Ashley the Teacher Researcher

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How teacher research has influenced me?

Every day as a teacher I engage in research from developing lesson plans, evaluating student work, and sharing assessment data with students, parents, colleagues and administrators. On a daily basis, I research ways to design and implement lessons that incorporate state standards, analyze assessments, and modify plans to better meet the needs of my students. As a teacher researcher, I am a continuous learner whose research style focuses on an intentional and systematic system that helps me to improve my classroom practice. My research is intentional because I choose the appropriate activities and strategies that will engage my students. My research is systematic because I have a scope and sequence of when/how I want to present the information. My final determination of the effectiveness of my instructional practices is whether or not students are moving toward mastery of the identified standard.

This year as a teacher researcher, I had my most challenging task of developing literacy workshops that I had to present in front of my CLT team. The process of developing these workshops was daunting. I had to selects three topics, research data, organize the structure of the presentation, and create Power Points/handouts. The workshops were entitled, Alternatives to Weekly Word Study Assessments, Publishing and Writing Workshop and Integrating Social Studies in the Classroom. In addition, after presenting the information to my CLT team, I had to pick one member who attended my workshops to coach/mentor on one of the strategies they selected from the workshop. The person I choose was my student teacher, Ms.Goodzey .

My Literacy Workshops

An email from my principal about a compliment that a parent gave me about her son’s

educational experience in my class this year.

Excerpt from my personal Journal- July 20,2012As a teacher researcher I reflected upon my coaching experience after presenting my workshops. The person I selected to coach/ mentor was my student teacher Ms. Goodzey. The coaching/mentoring experience was great for me, because throughout this project I was able to watch her teach and she was able to watch me teach. The workshop Ms. Goodzey enjoyed the most was on “Integrating Social Studies” in the program of studies for other curriculum areas. Ms. Goodzey stated that the activities and strategies presented were fun and innovative. Ms. Goodzey also stated that most of the activities and strategies presented were very creative ways to integrate social studies in non-fiction concepts. As I continued the mentoring relationship with Ms. Goodzey, I wanted to be an active listener in order to listen to what she felt was going right with her teaching. I would often paraphrase our conversations, so that Ms. Goodzey knew that I was listening and interested what she was experiencing. I discovered that this approach made her feel more comfortable expressing any frustrations she had with teaching. Ms. Goodzey expressed some concerns regarding her ability to keep students engaged and on-task throughout her lessons. Ms. Goodzey stated that students often left the carpet after she taught a lesson, did not know what they were suppose to do at their desk or would complete a different assignment. I suggested using short activities where students were allowed to brainstorm ideas of what they knew or had recently learned from the lesson taught. I also suggested she allow students to have short breaks in-between assignments to allow for movement or use a tableau or think-par-share activity. Ms. Goodzey decided to complete the “Hot Dog Fact Project” activity because it could be completed at different reading levels and it involved the use of food, which all of the students would enjoy. Before Ms. Godey completed the “Hot Dog Fact Project” I modeled all aspect of the project in my morning class. In my morning class, Ms. Goodzey watched as I started the lesson with vocabulary words focused on the life of Susan B. Anthony. I allowed time for students to discuss what they already knew about Susan B. Anthony’s life and vocabulary words students were familiar with. Next, I read a book aloud to students about the life of Susan B. Anthony. Upon completion, I allowed students to return to their desk and worked on a mind map of important facts about the life of Susan B. Anthony. The students were instructed to draw pictures words and sentences regarding Susan B. Anthony’s life. Finally, students made their hotdogs and wrote three facts they learned. Ms. Goodzey stated that my lesson went very smooth with the morning class. Ms. Goodzey completed the same procedure model by me in the morning with my afternoon class. Upon completion, Ms. Goodzey stated when she did the “Hot Dog Fact Project” lesson with the afternoon class, the students were more challenging because there were more ELL students and students reading below grade level in the class. These students often do not understand instruction when presented the first time and some of the students in the afternoon class need more individualize instruction. Ms. Goodzey indicated after observing the morning students were more attentive and engaged. Ms. Goodzey also stated the morning class was more curious to find out the historical background of Susan B. Anthony’s life. While I read aloud to the morning class, Ms. Goodzey stated she noticed I was able to stop throughout the reading to point out interesting facts as well as ask students probing questions. Ms. Goodzey felt the instructional strategy that I used kept students interested in the subject matter and students wanted to know what happened to Susan B. Anthony during the later portion of her life. Finally, Ms. Goodzey surprised me by taking the hot dog activity and making it into jumbo size hot dog. The “Hot Dog Project” was pre-cut out of big brown paper for the buns and red paper for the hot dog. Ms. Goodzey also provided lower level students with a fact paper to highlight information and refer back to the information when needed. Ms. Goodzey ideas were very creative and it was refreshing to see that she took my ideas and made them her own. Ms. Goodzey told me she was so pleased with how this project turned out. Ms. Goodzey also explained why she made the hot dog project larger in scope because of the composition of students in the afternoon class. Additionally, Ms. Goodzey commented on how a brainstorming activity got the student engaged in learning and kept their attention throughout the lesson.

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Teacher Leader

Some of the ways I have been involved with or shown leadership in professional development activities during the past five years are I am on the faculty advisory committee, FEA committee, 2nd grade team leader, 2nd grade liaison with 1st and 2nd grade, Social Studies Lead teacher, and CLT Lead teacher and facilitator. I am a member of the School Improvement Planning Team (SIP) and BLT Leadership team which is appointed by the principal. I have held a number of school-wide workshops on integrating reading and writing skills and integrating Social Studies skills. The workshops were well received and many of the teachers throughout the building are using strategies presented. I was a member of the recent Principal Panel’s committee to select our current principal.

Teacher Leader

I have take a wide array of professional development courses such as CETA workshop, Think Blocks, a variety of writing courses from my graduate program at George Mason University, a Differentiated Instructional Strategies course, Child Abuse and Neglect Course, Social Studies Lead teacher Course, Instructional Focus CLT course, Writer’s Craft in Grades 2-3 Explicit Teaching course, PLC Grade Level course, Tableau, Part 1: A Toolbox of Strategies for Teachers Grades 2-8, Tableau, Part 2: A Toolbox of Strategies for Teachers of Grades 3-8, Navigating Nonfiction in Second Grade, and Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) 2 in Grades K, 1st and 2nd. Additional reading graduate courses taken are Advance Literature Birth through Middle School years, Advance Literature Adolescent through Adult, Literature Assessment Individual Interventions/ Enrichment, Supervised Literacy Practicum, and Literature Assessment Group Interventions/Enrichment course. As a teacher leader, the knowledge I have acquired has helped me become more competent in my teaching ability and the development of my leadership skills.

Teacher Leader

PowerPoint I presented to my team on our SOL assessment data for grades 3rd-6th.

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Student Teacher

This year, I was the cooperating teacher for a student teacher from James Madison University. I also completed a mentoring novice teacher course to help prepare me to oversee and guide the student teacher throughout the duration of her student teaching experience. As a teacher researcher, I helped her develop key questions, activities and assignments to promote student understanding. This experience helped me realize what I’m doing in my classroom is important to student success and gave me an opportunity to share teaching skills with a novice teacher. Molly Goodzey

These are two examples of activities I helped Ms. Goodzey develop on story elements and summarizing.

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Best Practices and Collaboration

Best Practices and collaboration research influences me as a teacher by:

• Developing a standard based classroom• Checking for student understanding by using fast fives

and exit tickets• Developing curriculum maps• Working with a collaborative learning team(CLT)• Developing and using common assessments• Developing and using differentiated instruction• Student engagement and setting high expectations for

learning• Developing classroom procedures and routines• Building relationships with students, parents, and staff

Best Practices and Collaboration

An assessment and literacy chart developed during my weekly CLT meetings.

Mason and Me

• In the spring of 2010, I was admitted to George Masons Literacy Program. Throughout this program, I have learned how to administer assessments, how to develop text collections, how to analyze SOL assessment data to indentify literacy needs, write grants, coach teachers and develop literacy workshops.

• The courses I have taken have prepared me to choose a question I wants to know more about, plan how to gather useful information, gather relevant information, reflect on what I have learned, and determine how content can be used in my future plans to become a Literacy Coach.

Mason and Me

Reading Assessment that I administered and a plan that I developed based on the results

Future Teacher Research

1. How do guided reading groups affect students' attitudes toward reading? At Lake Anne Elementary, teachers are provided with a tremendous amount of resources such as a leveled library and a reading coach however; students reading below benchmark level continue to be a problem. As a second grade teacher, I teach guided reading daily and try to incorporate a number of interventions to positively impact reading achievement.

2.How do I get parents interested in promoting their child's literacy development?When parent are actively involved in their Childs education, student are often motivated to read and reach benchmark levels. The teachers and staff at Lake Anne Elementary have implemented a parent outreach program that incorporates a monthly meeting where teacher demonstrate reading strategies that can be used at home to reinforce reading skills. This program is entitled “Partners in Print”.

Future Teacher Research

3. Based on students reading data, how will I use the results to refine my teaching practices and facilitate student learning experiences?Assessment data collection is an ongoing process in my classroom. This results of the data allows me to give my students both formative and summative feedback. I feel that assessment data should not only be used as a teaching tool, but also as a learning tool to develop instructional strategies and learning tasks to best meet student needs.

4.What can I do to differentiate or extend the learning of students who have mastered grade-level standards and benchmarks? To differentiate means to provide students with a variety of ways to learn. When a student has learned the curriculum, teachers have an obligation to adjust the curriculum and extend the lesson to provide students with additional resources, activities and assignments to make the lesson more challenging and rewarding.

Overall ReflectionWhat I learned from this

project?Perhaps, one of the most interesting aspects of the Multi-Genre Project

was how challenging it was to reflect on my life so deeply. The first challenge was to find a theme which summarized me as a person. The second challenge was deciding the format of the project. The last challenge was to make sure that I elaborated on all elements of the project. The key elements included multiple examples, five reflective journal entries, and relevant readings; while connecting the main ideas to my current practice as a teacher. I used the rubric as a guide; however, because my project was so lengthy, it became difficult for me to make sure that I used clear, convincing and substantial evidence throughout the project. I spent a considerable amount of time checking, editing and re-checking my PowerPoint slides to make sure my project included all learning outcomes. Throughout this process, I became more of aware of my learning styles, my creativity, my technology skills, my teaching style and more importantly, my ability to be a reflective practitioner.

After completing this project, I realized how reflection is a very important skill to use as a classroom teacher. I think by using reflection often it serves as a guide when making instructional decision. For example, I will use reflection when I design assessments and instructional activities based on whether or not my students mastered previously taught information. I will also use reflection after I review my students’ cumulative files and DRA data to better understand my students’ learning styles. I can see how important it is for a student to know how they learn because it will help a student become more successful.

Throughout this project, the learning outcomes focused on me, however, in my classroom the focus is always on student learning. As a reflective practitioner, I need to make sure that every single learning experience my students are involved in is interesting, engaging, and at the correct academic level for student success. As I moved through the process of this project, I not only found the project extremely interesting, but I was completely absorbed in trying doing my best. The reason for my intensive desire to do my best on this project was because it was meaningful and I had a purpose for completing it. The connection I can make with my classroom experience is when a learning experience has a purpose and worthy of students’ time they will complete it with a passion. I completed the Multi-Genre project with a passion because the assignment transcended from just another project at George Mason University to a project that was worthy of my time and the learning experience was relevant.

Finally, I learned that there are multiple ways to complete a learning outcome. I think in the fall I will create lessons and use a number of differentiated activities to make my lessons more meaningful. I think the final determination of the effectiveness of any lesson/project that I design is whether or not my students are moving toward mastery of the identified skill or benchmark. The completion of this project helped me to truly understand how students’ process information and create meaning out of an assignment. This project allowed me an opportunity to connect my learning experiences with real world experiences and use complex thinking skills to complete it. I think if I can design learning experiences/activities in my classroom where students have multiple ways to demonstrate their learning student engagement will significantly improve and student achievement will increase. All in all, the completion of this Multi-Genre Project has been a very rewarding experience for me. Thank you for coming to my runway show.