Action Research Projects by Teachers

Step 2:

1. What is the title of the project?

Chemistry in Art: Crossing the Curriculum

 

2. What is the Question?

Can teaching chemistry be paired with art instruction to boost student performance in chemistry?

 

3. What strategy is being used to address the question?

It is almost like a Thematic Unit in that it is integrating Art into Chemistry. However, it failed miserably because the practicioner did not know how to implement it.

 

4. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work?

The creator of the AR states, "Teachers may need new connections with their students regarding the curriculum."  This seems to match up with the idea of a Thematic Unit in which themes are a way of understanding new concepts and provide mental organizing schemes.

 

5. How will data be collected to determine if the strategy will work?

Attendance was compared with the year before.  I have an issue with this data collection because classes tend to be unique in their attendance as well as their grades.  Some years classrooms will witness record breaking absences but it boils down to the type of students it contains.  How can this be a valid way to collect data?

 

6. How was the data analyzed?

The teacher developed four points for future teachers attempting an integrated curriculum soley based on his own experience.

 

7. What were the results?

The teacher saw a continued motivation in the students.  This could be significant since the subject Chemistry does not hold a lot of student motivation.

 

8. How do the results inform teacher practice?

His experience and his failures in carrying out theme units does give an insight in what direction may be  taken or avoided in such a project.  Sharing experience in the education community is what completes scientific research.

 

Step 3:  Rhyme, Word Family Recognition, and Reading in Kindergarten

1. What is the problem?

Kindergarten students at the Professional Development School (PDS) struggle with recognizing rhyme and word families in text.

 

2. What is the rational for the project?

Improving this basic literacy skill has been identified by the primary teachers as a goal in the school’s Strategic Plan and research shows that implementing a rangeof rhyming games can help students improve their recognition of rhyme and word families in text.

 

3. What strategy will be use to address the problem?

A variety of rhyming games will be introduced during readinginstruction in the kindergarten classroom. The selected games will require students to use basic elements of phonetic analysis, one of the CSOs for Kindergarten.

 

4. What is the question?

“How can I use a variety of rhyming games to help my students recognize rhyme and word families in text?” A supporting question is, “Will the rhyming strategies change student attitudes

about reading instruction?”

 

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work?

The teacher used literary resources to determine:

Nearly 30 years ago, Wylie and Durrell (1970) reported that their studies of early literacy
development revealed that children learn words more easily by the use of “rhyming phonograms” as
opposed to learning complicated decoding rules that have many exceptions.

 

6. How will data be collected?

The teacher will begin with a pre-assessment before the project begins for all students on decoding strategies. The same assessment is administered at the end of a four weeks project implementation.  The pre- and post-test results were compared to document the overall impact of the project