Action Research Update

I feel truly blessed to work with amazing teachers and a site supervisor that support my efforts to obtain a graduate degree.  In spite of our busy schedules they have rallied to bring this plan to fruition.  Without their help I would not be able to complete my action research. 

To date we have evaluated STAAR data and the results substantiated what we already thought, ELL and EC kids are our target populations.  Throughout August we teamed up and did some in-house workshops, which resulted in the creation of our master math vocabulary lists.  During the summer workshops we also decided to implement whole brain teaching techniques as one of our strategies to intentionally teach academic vocabulary.   Each of the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade classrooms created academic word walls in all four content areas.  Although math is our focus, we decided if would be worth the effort to carry the strategies over to ELA, science and social studies, too.

We have not created a math vocabulary assessment because we decided to use the assessments that come with our calendar math program.  We gave the pre-assessment at the beginning of the school year and there are monthly assessments as well as a post-assessment.  The program is vocabulary driven so we felt it would meet our needs at this time.  This is something we may re-evaluate next year.  We will also be able to rely on STAAR data for this year. 

The research shows the vocabulary of ELL and EC kids to be a fraction of the vocabulary of other subpopulations. My site supervisor has wholeheartedly bought into our focus on vocabulary.  We have also implemented a school-wide Word of the Day.  These words generally have a weeklong theme.  For example, during Freedom Week all the words connected to patriotism.  I created a word wall the entire student body walks by four times a day.  In my own classroom these words create some lively discussions in hopes of building every students’ vocabulary.

In spite of our busy schedules, we plan to meet each six weeks to possibly add new strategies and evaluate the monthly assessment data.