Reflections!

When reviewing my comments, I came across the question of  how many words I plan on using each week. This is something my site supervisor and myself has talked about when developing my plan. I started with 5 words a week, but after looking at all the content, we decided that 10 words a week is not too much to be asking. Other than that the viewer thought my plan was well thought out and having the students illustrate their terms was a great strategy. There was a comment that stood out to me when reading another student’s plan. The comment was about how she was interested in vocabulary strategies at first, but after sitting down with her campus supervisor they decided that vocabulary wasn’t a problem at their school so they decided to go a different direction. I thought that was interesting that someone had the same idea as me. Every school has their own problems due to different factors that create the problems, which is why she changed her plan. I feel very confident in my plan and this is why I made no changes to my research plan this week. I sat down with my campus supervisor about six different times when creating my action research plan and we both feel that this is the best approach. We are both excited to see the results because we feel that this can be beneficial, if positive results are found, for my department and hopefully the entire school one day. In addition to my campus supervisor feeling this is the best approach, I have had positive feedback on my blog and my discussion posts about how vocabulary is important to effective teaching and instruction. 

 We concluded that the best approach was to pick two different sample groups at different times of the year and compare their results. Each sample group would be researched over 6 weeks.  We both agreed about picking a topic that is going to have the most effect on my teaching and the topic should be worth my time. The topic that my site supervisor and I agreed upon is: How does rigorous vocabulary strategies in science improve overall grades? We both felt that this topic can be something that the whole department could utilize at some point. Science scores need to improve and we both felt that this topic would be a beneficial strategy to instructional progress.  We discussed how most of our students do not have good study skills and this could be effective for them because a lot of them come from low-income homes where support is not always there. We did not make any revisions to the plan this week because we both felt that this is the best plan to implement. We did discuss that while I am implementing the plan I may find areas that should have been revised and to document it to use for future research plans.  I feel confident in my plan and ready to see the results and conclusions.