The Green and Grey Classroom looks forward to implementing our action research plan in our placements next semester! We hope that our findings will inspire educators to explore grouping within their own classroom and continue further research on the topic. As Vygotsky once said, "What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow"- L. Vygotsky. We encourage our fellow teachers to facilitate group work in order to teach our students how to work collaboratively and better prepare for whatever path they may choose in life.
We appreciate any questions and/or comments!!
Feel free to view our prezi presentation here
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
End of the Semester Reflection
We have spent the bulk of the semester thinking about grouping, and whether a teacher's grouping strategy has an effect on student achievement. Looking back over the course, it's become clear to me that in our case, the grouping strategy employed definitely helped us create, what we consider, to be an amazing final product. I don't think any one of us could have created the ARPP, blog, and Web 2.0 Demo in the quality that was expected by ourselves. Furthermore, our unique talents and background knowledge helped us to create a product that came together seamlessly. It seemed like a challenge at first - we all teach in different content areas, in different school settings, and SES areas, but we used those differences to propel our debates. One conversation that stands out in particular was when we set out to define self-efficacy. We concluded on this
After completing the literature review, our action research team defines self-efficacy as the targeted sense of oneself in a given content area. For example, a student who says she is bad at math has low self-efficacy in that content area. Self-efficacy is determined by a number of factors including cultural norms and expectations. As typically understood, this is seen when society puts an emphasis on math and science for boys, and art and reading for girls. We will be measuring this through our pre and post survey, where we will directly ask our students how confident they feel in our respective content areas.
This definition comes right from our ARPP. I think this paragraph shows how we came together as a team to define the core of our action research.
After completing the literature review, our action research team defines self-efficacy as the targeted sense of oneself in a given content area. For example, a student who says she is bad at math has low self-efficacy in that content area. Self-efficacy is determined by a number of factors including cultural norms and expectations. As typically understood, this is seen when society puts an emphasis on math and science for boys, and art and reading for girls. We will be measuring this through our pre and post survey, where we will directly ask our students how confident they feel in our respective content areas.
This definition comes right from our ARPP. I think this paragraph shows how we came together as a team to define the core of our action research.
Our Action Research Journey
Our work as a team came to a close last Tuesday. We, The Green and Grey Classroom, have spent the semester developing an action research project in grouping strategies and their effect on students' self-efficacy. The last few weeks, our group has focused on cleaning up our wiki for its final draft, and creating a Prezi presentation of our action research plan. We have worked hard as a team to bring our work to a close. Dana worked tirelessly with Christy and Kevin to create the online presentation. They used images from the film, The School of Rock, to illustrate the abilities of one person versus the abilities of a team. They reflected on their own progress as a team through this process as a result, and came to the conclusion that they could not have completed this action research project independently. Colleen and Jane worked hard to edit the wiki, and create team self-evaluations of the ARPP, Web 2.0 demo (the prezi), and the team blog.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
The Achievement Gap Among Students
We want to frame our discussion around the achievement gap:
Why is the achievement gap harder to close in reading as opposed to mathematics? Wanting to find answers, we searched for statistics surrounding Maryland's own achievement gap and came across a recent article from The Baltimore Sun (link is below).
The article states that in third grade reading, for example, schools have cut the achievement gap in half in this past decade down to 18 percentage points; however the gaps continue to grow larger as students move through the grades.file:
Question: Why do you think this is? Do you think the new Common Core State Standards will have any affect on the achievement gap (in Maryland and/or across the U.S.)? Thoughts about math vs. reading?
The Achievement Gap is an interesting topic and it relates to Differentiating Instruction, because when you group students based on readiness and abilities, the prevalence of an achievement gap could influence how these groups interact and how successful group work will be.
Why is the achievement gap harder to close in reading as opposed to mathematics? Wanting to find answers, we searched for statistics surrounding Maryland's own achievement gap and came across a recent article from The Baltimore Sun (link is below).
The article states that in third grade reading, for example, schools have cut the achievement gap in half in this past decade down to 18 percentage points; however the gaps continue to grow larger as students move through the grades.file:
Question: Why do you think this is? Do you think the new Common Core State Standards will have any affect on the achievement gap (in Maryland and/or across the U.S.)? Thoughts about math vs. reading?
The Achievement Gap is an interesting topic and it relates to Differentiating Instruction, because when you group students based on readiness and abilities, the prevalence of an achievement gap could influence how these groups interact and how successful group work will be.
Link to Baltimore Article:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-07-25/news/bal-achievement-gaps-in-maryland-are-still-wide-20130725_1_hispanic-students-grades-gaps
Link to Denver Achievement Gap article:
http://co.chalkbeat.org/2014/04/08/at-denvers-flagship-high-school-shocking-achievement-gaps-and-small-steps-forward/#.VH5kLkvhwds
Monday, November 24, 2014
Divergent Thinking
The video posted below interestingly illustrates education in our modern society. In it, Sir Ken Robinson outlines how new technology clashes with the system of education created to mesh with the industrial revolution. This is a concept that is very integrated in gifted education curriculum, as opposed to convergent thinking. Divergent thinking, he argues, is the way to tap into our students' creativity. It's important to foster this throughout schooling, because it tends to decrease over time through traditional schooling. Think about it - we are constantly telling students that there is only one answer, and take away points when we deem their answer is incorrect. However, there are multiple ways to get to an answer, and we should encourage our students to think outside the box.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
A Visual Representation of our Action Research
This word cloud shows a visual representation of what our action research project is all about. A word cloud works by displaying the most commonly used words in larger fonts according to their prevalence. I think this is a great visual to show you all what we are working towards. As you can see, the words "student" and "students" are the words we use the most, which illustrates how our students are central to our action research in differentiation. Identifying what makes them successful is why we are working so hard to create and implement a plan.
Group Differentiation
These videos talk a bit about the importance of giving students independence and the opportunity to learn in groups. Although a lot of it targets elementary education, some of the management can be used for our classroom. The first one talks about keeping students on task in groups and holding students accountable. The second video talks about how to differentiate and what the students' responsibilities are and what the teacher's responsibility is. It gives a variety of teaching styles and how to differentiate, even while using direct instruction.
Because these videos are created by math instructors, they have given me (Dana) a few good ideas on how to teach without lecture and more interactively.
Take a look!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF3T2aZM3ko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVRYSC8YyYA
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