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
Monday, November 10, 2014
Clock Buddies
Today, in a professional development session at Loch Raven High School I found out about Clock Buddies. It's a grouping strategy devised specifically to vary partners based on different factors. Students are given a piece of paper showing a clock with lines extending from the numbers to record names. If Joey writes his name on Jackie's 9 o'clock, then Jackie will write her name on Joey's 9 o'clock. Here is a visual:
Each student has his or her own clock, with up to twelve partners, which allows teachers to create homogenous groups, heterogeneous groups, and even allow students to choose their own partner. The teacher should make sure to be consistent with every student's clock, so that when he/she wants to create homogenous groupings, for example, all he/she has to do is call out what groupings are to meet. This would sound like, "Complete the activity with your three o'clock partners." I think this is an interesting grouping strategy, and see many merits to this kind of organization. For example, set, consistent groupings are always available for activities.
Image from: http://www.readingquest.org/strat/clock_buddies.html
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Carol Tomlinson and DI
I believe the most important factor relating to DI is the idea that not every student is at the same level of readiness for the content material. In my AP Government class, which will be where I perform the methodology of my research, I have already witness that there are varying levels of ability and readiness for these students. Looking over their grades, observing their behaviors in the classroom, and hearing their attitudes about the classwork, has given me evidence that every student has differing abilities and strengths for the content and these varying factors in the classroom will influence how successful or not successful the differentiated grouping will be. One thing that educators must always be mindful of is that readiness does not relate directly to an IQ level.
Carol Tomlinson is one of the leading experts in differentiated instruction. She has contributed a great deal of knowledge and research on the subject of DI. The follow two links are videos of Carol Tomlinson discussing her opinions on DI...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcQ8shR37yg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMvCd5Xafag
When it comes time to begin grouping my students, the readiness level of each student will be a major factor in how I group these students. On the one hand I will break students up into groups, where each student displays about the same level of readiness for the content; this will be my homogenous grouping strategy. On the other hand I will break students up into groups where each student displays varying levels of readiness for the content; this will be my heterogeneous grouping strategy. Based on what Ms. Carol Tomlinson has described in her research, there should be different degrees of difficulty for students to achieve the same outcome. Will students learn better and find content more educationally difficult and stimulating in a heterogeneous group or a homogeneous group? The data for this question will be collected through observing group behaviors and keeping notes on peer relationships within the groups, as well as assessing each groups final product in the classroom. One of my theories is that if students are broken up into heterogeneous levels it will be more beneficial to each student because, just because each student is not a the same readiness level with the content, does not mean that each student does not have other strengths that they can bring to the group work. A student may not be at an expert readiness level for the topic of Federalism, but this same student may be incredibly organized and creative and may be the best person for designing the layout of the final project and can teach others in the group how to design such a creative project.
The following link is a video of the 7 major steps in Differentiating Instruction as seen in Hollywood...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6rEy3Lqfio
Carol Tomlinson is one of the leading experts in differentiated instruction. She has contributed a great deal of knowledge and research on the subject of DI. The follow two links are videos of Carol Tomlinson discussing her opinions on DI...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcQ8shR37yg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMvCd5Xafag
When it comes time to begin grouping my students, the readiness level of each student will be a major factor in how I group these students. On the one hand I will break students up into groups, where each student displays about the same level of readiness for the content; this will be my homogenous grouping strategy. On the other hand I will break students up into groups where each student displays varying levels of readiness for the content; this will be my heterogeneous grouping strategy. Based on what Ms. Carol Tomlinson has described in her research, there should be different degrees of difficulty for students to achieve the same outcome. Will students learn better and find content more educationally difficult and stimulating in a heterogeneous group or a homogeneous group? The data for this question will be collected through observing group behaviors and keeping notes on peer relationships within the groups, as well as assessing each groups final product in the classroom. One of my theories is that if students are broken up into heterogeneous levels it will be more beneficial to each student because, just because each student is not a the same readiness level with the content, does not mean that each student does not have other strengths that they can bring to the group work. A student may not be at an expert readiness level for the topic of Federalism, but this same student may be incredibly organized and creative and may be the best person for designing the layout of the final project and can teach others in the group how to design such a creative project.
The following link is a video of the 7 major steps in Differentiating Instruction as seen in Hollywood...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6rEy3Lqfio
Saturday, October 25, 2014
What is self- efficacy?
In our action research study we are going to be measuring student self-efficacy. So what exactly is student self-efficacy? Self-eficacy refers to how students feel about themselves in regards to their capabilities. It is the belief that they can or cannot complete a certain task successfully. This differs from self-esteem which deals with students' perception of their worth or self-value. However, self-efficacy can affect self-esteem. It is also common that self-efficacy can affect student achievement in school.
So how are we going to measure this? Well, after multiple discussions our team has decided on a one-group pretest/posttest method to complete our research. We will measure student self-efficacy through the survey previously posted. We will then assign students to groups of mixed readiness levels to work on an assignment to be graded. After the assignment is complete, we will measure student self-efficacy within the content area a second time through the same survey. The second survey will include additional space for students to add any comments on how working in the group helped or hindered their achievement in the content.
So how are we going to measure this? Well, after multiple discussions our team has decided on a one-group pretest/posttest method to complete our research. We will measure student self-efficacy through the survey previously posted. We will then assign students to groups of mixed readiness levels to work on an assignment to be graded. After the assignment is complete, we will measure student self-efficacy within the content area a second time through the same survey. The second survey will include additional space for students to add any comments on how working in the group helped or hindered their achievement in the content.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
DI in Gifted Students
Despite all the research I have recently compiled on DI, I still struggled to understand how High-Low groups benefit the high group in differentiated instruction. If these students aren't being challenged and are forced to work at a lower level, how does this benefit them? I believed that these students needed to be pushed to a higher level in order for their knowledge to expand. However, after reading this article I have started to understand the importance. These gifted students need the variety just as much as every other student. Take a look!
http://www.nsgt.org/differentiating-learning-for-gifted-students/
http://www.nsgt.org/differentiating-learning-for-gifted-students/
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Literature Review
We've been working on compiling a literature review over the past few weeks. We've each identified a source focusing on differentiated learning and its effects. Through this process the team has found that there is not one sure answer about differentiation - it largely relies on the students in the classroom, and how the teacher chooses to meet their many needs. While frustrating, we believe that this complexity will serve us well as we come from different content areas and different schools. The broadness will allow us to create a plan based off our actual students, and our results will be specific to our classrooms. It is important to note that what I end up implementing in my classroom will look very different than what Dana will implement in her classroom. Though Kevin and I have the same students now differentiation would still appear differently in a social studies classroom than an ELA classroom because our students aren't the same in every single class - or even in every unit. As a team, we will conduct surveys to gauge the self-efficacy of our students in our content areas, and build from there. We will compare the beginning results with the end results to see how differentiation affects a student's image of himself/herself in a given content area.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Flipped Classrooms
Recently I met with a retired teacher/administrator/many other education titles and we talked about differentiating instruction. She used a concept called the flipped classroom in a school where she was the principal. She explained that using a video camera the teachers created lessons for low achieving students to watch at home so the students would be exposed to the material before the rest of the class, so as to give them a jump start on the learning. I researched other schools using the flipped classroom and there are some interesting web sites explaining the concept like http://www.edutopia.org/blogs/tag/flipped-classroom. or
videos at http://flippedclassroom.org/. Check them out, not sure how I feel about the flipped classroom but it is worth looking into.
videos at http://flippedclassroom.org/. Check them out, not sure how I feel about the flipped classroom but it is worth looking into.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Coming up with a Problem
Hi all! Last week when our team met we began to discuss possible topics for our action research. We had difficulty coming up with a theme universal to all content areas, seeing that we all teach very different subjects. With that being said, we decided to go with differentiated instruction as our main idea. Of course, we are going to have to break this vague topic down to specific types of DI.
Differentiated instruction is something that all teachers must incorporate into their lessons, no matter what subject you teach. Students are all unique and learn in a variety of ways, therefore, one type of instruction is not going to reach all of your students equally.
As our research team discussed DI further, we came up with a few questions that we hope to answer with our action research. These questions include:
Differentiated instruction is something that all teachers must incorporate into their lessons, no matter what subject you teach. Students are all unique and learn in a variety of ways, therefore, one type of instruction is not going to reach all of your students equally.
As our research team discussed DI further, we came up with a few questions that we hope to answer with our action research. These questions include:
- Is there a functional way to differentiate the assignments given to students?
- Does this differentiation affect students' self-efficacy? If so, how?
- When forming groups, is it better to pair students of the same level, or to pair high-performing students with low-performing students?
We will keep you updated as we explore these questions further!
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Meet The Team!!!
Greetings, fellow action researchers and guests! We are the Green and Grey Classroom! We will use this blog to communicate the findings, questions, and results of our action research plan. We had our first meeting today where we discussed group roles, and came to the conclusion that we should first decide on a research question. We also created a Twitter account (@greyhoundclass) in addition to this wonderful blog to communicate with groups and individuals doing similar work. The five of us look forward to the year ahead of creating and implementing an action research plan concentrating in secondary education. Take a minute to get to know us below!
Hi, my name is Christy Kontos, and I am an action researcher out of Loyola University Maryland, focusing on secondary education. My content area is English, and I am hoping to work in 8th grade upon receiving my masters degree in education this upcoming May. I enjoy literacy, blogging, and creative writing.
Hello! My name is Kevin Harrington and I am currently getting my Master's in Teaching at Loyola University Maryland! My focus for teaching is Secondary Education in the subject of Social Studies.
Hi, my name is Dana Boggiano and I am currently pursuing a Masters of Arts in Teaching with a concentration in mathematics. I am hoping to work in a high school classroom upon receiving my degree in May.
Hi, I am Jane Mundy a math teacher at Perry Hall Christian School. I am a mother and a grandmother to a beautiful red head. I hope to earn my masters in teaching from Loyola in the spring of 2015.
Hi, my name is Colleen Carroll and I am also currently pursuing a Masters degree from Loyola University. My content area is Spanish, and I ultimately would like to teach middle school. I enjoy learning about other cultures and languages and hope to pass this on to my future students!
Hi, my name is Christy Kontos, and I am an action researcher out of Loyola University Maryland, focusing on secondary education. My content area is English, and I am hoping to work in 8th grade upon receiving my masters degree in education this upcoming May. I enjoy literacy, blogging, and creative writing.
Hello! My name is Kevin Harrington and I am currently getting my Master's in Teaching at Loyola University Maryland! My focus for teaching is Secondary Education in the subject of Social Studies.
Hi, my name is Dana Boggiano and I am currently pursuing a Masters of Arts in Teaching with a concentration in mathematics. I am hoping to work in a high school classroom upon receiving my degree in May.
Hi, I am Jane Mundy a math teacher at Perry Hall Christian School. I am a mother and a grandmother to a beautiful red head. I hope to earn my masters in teaching from Loyola in the spring of 2015.
Hi, my name is Colleen Carroll and I am also currently pursuing a Masters degree from Loyola University. My content area is Spanish, and I ultimately would like to teach middle school. I enjoy learning about other cultures and languages and hope to pass this on to my future students!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)