November 1-5, 2010

This week, I took over Reading on top of Math. It was really beneficial to work in small groups with the students at reading stations. This allowed me to focus on their individual needs and see what each of their ability levels are. It allowed me to gain more insight into their academic abilities. This will help me in the future when I am planning lessons. Because I was teaching so much more, this week seemed to go by so much faster. Also, because I was teaching so much more and having more close interactions with the students, I was also able to pick up all of their germs. We have a stomach flu going around and it seems like it is just making its way around the grades. I am a clean freak and hate that the desks aren't cleaned every night so I try to disinfect them as much as possible. I think it is so strange that it isn't required that the desks are cleaned, especially with how younger students are. They are always picking their noses and coughing all over everything. It's just a big germ fest waiting to be spread around.
In math on Friday, we had students do a review sheet on time and counting money. It was evident that many of the students are not getting it. From the exit slips from those days, this was not clear. Many of the students did well on the exit slips. These review sheets came as a big shock. We started a "mini" intervention group based on my findings on my exit slips. We created a group of students who have performing poorly overall. Whether this be because they are not applying themselves or they just simply don't get the material, we are working to find this out. I have also decided that I am going to create 5 case studies on my lowest achieving students. I hope to incorporate their Math DIBELS scores in this case study as well. I would like to see if my action research is at all affecting their mathematical understanding. I will excited to see how this turns out.

Action Research Week 3:
This week went pretty well. This week was actually the opposite of all of the other weeks. The two days that I used the books, the students actually did worse on their exit slips. I am not exactly sure why. The two days I used the books, both dealt with money. We also did many physical activities while reading the books that got the students involved in the learning and the books. For example, on the dime day (Wednesday), I had 1 student come up at a time, pretending to be a dime, until students told me that there were enough people up there to make a dollar. I was working with the concept that 10 dimes make a dollar. We also worked with the concept that 2 nickels make a dime and 4 nickels make 2 dimes. The students were very engaged in these activities and seemed to really understand it, but their exit slips said otherwise. On Thursday, we practiced counting coins. Students were actively engaged during the story and were discussing how much money the girl had and so on. When the story was done and the students were back at their seats, it was like chaos. I could not get them to pay attention for the life of me. There are many factors that could relate to why they did poorly on this exit slip, but again I am not sure.