Developing my Action Research Question
What happens when I work with students to set individual goals?
One student is on his knees in the back of the class moving around, another is picking at her shoes while the person next to her watches, 3 kids are staring into space, another three are talking and some are on task and paying attention.
My initial response to those staring into space is to continually try to engage everyone, often using their name, “Name what do you think?” For the students who are talking I ask, “Name, what did other student just say?” Or I will ask them “can you help me understand this more?” Usually they don’t have a response and I remind them of 3 of our 4 school key words, “Are you being respectful to your classmates and me? Are you being responsible for your learning? Are you ready to answer and learn? Some of the students respond to this and other students do not seem bothered. I try to get students up and give examples or to point during lessons to what we are talking about. I have them point to evidence and always explain more.
When we finish instruction and move to more independent practice, my teacher and I always offer to help our students, however some of the students who consistently struggle to pay attention come to us for help, but essentially ask us to re-teach the whole lesson because when we ask them as a reminder, “what do you do when you have to add?" or "how many tens does 54 have)?” they stare at us confused. We know that the math is not too difficult for these student because when they do focus or try, many of them fly through it and understand the concepts.
After implementing many of these techniques to make lessons more interesting and engaging, I still see these behaviors occurring. Additionally these behaviors occur daily not just during instruction, but also independent work, group work and more. My student who was on his knees loves science and becomes super engaged but as soon as he has to focus on a task he loses it.
Students were constantly changing their clips (our class management system- click for details) for these kinds of behaviors. I decided to start watching when students were changing their clips and for what reasons in order to give me more information about which students struggle with what types of self-control. The kid on his knees frequently changed his clip for not paying attention and distracting students. The student picking at her shoes was always changing her clip for not being on tasks. Many students were changing their clip for constantly talking at inappropriate times. Finally, the same set of students, were changing their clips daily for not doing homework. Something needed to be changed, there has to be a better system! Graph and Summary of Clip Observations
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Clip Chart Observation Photographs
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After noticing that students were not monitoring themselves very well, I tried to figure out and observe what attributed to this. Were they bored? Was the lesson too difficult? Did they have trouble hearing or seeing? As expected, was difficult to pin-point just one reason for each child’s behavior. The kid on his knees wears glasses and sits in the front, we let him stand or sit on his knees because he is more active, we tried letting him sit on a chair. We let him get small group attention, hoping this would help but it just proved he understands the math but chooses not to focus. Despite the different modifications we have made addressing multiple issues, there were no behavior changes.
In further attempts to understand my students I had an informal class discussion with my students. I talked with students about what they want to be when they grow up, how they think the class functions during lessons, what subjects they liked and which ones they thought were to hard, so I could get a better grasp on their academic interests. I wanted to see if their interest or lack on interest in particular subjects aligned with their behavior choices. (Please note the chart to the right for specific answers)
Next I asked them who was responsible for their learning. In unison they all replied, "we are" (I ask them this often). I explained that no matter what I teach them if they don’t want to learn, if they do not try hard, or if they do not pay attention they will not learn what is being taught. This lead to me explaining, that if a student is off task during a lesson, they are not only hindering their own learning but also the people around them. Then I asked my students to raise their hands (with their eyes closed) if they thought there was too much talking during instruction. 12 out of 18 students present felt there was too much talking and that it made it hard to learn. I asked the students what they thought could fix all of the talking and lack of focus. One student said, “tell the person next to you, I want to do my work please don’t talk.” Another student said people should stop playing and goofing around during lessons. These are good ideas, but after my previous weeks of observation, its clear that the students had trouble following through on these ideas. So, I quickly reviewed what a goal was with them and asked them if they thought we should work as a class to make these goals for our class. Most were very excited.
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Results From Student Discussion
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Setting general classroom goals would not be enough though. We already have classroom expectations and key “words” to guide student behavior. Plus I want to work with students on individual, specific behavior. To be brave or respect others is not going to help a student who will not participate. This led me to want to work with students on setting individual goals. So:
I wonder:
What happens when I work with students to set individual goals?
What happens when I work with students to set individual goals?
- How will students respond to setting personal goals?
- What effects will goal setting have on the class as a community?
- How does setting goals impact student responses to classroom rules and expectations?