Blog Survey Results- 2nd grade

I developed a survey for Mrs. J's (pseudonym) 2nd graders to complete in regards to their feelings towards the blog.  There was a total of 20 students. Below are the results from this survey.

Class Blog Survey

In my attempt to collect more data, I have developed a survey for Mrs. J's class to take in regards to their classroom blog.  The survey consisted of 5 simple questions ranging from, "Do you like to blog?" to how students thought that their writing was progressing in for them, "changing."  I will post the actual survey for you soon!  I also plan to pick out a few students, maybe the whole class, and graph a word count from their first post the the next to see if there was growth (in the word count, which in turn means that they were able to give more detail and expand their thoughts in the writing process), if it stayed the same, or if there was a decrease in word count.

Thoughts

Stock & Duncan (2010) mentioned, Duncan & Stock (2009); Stock & Duncan (2009), "As schools invest more heavily in training their educators in new instructional strategies, it becomes important to ensure that the instructional coaches themselves are provided the support and training they need to become successful.  Principals and instructional facilitators alike recognize the need for mentoring, even those individuals with experience," (Duncan & Stock, 2010, p.57).  I agree with this statement.  There is a strong need for mentoring to occur within the educational setting in order for the next person filling the position to be successful in the respective position, in this case, as an instructional coach.


Below is a video link of what an instructional coach does:


What does an Instructional Coach do?

Data

Using the Classroom Academic Engagement Form from Reinke (2005) below is the information that I've collected:

Comments:

• complimenting students for being on task (focusing desired behavior)
• removed 3 marbles for "too much talking"
• going through step by step directions as a class
• using choral response
• re-directed a student who was off task (10:39 am)
• writing words on the board for students to check their own work and complimenting desired behavior (10:41 am)
• engaging individual students (10:41 am)
• walking and assisting as needed/ guided independent practice (11:00 am)

2nd grade team follow-up

I've communicated electronically through email with the 2nd grade team to follow up on the materials that I've presented to them in our coaching session which was focused on student writing quality.  Below is the email and response:

Hello Wonderful 2nd grade team,

I hope you are all doing well.  I am following up with you on the different materials, tools, and methods that I presented to you.  If you are implementing any of them:

1. How are they working for you?  I started a blog last week.  The students really enjoyed it.  They answered a simple question about what was their favorite season and why.  They are excited to get back into the computer lab to blog some more.  Tomorrow I’m going to have them compare and contrast two characters we have read about. 

2. Do you see a difference in your kids' quality of writing? What specifically? It’s only been one week so I don’t know that it’s made a huge difference in their writing.  They did read each other’s and see  some typos and errors.  I’m hoping this will make them realize that other people are reading your writing.

3. Do you see a difference in your kids' writing motivation? What specifically? Like I said, my students LOVED blogging.  When I told them today, we were blogging tomorrow they cheered. I think they liked being able to type their writing and felt that it was more authentic.  They also got to read each other’s writing which is motivational.

4. How has this affected your teaching?  How has it affected their learning? Again, it’s new so it hasn’t had huge impacts yet.  I think the fact that they are motivated and excited is amazing!

5. Are there any other tools or information that I could provide to you that you feel would be useful or helpful? This was a great idea and very simple to put into practice. 

6. Any further comments or ideas :)

Mrs. J (a pseudonym) provided a link to her classroom blog and the log-in information.  The blog has been a great start in getting students to develop written conversation. Bravo Mrs. J!!

Methods for 1 on 1

Based on the comparison taken from the 2012-2013 School Report Card (http://applications.education.ky.gov/SRC/Default.aspx) and from discussions with Mrs. H (a pseudonym) we made the decision to focus on one of Knight's (2007) Big Four areas: Behavior.  The methods that we decided to use were:

1. Proximity: This was Mrs. H moving around the room and moving closer towards those students who did present any behavior issues during the lesson.
2. Ratio of interaction: "A common rule of thumb in the literature on classroom management is that to encourage positive behavior, teachers should pay at least three times as much attention to behavior they want to encourage as they do to the behavior they want to discourage," (Knight, 2007, p.143).  In the classroom, this would look like: praising several students that are on track and performing the desired behavior, focusing on the behavior that she wanted, catching the student with the most behavior issues doing something good, etc.
3. Providing Opportunities to Respond: "Ways that students might be prompted to react to any learning activity in which they are involved," (Knight, 2007, p.147-148).   During the lesson this came in the form of choral responses, individual work, and partner work.
4. Effective corrective comments: In the classroom, this would simply mean to build relationships with all students, especially those that display the most behavior issues, and keeping roles in the classroom clear.

Coaching for change...

In our one on one coaching experience, Mrs. H (pseudonym) and I developed a plan of action to address the behavior issues in her classroom.  Being on Spring Break this week I have some time to reflect on what we've done and our progress.  Below is some information about behavior incidents at B Elementary (a pseudonym) according to the 2012-2013 school report card:

Addressing this instructional goal, of increasing on task behavior by eliminating or extremely decreasing behavior issues in the classroom, will help with academic achievement and the overall classroom environment.  Knight (2007) mentioned that an effective classroom was one where 90% or more of the students are on task, we were aiming for that 90% to allow for reciprocal learning for both the teacher and students.