New conclusions I have drawn from my data

I think I mentioned in a previous entry that I received all new students about 10 weeks into this action research project.  The majority of the data I gathered came from the first group of students I was with.  Within the last month or so, I have been more closely observing my new group of students.  I thought movement was "the thing" to get everyone engaged.  I still strongly believe it is a great tool to get students actively participating with the content, but a recent survey I gave to my students swayed my opinion a bit.  I saw a few comments from kids stating that they don't like the movement.  I am a very social person and I very much enjoy interacting with others, so I sometimes tend to assume that everyone must love interaction.  I haven't been as empathetic as I should be with the students that are very closed off and struggle socially.  I can see how interactive exercises like we do in class that involve lots of interaction would be hard for those kids.  They probably prefer individual based activities. 

This data does will not keep me from continuing to use movement in my classroom.  I have definitely seen more  positive results than negative....by a long shot, but I will try empathize more with the students that are not so fond of these activities.  I need establish a nice balance with the types of activities I do in class in order to work to the strengths of all my students.

Data with new students

I was excited to see how my new students reacted to my style of teaching.  So far, the data I have collected from them has been pretty similar to what I saw with the groups I had during the first trimester.  We did a lot of active learning this week.  One activity in particular allowed us to head down to the lobby of the auditorium, where we worked on learning verb conjugations.  This deals with the memorization of subject pronouns and a verb chart.  We used masking tape to make a chart on the floor.  From there, I quizzed them by asking them to move to particular boxes of the chart.  It helped them visualize things and it was a productive way to use their energy (better than writing the chart on a worksheet).  Of the 100 students I had do this activity, over 90 were actively engaged.  Today, we did a lot of seated work and it was more of a struggle to hold their attention.  I think students have become accustomed to my active style and expect interaction.  I believe this has created some difficulty for me to calm them down and get them to focus during our whole-class lecture time.

In a survey I gave, I asked, "Describe a learning activity we have done in class that has been very helpful."  Some of the responses were:  "the chair game," "when we do actions with the words," around the world," "standing up and doing actions" (there was a lot of this one and the chair game).  I also had a few responses that said "quiet time," "working in our seats."  I had one kid say that he gets bored and doesn't listen if he has to sit for the entire hour."  There is some mixture in the results, but a strong majority prefer the interactive ways.  At the same time, my job is to reach ALL my students, so I need to find quiet activities that cater to the interests of some of the students.