The Impact of my Action Research...

How do I continue what I have learned after I have completed my grad program? 

I have learned a lot through the program and my action research.  I have learned that using movement in the classroom is an effective way to engage students and an effective way for them to learn.  If I care about how much my students learn, which I do, I will continue to implement the strategies I have used since September, and add to them.  Using movement in the classroom can cause things to get a little crazy, but the students enjoy it and I believe they learn from it, so why not keep doing it.  I know giving the students a worksheet is an easy thing to do.  It doesn't take much creativity or thinking on my part and it is very managable, but it also doesn't produce the same results as an interactive activity.  I need to keep in mind what is in the best interest of the students.  If I can maintain that philosophy, I will continue to get better and grow as a teacher.

I want my students to learn a lot of Spanish, but I don't believe that's all that matters when they leave my class.  My hope is that they learn a lot of Spanish, but ultimately have a good experience in my classroom.  I hope they remember some of the fun activities we did and some friends they made in the class.  Movement creates lots of interaction amongst students, so learning how to build a strong community is a great thing I hope they can take away from my class.  Those are the things that impact students beyond the classroom.

Problems...

I am in the midst of starting a new unit with my Spanish 1 students.  Sometimes the new vocabulary and material doesn't lend itself well to active learning, at least not right at the beginning of this unit.  I have to get all of the "input" to the students and it has been hard thinking of active ways to do this, so during the past few days, they have done a lot of listening to me.  These days haven't gone too well.  They have been chatty, easily distracted, and somewhat disruptive.  I can't say that the sedentary learning style is the only reason behind this, but I believe it has a lot to do with it.  The kids in these classes are accustomed to a more active style, so I think they look forward to the interaction they usually get, and not getting it has made them seek out ways to get it, which has been disruptive.  It reaffirms my research, that students need active ways to expend their energy.  It is tough to expect them to sit and listen for extended periods of time.  At the same time, I need to have clear expectations that identify how students need to act in the classroom.  There is no excuse for them being rude and disrespectful.  Just because you have to take notes and listen to lecture doesn't give you the right to act out in a negative way.  Yes, a more interactive lesson would help, but a lack of enforcing expectations by me is partly at fault.

A different kind of movement...

I have focused a lot on doing actual physical movement in the classroom during a learning activity.  This week, I took my classes to the computer lab to do an assignment on wordle.  When working on the computers, there was not movement, but the movement to the computer lab to create a change of scenery was great.  Day after day, they come to my classroom and that is our setting, so going to the computer lab was exciting and different and I could tell it created high levels of engagement.  I took three classes to the lab, so out of the 101 students I have in those three classes, 98 of them did a fantastic job in completing the assignment we went down there to do.  Something as simple as walking to a different room was enough to get them engaged.  Change is good.  As a teacher, you want to have routines and clear expectations, but you don't want to be overly predictable.  Changing things up makes the kids say "I wonder what we are going to do today in class?"  That is a good thing to have kids say when they enter your classroom.  If they know what is going to transpire each day in your class, the levels of motivation and attention are going to decrease.  Keep it interesting and unpredictable. 

What does the data say?

I have tabulated the results from a few of the surveys I gave to students.  I asked the question, "How much did you learn during the first trimester?"  The chioces were tons, a lot, some, not much, almost nothing.  Out of the 55 surveyed, 0 students responded with "not much, or almost nothing."  50 out of the 55 said they learned "tons" or "a lot."  I was pretty happy to see this.  I believe the movement had a lot to do with it.  The movement forced students to participate and when one participates, one learns.  Do they have a deep understanding of the material?  That is something I need to investigate further. 

Inner outer circle activity is successful again

I have new students and am teacher the same thing I taught in trimester 1.  Spanish 1 is just beginning and getting into phrases you would use when meeting someone for the first time.  I took my classes down to a large open area near the auditorium and had them form 2 circles, one inside the other.  They conversed on assigned topics and rotated in order to switch partners each time we did a different piece of the conversation.  They did a fantastic job and ALL were actively participating.  It was also nice to leave the room and learn in a new setting.  Today, I had a student ask if we could do that activity again and she said, "I learned so well when we did that activity."  She actually called it a game, meaning she had fun doing it. 

This continues to prove to me that movement is a great tool one can use in the classroom.  The kids are full of energy and it is an effective avenue to allow them to utilize their energy for learning.  At the same time, too much of it could hamper their interest of those types of activities, so I think using a variety of activities is important.

What's new?

This was the final week of the trimester for my school, so I will have a number of new students next week.  This week, Spanish 1 was learning about food.  One activity the students engaged in was an interactive questionaire about foods.  They had a list of quesetions in Spanish like, ¿Te gusta el pescado? (Do you like fish?)  They had to find someone in the room that would answer "yes" to that question.  They had a list of questions, so it was their job to gather signatures speaking Spanish and using the new vocabluary.  I monitored their participation.  Their participation was excellent; a very high percentage if not 100% engaged and participated in the activity, but not everyone used Spanish the entire time.  I think they enjoyed it and learned from it.

As I get new students next week, it will be interesting to see how they react to all the activities we do involving movement.  I saw great results with the students I had first trimester, so we will see if the data continues to say what it has said up to this point.

More data collection

This past week, my assistant principal observed my classroom.  We did a review activity where the class worked with individual white boards.  We met the next day to talk about what she saw.  She said that there is no doubt that there is a very high level of student engagement during my lessons.  She said that it is difficult for students to hide in my classroom.  If they don't participate in the activities, they stand out and standing out is awkward, so they choose to participate. 

I think my data definitely tells me that student engagement is extremely high in activities that involve movement.  Student engagement is still high in my classroom where movement is not a factor, but less than when it is.  It would make sense to me that if student engagement is high, learning happens.  At the same time, there are students out there that don't learn well in interactive activities that require movement, so I need to utilize other types of activities as well.

There is something to be said for students enjoying your class.  I think my students have enjoyed my class, and I credit a lot of that to the types of activities we do in class.  Students don't just sit in their seats all class period listening to me, but rather they are interacting with classmates and engaging in active activities.  I think they enjoy this, which is another reason for the level of participation I have seen. 

I would still like to do another survey asking them more questions about how they learn best and what types of activities they enjoy or don't enjoy.