Results

Unfortunately I have not been able to run my stats so I do not have any official results at this time.  I have, however, looked at the numbers comparing how my ELs did at the beginning of the year compared to the end of the year.  These students made good progress in phonemic awareness activities.  

My plan once I find someone to help me with my stats is to run a number of different tests.  I want to compare how my ELs did in comparison with the rest of the class.  I also want to compare my class from 2007-2008 with my class from 2006-2007 so that I have a control group.  When I look at the numbers it seems that my class as a whole from 2006-2007 did better on these skills, but they had been doing better since the beginning of the year.  I am curious to see if I have any statistically significant data.

Poetry

My school hires a poet every year to come work with the students and give teachers new ideas. This was my first year participating because kindergarteners do not participate.

This was a great experience.  Most of my students were able to write what they wanted to write with a little bit of help.  I learned that a few of my students are really creative and I had not allowed them to show this before.  I will be doing this poetry lesson again soon.

The poet played a CD of instrumental music and had students doodle and draw designs for about 5-10 minutes.  When this was done she had them write about their picture.  They either had to start with "I am" or "I see."  This was a really great experience for some of my students.  I think that one of my students realized that being an author is a real option for a job and I think this really inspired her.

Writing

Thanks for the feedback on writing tips!

About a month ago I decided to take a writing sample from each child, put it on construction paper, laminate it and I made it into a book.  The students LOVE it!  They fight over who gets to read it all the time.  Since then I have made three more books.  I just finished a Halloween book, which they were even more excited about.  For some students the just like seeing their work in a book.  For other students this is exciting because this is a book that they can actually read because they wrote one of the pages.

I have found that on days that I tell students we are writing to make a new book they really try a lot harder to write words correctly, include punctuation, and have a matching picture.  These are all part of the first grade writing rubric.  If only I had realized this before our writing test... I guess now I can focus on growth for the next test.

Frustrations

I guess I'm just to the point of the school year where I am feeling a little overwhelmed.  Even though I have settled into teaching 1st grade I still feel like I am constantly working to keep up with my lesson planning because it is all new to me.  We had our first round of testing last week and my students did poorly on the writing because I had not prepared them since I did not know we had a writing test.  This is something that I have started to spend more time on but it is hard to fit it all into a day.

I am also stressed out about completing my action research project.  I have made progress on my first two chapters but I have not done any work on chapters 3 and 4.  I collected my test results and inputed the data into excel but I have forgotten completely what to do now.  I emailed my advisor who sent my info to Dr. Tracz who ran my stats but now I am not able to open the file...

So, I am hoping that it all comes together somehow over the next month so that I can finish on time.

All about my research questions

How can teachers help all students learn these skills in a way that will be beneficial to all students?

I have found that some students are able to quickly learn new skills like blending and rhyming while some students have a lot of trouble learning these skills.  I know that I need to continue practicing these skills with my students but I want to do it in a way that is fun.

I think that using partners makes it more fun and also allows students to help each other learn.

I also am curious to know if English learners (especially Spanish speakers) progress through the same stages of pre-reading and reading.  In my experience my Spanish speakers have a hard time learning how to rhyme.  When I asked a coworker who is bilingual she told me that rhyming is less common in Spanish and that there are not many rhyming book like there are in English.  I think that English-speaking children grow up listening to rhyming stories and songs and this makes rhyming easier when these students get to school.

This information gives me an excuse to do more read alouds in class.  I make sure to choose some rhyming books when I am reading aloud to students.

focus on social justice and multicultural curriculum

My project focuses on social justice because I am trying to find a way to teach both English learners and native English speakers.  I do not want to give lots of extra attention to one specific group of students; I want to find a method of teaching that will help all of my students.

On a side note.  

Last year all of my students were Hispanic so I focused on Hispanic and American culture though the year.  This year I have 5 Filipino students.  One of these students does not speak much English so I have a Filipino woman who works in my class a few hours a day to tutor this boy.  I am hoping to have her help me teach about the Filipino culture since I have such a large percentage of Filipino students this year.  This will also be an opportunity for me to learn more about the Filipino culture.

How will your study influence your future practice?

Even though I am not teaching kindergarten this year I will still use some of the techniques that I used during my action research. The most important is that I will continue using partners. I learned that partners help my teaching in a number of ways:

1. I have half as many people to call on (I have 10 groups instead of 20 students).
2. I can listen is while they are whispering with partners so that I know which students in each pair are understanding and which students are not.
3. Students are able to help each other.
4. Shy students only have to whisper to one student instead of speaking up in front of the whole class.
5. Students get to know each other. I change partners about once every six weeks so students get to know a number of different classmates throughout the year.