action research
overview &
Plan
The Issue of Concern
A persistent problem that I encounter most days in my classroom is general student apathy and I wish that my students were more self-motivated and engaged in their learning. I initially believed that inappropriate phone use was the root cause of my students' inattentiveness and apathetic attitude in class. However, I've recently come to believe that non-educational phone use during class is really just a symptom of a bigger underlying problem.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that I'm not giving my students enough choice in their learning activities. Giving my students more choice might make them more active participants in the daily lessons. I believe that when students are more actively involved in learning activities they find interesting, they will be more willing to come to class and be more excited to learn. Furthermore, I also believe that if I allow more opportunity for "hands-on" activities that help connect my students' learning to the real world, they will be less apathetic and more engaged while in class.
The Plan
My action research began with a survey for my students that gave me some feedback on the learning activities my students liked most (and liked least) in Biology class this year. I chose the "top-10" most frequently used learning activities and had my students rate them in order from 1 (liked the most) to 10 (liked the least). The survey also included getting student feedback on three new "hands-on" activities that I believe my students might enjoy because they allow them to be active participants in the classroom and help connect their learning to the real world.
The purpose of my action research plan is to incorporate the student feedback I receive into future lessons, using more of the learning activities that my students liked most and less of what they liked least. When I first began my action research in early March, my hope was to plan some engaging, interesting lessons for the 2nd half of April, focused around the learning activities my students indicated that they liked the most on their survey. What I did not anticipate and plan for back in early March, was the required, time-consuming STAAR review my students would need to do during class for the last 3 weeks of April. This highly-structured, required STAAR review neither allowed me the time nor the leeway to use my survey results to try out & evaluate some new "mini-lessons" of my own during class in the month of April. My hope, therefore, is that my survey results will be useful when attempting to plan more interesting and engaging Biology lessons for next school year.
While I was not able to use the data from the "top-10" portion of the survey to plan some new "mini-lessons" during class in order to observe their impact on student attentiveness and engagement, I was able to try out 2 of the 3 new learning activities that most of my students expressed interest in doing when they completed their survey. These 2 activities--a pig dissection & viewing various cells under a microscope--were set up in the classroom for students to do after school, if they wanted to. Using the microscopes or doing the pig dissection after school was strictly voluntary--no student was required to stay after school to do them. This allowed me to observe how truly interested my students were in doing these 2 activities since no student would willingly spend time after school doing something they believed to be boring or uninteresting. The 3rd new learning activity--trying out a brand-new style of Kahoot (jumble Kahoot)--was not able to be done after school because it does require the entire class (or at least a few students) to be present in order to work properly. My hope is that jumble Kahoot can be tried out next school year and observations can be made about how interested students are in playing it.
The observations that I made with regard to my students' interest in the pig dissection & microscope slides were compiled and organized in a table.
A persistent problem that I encounter most days in my classroom is general student apathy and I wish that my students were more self-motivated and engaged in their learning. I initially believed that inappropriate phone use was the root cause of my students' inattentiveness and apathetic attitude in class. However, I've recently come to believe that non-educational phone use during class is really just a symptom of a bigger underlying problem.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that I'm not giving my students enough choice in their learning activities. Giving my students more choice might make them more active participants in the daily lessons. I believe that when students are more actively involved in learning activities they find interesting, they will be more willing to come to class and be more excited to learn. Furthermore, I also believe that if I allow more opportunity for "hands-on" activities that help connect my students' learning to the real world, they will be less apathetic and more engaged while in class.
The Plan
My action research began with a survey for my students that gave me some feedback on the learning activities my students liked most (and liked least) in Biology class this year. I chose the "top-10" most frequently used learning activities and had my students rate them in order from 1 (liked the most) to 10 (liked the least). The survey also included getting student feedback on three new "hands-on" activities that I believe my students might enjoy because they allow them to be active participants in the classroom and help connect their learning to the real world.
The purpose of my action research plan is to incorporate the student feedback I receive into future lessons, using more of the learning activities that my students liked most and less of what they liked least. When I first began my action research in early March, my hope was to plan some engaging, interesting lessons for the 2nd half of April, focused around the learning activities my students indicated that they liked the most on their survey. What I did not anticipate and plan for back in early March, was the required, time-consuming STAAR review my students would need to do during class for the last 3 weeks of April. This highly-structured, required STAAR review neither allowed me the time nor the leeway to use my survey results to try out & evaluate some new "mini-lessons" of my own during class in the month of April. My hope, therefore, is that my survey results will be useful when attempting to plan more interesting and engaging Biology lessons for next school year.
While I was not able to use the data from the "top-10" portion of the survey to plan some new "mini-lessons" during class in order to observe their impact on student attentiveness and engagement, I was able to try out 2 of the 3 new learning activities that most of my students expressed interest in doing when they completed their survey. These 2 activities--a pig dissection & viewing various cells under a microscope--were set up in the classroom for students to do after school, if they wanted to. Using the microscopes or doing the pig dissection after school was strictly voluntary--no student was required to stay after school to do them. This allowed me to observe how truly interested my students were in doing these 2 activities since no student would willingly spend time after school doing something they believed to be boring or uninteresting. The 3rd new learning activity--trying out a brand-new style of Kahoot (jumble Kahoot)--was not able to be done after school because it does require the entire class (or at least a few students) to be present in order to work properly. My hope is that jumble Kahoot can be tried out next school year and observations can be made about how interested students are in playing it.
The observations that I made with regard to my students' interest in the pig dissection & microscope slides were compiled and organized in a table.
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