Action Research

My problem for my action research was that students were not using their text when answering questions for reading, science and social studies.  Even when explicit instructions were given to use the text, very few would.  This obviously led to low scores.  So, my objective was to figure out why students were not using their text and to find a ways to change this.

I spoke to other teachers and found out that many of them had experienced the same problem.  We talked about how the science and social studies texts are written well above grade level and that we have to make sure we read these as a shared reading.  One of the teachers reminded me of how she has her students write the page number of the page they found their answer next to the question.  We also discussed modeling which I had done at the beginning of the year, but decided maybe this needed to be done again. I did some reading about learning activities and decided to try some cooperative learning.  We do this for so much of our inquiry I talked to some of my students who seem to do well with using their text to find answers and asked if they would be willing to help their classmates.  They each agreed.  I decided to pull a small group as I do with guided reading and math, and work with my lower level students and to put the rest of the class in groups with a "lead" student who does well with finding answers to questions.  This student would be the lead teacher and would show students how they find the answers without giving them the answers.       

After trying each of these strategies the results were successful.  I had better results with science and social studies than reading which I found interesting.  Report card grades from the first and second nine weeks came up in the third nine weeks midterms.  I am hopeful this will carry through to report card time.  I am pleased with the results and will continue with these strategies.  This project also brought up another question that seemed to continue to be a problem.  Some children just seem to be completely unmotivated to learn regardless of the modifications in place to help.  So this has led me to the next question, how do I motivate students who seem completely uninterested in learning?