Memo 8

     Keep Calm and Speak On:

A Closer Look at the Strategies that Incite Student Participation at the Secondary Level

1.)    Teacher Journal: I’ve used my teacher journal everyday after class to jot down all the moments of tension, discomfort, and moments of success within the classroom. I’ve found overall that my students are more likely to participate in discussion when they feel a connection to the topic. Also, my journaling shows that these moments of “tension” usually result from students challenging each other’s or my ideas, which can be a positive learning experience when done respectfully. Going forward, I would like to write more detailed teacher journal entries and I would like to write more consistently since there were some days where I neglected writing or included brief, vague entries. 

 

2.)    Classroom Observations: During class, I use my clipboard to jot down notes about things I notice within the class relating to class discussions and engagement levels. Overall, my notes have worked well at allowing me to write down specific facts and phrases that may be lost from my mind by the end of the class period. I’ve found that giving students the chance to speak to a “neighbor” about their opinions prior to whole-group instruction is a great way to engage the entire class and increase the number of students who are willing to share their ideas to the class afterwards. I’ve also found that discussion that take place after writing, specifically journals, are richer since the students have already had the chance to articulate some of their ideas beforehand. Looking ahead, I can enhance my data by including audio recordings of the class. It was sometimes challenging to write things down while I was teaching.

 

3.)     Question Tracking: During class, I keep a roster of all the students’ names on my clipboard. During class time, I place a “check” in the box each time a student participates during class discussions. I’ve used this tool to simply track the frequency of class participation within the classroom. I’ve found that on most days only about a third of the class volunteers answers within the period. I have no included speaking during group sharing or partner sharing, which is a possible flaw in the data. When the students engage in this form of sharing, the level of engagement and frequency seems to drastically increase.

 

4.)    Classroom Discourse: In order to measure the level of depth and analysis within the classroom, I first started by documenting my own questions and set of directions. On the daily agenda that I keep on my clipboard, I composed my questions in advance to ensure I was going to ask the students at least some students questions that required higher-order thinking skills. I also carefully worded and planned my directions, including directions for small group conversations, to ensure that the expectations were always clear. During my data collection, I used the column next to my “Question Tracking” to code the type of questions and responses that were contributed by students. I coded the types of responses as either response (directly answering my question without further investigation or comment), self-initiated (a student volunteered idea, basically a connection to an experience, or opinion), or discovery (an insightful, in-depth analytical response). So far, I have found that nearly two-thirds of the answers have been response, while some were self-initiated connections, and even fewer were discovery. As a noted earlier, I believe I could improve this data by including audio recordings so that I am not scrambling to take notes, jot down question tracking, and classroom discourse while trying to manage a classroom. During times where I have found this too overwhelming, I have ended up neglecting an area of the data collection, or in other words, my triangulation (observations, question tracking, classroom discourse).  

 

5.)     Student Self-Reflection: In my classroom, students have known since the start of the school year that class participation is a factor in their quarterly grades. With the quarter ending this week, I will be issuing a self-reflection sheet that asks the students to reflect on their own class participation. Although it is still a work in progress, I will prepare a list of the factors that influence participation, and then ask the students to respond to which factors are their biggest strengths and which areas they need to improve in for next quarter. I will also ask students to reflect on how they plan on making these improvements. In the past, I have calculated these grades based on preparedness to class, participation during small-group discussions, and participation during whole-group discussions, with the greatest emphasis on the latter. Also, I plan on surveying the students within this assignment by specifically asking them which strategies will help them participate more during class.