Action Research Project

Conclusions and Implications

Conclusions

In my study, students were exposed to various support structures aimed at building confidence and raising comfort levels in their ability to share their learning. Through looking at the data from the initial survey, I decided to focus on three major factors: building stronger student-to-student relationships, teaching students how to become craftsmen of their work and products, and creating an environment that supported academic discourse. From the beginning of the year, it was my goal to use student voices to drive the direction of our class and this study. As we changed our practices and environment based on my students’ voices, we created a culture where every participant was engaged. Throughout the year, students were given experiences from team-building activities, learned new protocols for peer critiquing, and were engaged in an environment that was always evolving towards their needs. As our year came to a close, a fourth element emerged, changing the direction of this study. The discovery of authentic audiences had changed the way we produced work, inspiring my students to craft professional quality products.

Building the Team Within

For years I have focused on building a strong teacher-student relationship. My thinking was that if I truly understood and connected with each of my students, I would be able to help them grow as a student and a person by leaps and bounds. During the start of this study, I maintained my mission, but after I analyzed their first survey, I learned something different and very important. Students didn’t have much trouble sharing their work with each other; they just needed to feel like they were a part of a family first. Multiple voices spoke about the ease of sharing their learning when it was with a good friend, but when they were sitting amongst strangers, it wasn’t so easy, and at times it became completely difficult. Planning “getting-acquainted” activities helps “ensure that students know and care about their classmates, thus creating an environment of trust” (Fisher, et al. 2008). Focusing on building student relationships allowed me to help them build connections with each other. By engaging in team-building and group problem-solving activities, my students were able to learn how to trust, and in building that trust, students were able to open up to each other in other areas of our academic day.

Throughout each activity and exercise, students reported that the relationships within their groups improved dramatically. Some students reflected on the growth of their groups’ teamwork ability, stating that communication and listening skills allowed them to produced great work. Ron Berger’s (2003) realization that “the power of the culture rests in community,” taught me the importance of teaching my students that as a family we can grow, share, and learn together. Although these exercises and new way of thinking were completely foreign to my students, they allowed themselves to experience without reservation. Changing the “traditional” culture that my students had known for five years was difficult, and although a lot of work has been done this year, there is plenty of room for them to grow.

Building Confidence in Crafting Beautiful Work

I also learned that it is important to validate the past experiences students bring to class with them. Every new year, students not only bring themselves to class, but they also bring the positive and negative experiences of their lives. Students in my class that had a negative experience with sharing their work were timid and unsure of themselves when they came into my room. They had learned that it wasn’t safe to trust their peers with their work and products. Many of my students stated in the short answer question of the initial survey, that they felt ashamed of their work, saying that it wasn’t good enough to share with a classmate. Other students stated that they were scared that they would be made fun of because their writing was poor. Many of these students were English language learners, struggling to learn the complexities of a new language. In any case, they had built up apathy towards sharing their work.

Introducing the concept of “Beautiful Work” and teaching students the power of critiquing, has aided them in building trust, and confidence within their own work. In multiple responses through reflections in their inquiry journals, students had stated that critiquing gave them an understanding that through multiple drafts, they would be able to create a work of art. One student stated that working with his group felt like they were a family and that they never laughed or made fun of his work. With an understanding that through working together they were able to fine tune their work, students built confidence within themselves, and finalized their projects with craftsmanship and pride.

Creating an Environment Conducive for Academic Discourse

Productive group work has been around for many years, taking various aliases, and used for a multitude of reasons. Often times when teachers ask students to discuss something with a partner or with a group, they do so, assuming that students already have the knowledge and understanding of how to conduct an academic conversation; and you will see students doing so, listening to their teacher and doing their best to talk with each other. But if we took the time to study those conversations, most likely we would find proficient students talking, and far below basic students listening, English-only students talking, and new to the country students listening. My goal with this study was to bridge that gap. I wanted to create an environment that supported every student with having the opportunity to engage in academic discourse. To do so, I concentrated on a using three key strategies: Teacher Modeling, Specific Expectations, and Building a Supportive Environment.

An important factor that influenced my students to engage in academic conversations with each other, was my ability to explicitly model what those conversations look and sound like. In creating the expectations for talk, Fisher, Frey, and Rothenburg (2008) state:

“For students to talk like mathematicians, scientist, or historians, using the language of the discipline, they must have multiple exposures to that type of language. Through teacher modeling of academic language, we can teach students about the register and the discourse style of each discipline, along with the vocabulary we expect them to use.”

Intentional modeling is especially helpful for English language learners, allowing them to experience academic conversations through various mediums. Whenever I was conversing with students, I purposely modeled the type of language I wanted them to use. Some students commented that hearing me use the sentence frames that I provided, gave them a better understanding of how to formulate their own responses.

It was equally important to create a language expectation for my students. There is a fine balance between forcing and supporting academic discourse while using objectives. The key factor is relevancy. Pushing students to engage in a conversation that is contrived, will just turn them off from trying to engage. But if there is a clear connection between the learning and language objective, then students will understand that their table conversations are an extension for practice and processing.

Before the start of this study, I had done an analysis of my room environment, looking at how I had arranged furniture. I found that the arrangement that I had been using for the last seven years was not conducive for students to engage in any group conversations about their learning. In the old arrangement, students had to turn, shift, and move tables in order to create small groups. So throughout this study, I had experimented with a couple types of arrangements using different kinds of tables. What I found was that students most appreciated using large tables that allowed them to sit facing together; and when it came to project time, it was important that the tables were large enough to spread around work. One important change I had made, was that I freed my students from any personal space that was connected to a table. Having free floating tables allowed students to move around the room with ease, giving them different vantage points for learning and working with various groups. In a reflection about our environment, 95% of my students indicated that the changes made to the larger tables were favorable, and that the arrangement around the room gave them enough space to spread out and work on projects.

Another important change I made to our environment was how I used our wall space. It was vital that I supported my students’ language by giving them models and immerse them in a print rich environment that gave them opportunities to engage in academic conversations. Some researchers believe that “visual supports in the room provide a valuable scaffold for students who are learning English” and if teachers want students to use “academic language in their discourse, it is helpful to post charts that contain that language” (Fisher, et al. 2008). Throughout the year, I made it a point with every lesson and project, to create language frames and vocabulary charts to support my students; and in response to a environment survey, 81% of my students reported our classroom as being somewhat to very supportive for using academic language. 58% of my students reported that they used our environment on a daily basis. Teaching in a classroom where the majority of my students every year are English language learners, it is important to continue providing visual support for academic language in all content areas.

Discovering Authentic Audiences

Through our Blurb book writing experience, a new understanding of the power of authentic audiences had emerged. Uninterested and ready to give up, my students’ interest with the book project was pulled back in with our discussion about creating a list of an intended audience. Ignorant of the this simple activity, I learned that providing students with an opportunity to be invested in a project where their authentic audience is well defined, gives them a sense of ownership and pride, where if supported, the end products will be masterpieces of beauty. Through informal observations, the level of work produced in our book project was on a much higher level than observed during previous projects. When asked what was the difference between this project compared to others, students stated that because they knew whom they were writing for, they were excited about creating their best pieces of writing.

After my students completed their first drafts, the anxiety of critiquing their work that was observed in the beginning of the year, was nowhere to be found. Instead, I witnessed my students working together, again and again, taking their work through multiple drafts. For some students they completed seven to nine different drafts. When I asked them why they didn’t want to finalize, their response was that they just didn’t feel like it was perfect and ready to publish. It was during that discussion, where I realized that creating an authentic audience not only changes students’ work ethic, but it also creates a new culture. A culture where students truly care about the work they are producing, and they will go through every means to make sure it is beautiful.

Implications

Teachers working in a “traditional” environment often find themselves suffocating with district-mandated curriculum void of real world practices. High stakes pressure to raise test scores has created a new wave of formative and summative assessments that are on a constant rotation given to students all year long. Never ending top-down drills are teaching students to memorize, when they should be taught to synthesize. When students are allowed to exercise their voices through authentic conversations, they are able to gain a better understanding and an ownership of their learning. Students are able to process, evaluate, and synthesize ideas and concepts together with their peers using academic discourse. It is because of these reasons, why teachers should incorporate these types of exercises in their classrooms. Most often they will find that through these types of authentic exercises, students will be able to learn the necessary skills to perform well on tests. The only difference will be, that after the test is over, their students will continue to remember their learning.

The following tips are ideas and concepts I have used to revolutionize my “traditional” classroom; using the HTH principles as a guide, I was able to weave creative practices into my mundane district mandated curriculum.

Tips for Teachers:

Teacher Modeling

I have found that using sentence frames as a source to reference when you are modeling academic language to students, allows them to explicitly observe how to use a frame to formulate sentences. I often found myself, informing my students when I would model academic discourse pertaining to a specific content area. Whatever you plan to model, it is important to be purposeful and strategic, that will assist your students with understanding how to formulate their own ideas and thoughts.

Opportunities for Reflection

Most often, students rarely get the chance to reflect about their learning; it is vital for our students to practice these types of exercises. Increasing the opportunities doesn’t have to turn into a laborious chore. Simply asking students, “What do you think?” could strike up a meaningful discussion. Time and space, is also an important factor to providing reflective opportunities. Students need time to process their thoughts, and a space to do so, whether it is through writing in a journal or discussing in a small group.

Building Student-to-Student Relationships

Coming to this realization through this study has allowed me to build a much stronger community in my class. By planning “getting-acquainted” activities, your students will be able to develop their relationships with each other. Often times, teachers take it for granted that students seem to already “know” each other. But those kinds of relationships are usually superficial. Purposeful team-building activities, teach students the importance of a Family culture, interdependence, and the power of teamwork to achieve a common goal.

Using the Power of Critiquing for Building Confidence

The largest battle I had during this study, was trying to help my students understand that they were capable of producing greatness. By teaching students how to develop a product over the course of multiple drafts, they are able to understand that fine-tuning a product takes time, effort, and teamwork. The key factor with critiquing is the interdependence amongst students. By working together to workshop one product, they are able to use the power of all of their minds to help a peer turn his/her work into a masterpiece.

Creating a Supportive Environment

Classroom environment is one of the first indicators to students whether or not they are going to feel supported in a classroom. Students interact with their environment just as much as they do with each other and their teacher. Be cognoscente of your surroundings. Use a critical eye to decide how your classroom should look like. Pay attention to how your students interact with their environment, and most importantly, include your students in the decision making process with changing your room. Their voices are critical, so stop and listen, you just might be amazed with what they have to say.

Finding Time for Authentic Audiences

Creating an authentic audience for your students will change the way they produce work. When students are asked to create a product for a contrived audience that will never view the their creations, they are taught not to value the ethics involve through that process. But when students understand that their intended audience will pick up their products and examine them, the level of care and precision in crafting those products increase tremendously.