There are many aspects of student-choice project that cause me to rethink my position in the classroom. In student choice learning projects, the teacher’s role is to facilitate and challenge. My focus is to provide direct instruction in a series of mini-lessons that teach research skills while using conferencing as a way to facilitate student research. I will need to create rubrics and design a curricular map to guide the projects. In addition, I have to learn to manage and track a large number of individual projects. Moving from a teacher-centered instruction to student-centered instruction poses new challenges to myself. Understanding the shift in my classroom role is critical since my own education has been in a teacher-centered environment. My role as teacher-researcher is a challenging one. Understanding to collect, analyze, and interpret data in a daunting new task for myself. Yet, I am eager to understand unbiased practices of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data for improvement of my practice.
Lastly, my action research is centered to a topic that forms my philosophy of education. I want students to be able to become independent learners. From this research, the ultimate goal is to give students the opportunity to take charge of their learning. Students should be able to develop research skills that could be applied at any point of their life. My action research is focused on analyzing the relationship between student choice projects and research skills. The goal is to equip students with research skills, so that when they are confronted with an unknown, they have the necessary tools to investigate.
Needs Assessment
The group studied was a fourth and fifth grade combination class. There are a total of thirty-three students. Seventy-three percent of the students are fourth graders and twenty-seven percent are fifth graders. The master teacher is characterized as a driving force in the school’s implementation of technology. He manages all the school social media sites and brings in programs for the school to pilot. Working with my master teacher, I have been able to quickly learn the various computer programs that are implemented at this school site. The school is located in southern California and is the second smallest school in the school district. There are approximately 600 students at this site from grades kindergarten to eight. Sixty-six percent of the student population is classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged. From the students at the school site 20.7 percent are classified as English Language Learners through CELDT and 7.2 percent of the student body has a documented Individualize Education Plan. The school site spends a total of $7,154 per pupil each year. (SARC, 2013)
From the mission statement, the school focus is using project-based learning and incorporating technology. In several years, before this project teachers collaborated to write grants. The school received several grants that gave access to technology to the majority of the school. There are in-computing stations and netbooks in some upper-elementary classrooms. Some primary grades use touch-screen iPods to learn technology skills. Most of the students are exposed to some technology as a daily resource for performance or fluency tasks. The school has piloted several computer programs, such as, edmodo, dreambox, and roovy. There is a big emphasis for teachers to collaborate and work in teams to design curricular goals and lessons. The majority of teachers have personalized professional development plans, in which, they focus on a strategy, discipline, resource or methodology that they want to develop. Most teachers attend and present at conferences through out the year.
It became evident to me that students were struggling with synthesizing information during a social studies project. The project consisted of the students creating an itinerary with detailed descriptions of each location. I collected data through conferences, teacher observations and final project rubric. The rubric consisted a 1 – 4 scale labeled below standard, approaching standard, at standard and above standard. Conferences occurred during student research and presentation development. Each conference lasted between two to ten minutes depending on student need. From conferences and teacher observations, 94% of students were not able to categorize information for their research. After a week of online and library research 82% of students could not recall the location of their sites. Some students were lost with the overload of information from online search engine results. For instance, they would click on advertisements rather than websites. Only 11% of students used notes or graphic organizers to collect information. I was able to conference with students and 97% reported that copying and pasting was a form of note taking. Other students were not able to create products from information they researched. From the four-week social studies project timeline only 50% of projects were completed. Finally, the final rubric scores show that 88% of students receive an average score of 1 or below standard. On the other hand, my teacher observations and conferences indicated a 94% student engagement rate throughout the project. Students worked in partnerships to Google information and exchanged information via a learning management system called edmodo. Additionally, from my observations 82% of students collaborated to find a platform to create a final product. Conferences revealed that students spent the 3 to 5 days of project timeline testing various applications to create a presentation. This project gave students two main areas for choice. Students had to develop their own itinerary based on locations of their personal interest and were allowed to create a final product of their choice. Students could develop an online or hard copy product. The final products completed were websites, paper books, PIXIE electronic book, Microsoft power point, Pixton comics and posters. From the data collected it evident that student engagement was driven by student choice. Yet, student choice did not lead to retention or learning in social studies project. Data indicates student research and technology skills are not fully developed for self-regulated learning to occur in this project-based learning classroom. Thus, the intervention of Genius Hour will allow me to use an intervention that is student-centered and creates authentic learning experiences for student research and technology skills.