I won’t be able to attend the Inquiry Celebration this weekend, so I attended the staff meeting at my PDS where the interns presented their action research studies. I was glad I did this because I was able to see what I will be doing next year.
It made me excited to think of a topic to study, but it also made me see how hard it is to think of something so specific to implement. I believe that will be the hardest part about doing my Action Research next year. Analyzing the results and thinking of things to do in the classroom will be difficult, but in my opinion, not as difficult as first thinking of a research question. Luckily I have all summer to think about this. Next semester I will be spilt between my home PDS and a middle school, so I will also have to think about in what setting I will want to conduct my research. I am more familiar with the teachers at my home PDS so I’m thinking I will be more comfortable doing research there.
The interns did a really nice job. They created PowerPoints that had a bunch of important information, but were not bogged down and boring. They all presented their results in table format, which is something I will probably do next year, this really gives a great visual representation of all the data. One of the interns did a pre and post assessment in which they gave the same test/activity before and after they implemented their study. I will make sure to do that next year as well because it really helps you see the affect your study had on the student’s learning.
It was really interesting to see what they did in their classroom. One girl looked at vocabulary lessons in her classroom and two other interns did theirs together and looked at number sense. I thought it was really cool how the two girls did their together. I wish there was going to be in inter at my school that was placed in the same grade as me so we could do ours together. Theirs was interesting because they were both in a kindergarten setting and were able to compare results from their activities in the two different classrooms.
Overall, I wish I would have been able to attend the Inquiry Celebration because I was not able to go last year either, but being able to watch the interns do their presentations in front of the whole staff at my PDS gave me confidence that I can do the same next year. I also know how I should create my presentation next year.
