Running Head: ACTION RESEARCH PAPER

Influence of CLD/E Student Feedback on Increased Engagement Tabitha Ford SPED 6276 George Washington University

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Research Question: If I include my class of first year CLD/E students input and feedback in the unit planning and evaluation process, will their level of engagement in unit of inquiry activities increase? Alignment with School Improvement Plan: At Kristiansand International School the Primary Years Programme is developed and maintained based on the criteria set forth by the International Baccalaureate Organization. The IB Programme Standards and Practices is a document created by the IB which states specific minimum requirements for any PYP to maintain IB World status. The PYP program is continually reviewed against the standards and new goals and areas of growth are set. Every PYP program should include the students feedback as much as possible, including in the development of tasks and criteria. As the school grows we are working towards meeting all of the standards and expanding beyond. Information Needed and Steps Taken to Obtain Information: Previous end of unit reflections completed by students to determine prior level of engagement indications. (Discussed and determined by PYP 1 classroom teachers, Ms. F and Ms. H) Current student level of engagement or anticipatory engagement regarding the unit of inquiry. (Short questionnaire and whole class discussion about Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry, Ms. F) Student feedback/input on activities that could be pursued or developed during the unit of inquiry. (Anecdotal records of Open class discussions reviewing the Lines of

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Inquiry and activities that best correlate with those, including formative assessment tasks which measure development against each Line of Inquiry, Ms. F and Ms. H) Student feedback/input on what type of formative assessments and criteria could best guide our inquiry. (Anecdotal records of Open class discussions regarding the development of formative assessment tasks which measure development against each Line of Inquiry, Ms. F and Ms. H) Student feedback/input on summative assessment criteria. (Whole class discussion on what the summative assessment task will be and then determining criteria to measure outcomes. Teacher-student created rubric, Ms. F.) Student unit reflections upon completion of unit to determine possible level of engagement indications. (End of unit reflections analyzed by Ms. F and Ms. H to determine possible indicators of level of engagement. Student oral survey evaluating level of engagement upon completion of unit. (Oral survey with questions prompting students to think about and determine their level of engagement during all unit activities they helped create, conducted by Ms. F and discussed among PYP 1 teachers including subject specialists to determine level of engagement in relation to student input in unit planning and evaluation.) Analysis and Evaluation: All goals above will be evaluated and analyzed by the individuals discussed in the information collection process. The whole team of PYP 1 teachers will come together for the final goal which involves the student oral survey conducted by Ms. F to assess and determine level of engagement in the activities students helped create. The data collection, analysis, and evaluation process involves qualitative methodology to answer the research question posed; however, a graph could be created representing student feedback from the questionnaire

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which would involve quantitative measures. The students rate themselves from one to five stars to indicate the anticipated level of engagement. Reflection of Implementation and Process: The goal of this action research project was to determine if my first year students would have higher levels of engagement if they had more input in the unit activities and evaluation processes. In reviewing the various aspects of the data collection plan it becomes more apparent that while the research itself was insightful, the process did not always go according to plan. Implementation Issues: Previous unit reflections were supposed to be analyzed by myself and Ms. H to determine previous level of student engagement; however in analyzing these documents we came to realize that while they sometimes revealed what unit activities the students enjoyed and why, they did not always due to the structure and namely questions in the reflection. The reflection sheets were still analyzed, but the information was spotty and therefore did not allow us to feel certain about how the students felt with unit activity tasks, whether teacher created or teacher-student created. The whole group discussion which occurred to allow a better understanding of anticipation level of the students was conducted with minor changes. The units central idea and lines of inquiry could not all be unloaded to the students in one discussion, but happened rather in a series of discussions over three days. The reason for this was due to some of the language and conceptual knowledge for understanding the lines of inquiry needing to be explored and built first. For example the students did not understand what the word community meant.

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The student oral survey was able to provide some qualitative information; however, as Ms. H and I were conducting the surveys we realized that the survey was very similar to what is required of students in the end of unit reflection. The students should have been asked to rate their level of engagement and answer questions regarding engagement after each activity instead of as a culmination at the end. Due to the students being so young it was apparent that they remembered better the activities that had happened within recent times versus those that happened at the beginning of the unit, roughly five weeks earlier. The teachers who have the most contact time with the students should have been the individuals who analyzed the data instead of having all teachers who teach the students involved. It was difficult to arrange a time for every teacher who teaches the students to come together and share their thoughts and feedback. In addition to this, not all of the teachers spend enough time with the students to feel that they could give insightful information, especially with regards to subjects that are not taught through the unit. It was very useful to have myself as the homeroom teacher and Ms. H who teaches the students seven hours a week while I am doing administrative tasks work together to complete the data collection process. We both know the students very well and are able to reflect more critically on what the students are thinking when they are participating in discussions and complete end of unit reflection sheets for example. Due to there being so many teachers involved it became difficult to discern a clear picture about the students and thus myself, Ms. H, and Ms. A took over implementing and analyzing the data collection processes. Ms. A is the Norwegian language teacher and has four hours of contact with the students during the week. Perceptions of the Process: Before the data collection plan was implemented I truly felt I had considered all of the possibilities and hiccups that might occur and would be able to follow my original plan with

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few deviations. During the process I began to realize that it would have been best if I had sat down with my colleagues and looked over each point of the data collection plan critically in order to make adjustments where issues might occur. In reflecting upon the completion of the data collection processes I now feel that I am able to conduct this action research again and with the ability to obtain more accurate and revealing information. This was an invaluable learning opportunity which has allowed me to see that it is possible to arrive at some answer for the research question; however, the technique may need to be refined and then repeated in order to obtain the clearest answer. The students seemed to enjoy being asked for their feedback, and naturally in an inquiry based learning environment are used to being asked a lot of questions and taking part in many discussions. I look forward to fine tuning the data collection plan and the tools used in addition to creating or modifying some tools in order to repeat the action research and evaluate and compare those results with the results of this action research. Evaluation of Process and Data: In order to determine previous level of engagement and determine whether it could have been related to students input in their activities, Ms. H and myself (Ms. F) pulled the students previous end of unit reflections and reviewed them. Initially I felt this would be a good starting point as the students had to reflect specifically on what activities they liked during the unit and what activities they did not like. The issue that Ms. H and I came across was that some students reflected on activities that occurred during the unit but were outside of the actual scope of the unit, i.e. stand alone Mathematics and Language. As we looked back into each students reflections we noticed a pattern for some students. Two of my students always list Mathematics activities as activities they like and their reasoning is because they enjoy math and math related activities, especially those that use manipulatives or require the student to actively be involved in some way with the process, i.e. creating and conducting

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surveys then graphing results. While this does not allow me to see directly into unit activities it does at least show that the students prefer to be actively involved. The unit activities that were listed on the reflection forms represented mainly activities whereby the students were involved in every step in a very active way. For example for the fourth unit of inquiry students listed either the whole Science Lab activity or part of the Science Lab activity as what they liked. The Science Lab activity included a teacher-created packet of three activities for which students spent three weeks going to the science lab to complete, with one rotation occurring each session. The first activity was for students to create their own design for and model of a toy car with a set of given materials, the second activity was to develop hypotheses and test three different recipes for making bubbles, and the third activity related to a book read during language, Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss; students created their own Oobleck. During Art, students also designed and created their own toys using everyday materials. The reflections showed that four of seven students specifically listed creating the cars and art toys as the activities they liked best. These were the activities that required most student input for the final product. Whilst the end of unit reflections did not always contain relevant information, i.e. on some of the reflections students wrote nothing or everything as their answer, overall we felt there was a pattern with students listing activities they liked which also were activities that students were very actively involved in. Our conclusions were that we would redevelop this form so that it is more specific to units and therefore can reveal better and clearer information which can be used. With regards to student feedback and input on unit activities, backwards design is the process that is used to write the unit planners for each unit, which means that possible formative and summative assessment tasks have to be stated in some way before the unit begins. The formative and summative assessment tasks were already decided upon before the unit began; however, there were no specific criteria or specified plans for how students would

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do the tasks. Students kept a Job Booklet during the unit, they took a field trip to the city to interview members of the community about their jobs, they conducted parent interviews on Wednesday afternoons when parents came in to present their jobs to the class, and for their summative assessment task they worked for two and a half weeks conducting research and preparing presentations for Career Day. The class chose three jobs a week to place into their Jobs Booklet. On Wednesday mornings in English language lessons students worked with the three jobs, writing the title of the job and what a person with that job does in English. On Thursday students worked again with the jobs, this time in Norwegian during their Norwegian lesson. They wrote the title of the job in Norwegian and discussed what a person with that job would do in Norway. For homework every Thursday they took home the Jobs Booklet and repeated the process in their Mother Tongue. There are two students in the class who have both Norwegian and English as their home languages. One of those students approached me and asked if he and the other boy could be allowed to choose a third language (not their Mother Tongue) to do their homework in. I replied that I felt this was a wonderful idea and commended him on his initiative. He chose to present in Italian because Italy is a country he wants to visit, and the other boy presented in Konkani which is a language spoken by some indigenous people in Goa, India where he lived for five years. The students were excited every Friday to share their Mother Tongue/third language results with each other. On multiple occasions students would approach me and ask if it was time to share yet. This was very exciting to be a part of. Students also took a field trip to the city to interview people working in our community. Prior to going on the field trip the students as a class came up with a list of questions they felt were important to ask. Their list included: what is your job, what education did you need to get your job, what do you do in your job, and why is your job important. The students rotated who would go into the business and ask politely if we could

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interview an employee before the class entered. The interviews were conducted in both Norwegian and English, depending on the person interviewed. Students did not need prompting to use one language or the other and independently asked each person what language they preferred to be interviewed in. The students had full range of who they would interview and they chose the questions prior to going to the city. It was exciting to see how happy and independent they were during this task. Later back at the school we discussed our findings. The students conducted parent interviews on Wednesday afternoons during their unit of inquiry lesson with Ms. H. Students used a question matrix to help them decide what types of questions they could ask. Ms. H led this activity and guided students in asking a variety of questions. She stated that some students (P, F, and A) were very involved and asked a lot of questions, including further questioning after receiving answers to previous questions. She felt that because English was the medium, and in some cases parents presented their content in too complex a manner first years, this caused some of the students to shy away from asking questions or they became disinterested. If students could have used Norwegian and English during this task students may have been more willing to actively participate. Another factor which teachers could not control was the way parents presented information which was sometimes outside the range of understanding for the first years due to lack of background knowledge, vocabulary, and complex language. For these reasons Ms. H and I felt that the level of engagement by students was likely influenced by factors other than their decision making and active involvement in structuring the activity. The summative assessment task was Career Day. The summative task should always be a culmination of everything the students have been learning, and tie the lines of inquiry in with the central idea. I had a whole class discussion where I asked students to share what they think would be important for Career Day. They decided they needed to tell what they wanted

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to be, what the job was like, why they wanted the job, and to dress up. In addition to their wishes for the final product I added in some questions to their guidelines which linked all lines of inquiry into the research they would conduct. I developed the criteria for the teacherrubric based on the Career Day guideline sheet, and students gave specific feedback for setting the criteria on their student-rubric. The following shows the Career Day guidelines students used to guide and develop their presentations and the teacher-made and student made rubrics;

Name:__________________________ Date:__________________ Directions: Fill in this form to help guide your research for your Career Day presentation. Remember you will need to do research to find some of your answers. Where can you find answers? (Resources) __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________

1. When I grow up I want to be _____________________________.

2. What education or training does a person with this job need? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 3. What does a person with this job do? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________

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4. How does a person with this job contribute to their community? Why are they important and how do they help? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 5. Has this job changed over time? Is this a new job? Tell a little bit about the history of this job. _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 6. How will I dress on Career Day to show off this job? _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ 7. How will I present my information to my peers and teachers? (You may use PowerPoint, drawings, photographs, a poster, and so forth) _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ Rate this activity:

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I look forward to presenting my job on Career Day.

I liked this activity.

Name____________________ Date______________ PYP:_________ Teacher Assessment CAREER DAY Unit 5: Nice Job
The student needs continued support from the teacher as he/she develops new knowledge and skills.

Career Research Activity

Emerging

The student was able to:

The student is developing his/her knowledge and skills with support from the teacher.

Developing

The student understands and applies the knowledge and skills towards his/her learning.

Proficient

The student works independently and is able to apply his/her knowledge and skills towards other areas of learning.

Independent

Explore a variety of resources (Reading Eggs online Library, Primary Britannica, Google search, books, etc.) to become more knowledgeable about their chosen career. (UOI) Set their goals and expectations for themselves for Career Day. (UOI) Present their career on Career Day. (UOI) Accurately discuss and answer questions about their career on Career Day. (UOI) Demonstrate critical thinking skills during their

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collection of research and presentation. (UOI) Demonstrate the ability to reflect and assess themselves against their own criteria (goals and expectations) for Career Day. (UOI)

Name____________________ Date______________ PYP:_________ Teacher Assessment CAREER DAY Unit 5: Nice Job
Emerging
The student needs continued support from the teacher as he/she develops new knowledge and skills.

Career Research Activity

Developing
The student is developing his/her knowledge and skills with support from the teacher.

Proficient
The student understands and applies the knowledge and skills towards his/her learning.

Independent
The student works independently and is able to apply his/her knowledge and skills towards other areas of learning.

The student was able to:

Use Encyclopedia Britannica to access relevant information for their chosen career. (I.T.) Create a simple Word document displaying clip art and text related to their chosen career. (I.T.)

Name____________________ Date______________ PYP:_________ Teacher Assessment CAREER DAY Unit 5: Nice Job
Emerging
The student needs continued support from the teacher as he/she develops new knowledge and skills.

Career Research Activity

Developing
The student is developing his/her knowledge and skills with support from the teacher.

Proficient
The student understands and applies the knowledge and skills towards his/her learning.

Independent
The student works independently and is able to apply his/her knowledge and skills towards other areas of learning.

The student was able to:

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Engage in discussions about books or stories on a variety of careers. (Library) Demonstrate their ability to think critically during discussions about careers or stories related to careers. (Library)

Student Self-Assessment: Career Day

Unit 5: Nice Job

Name_______________________ Date :______________ PYP 1

Always I dressed up for Career Day. I showed respect and was principled when others were presenting. I acted grown up during my presentation. I made eye contact during my presentation. I talked loud enough during my presentation. I listened and answered questions about my presentation. My presentation had all of the information I researched.

Sometimes

Not often or never

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Created by PYP 1 students Spring 2013

There was a high level of participation for Career Day. The students put a lot of effort into their research, and were excited to plan out what they would wear and how they would stand and speak. All students chose PowerPoints as their method of presenting. The students chose their design template and each page layout. I typed their responses into the PowerPoints as they explained to me what information from their Career Day sheets needed to be put in. I asked the students how they felt about this activity and making the criteria for their student rubric. They responded that it was nice and they like to decide. Conclusions: As previously stated, the oral survey at the end conducted by myself and Ms. H should have been done differently. It became obvious to us that the students had trouble recalling previous activities with great detail. A rating system should be placed at the end of every formative and summative activity to evaluate student engagement immediately following the activity for accuracy. We did not feel the survey being conducted at the end provided an accurate picture of student engagement from the students own perspective; therefore, we used our observations to determine student engagement. The end of unit reflection gives students a voice in their units, but again this is something that can vary in terms of the information it provides and whether or not that can be used to determine student engagement. The end of unit reflection sheet needs to be less open ended to determine student engagement; because it is a general form for use with each unit it does not ask specific unit questions. In the end, Ms. H, Ms. A, and I were the teachers who discussed our perceptions of the process. Ms. A is the Norwegian teacher and therefore was involved in working with the Jobs Booklet. We determined that while we cannot say conclusively the students level of

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engagement increases or is directly tied to their input and feedback, what we did determine was that there is enough from our observations and discussions to state we feel this is worth reworking and investigating again. We felt that the students were very engaged during the formative and summative activities and they did have a lot of input during the process. One outlying factor we would like to observe as well is whether the unit itself contributes to student level of engagement, because the units have different themes and students may be more engaged in a unit where they find themselves naturally more curious or interested to begin with. We will make changes to the process that we felt necessary and collect data over a minimum of two more units which we feel will allow us more data and the ability to determine if the theme of the unit affects engagement too. Currently this research is only relevant to the class it is specifically done on, as each student group is unique and the study would have to be conducted with multiple classes to determine if the outcomes are reliable. Long-term this is an area that can be pursued after evaluating the results of the study conducted again on the same class. At this point it would be the recommendation to include students in development of their tasks and criteria; however, to conclude that this will definitely increase engagement further study needs to be undertaken. Based on observations the students seemed genuinely excited that they had more control and say in what they were to do. I work in a system that encourages student involvement and student driven inquiry; however, I work with colleagues from all over the world who dont always feel comfortable letting students have the reigns where there education is involved. It is my hope that further study will either confirm or refute the idea that students input affects their engagement so that my team can evaluate and discuss what this means for how we approach learning with our students.

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In completing this assignment, you will be asked to consult with at least one person with expertise in your research area of interest. Please complete the following form, to be turned in with your data collection plan.

Consultation Form

Name of consulting colleague: Kristiansand International School (KIS), Kongsgrd alle 20, 4631 Kristiansand, Norway.

Role/ title: Sonya Eriksson, Head of school and Coordinator for Primary Years Programme (PYP) grades 1-5 students aged 6-11 years of age.

Topic of consultation: The importance of including students in the development of various aspects of the curriculum, including but not limited to their activities and assessments. Will this increase student engagement? What is the IB view?

Outcome/ information: Introduction

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KIS is an authorized IB World school and as such must comply with all IB standards and practices for the PYP. These practices clearly state that students must be allowed a voice in many aspects of curriculum design, classroom activities and assessment practices. This effectively means that students have a voice inside the classroom in the way in which they learn and an influence on curriculum content. This naturally reflects on learning experiences the students undergo inside their school community and ultimately the type of assessment tasks the student is engaged in.

In order to fully appreciate just how this works in practice one must consider the pedagogical base upon which the PYP is structured. The PYP offers a curriculum structure that invites indepth inquiry leading to learners asking questions that require research, reflection upon the findings of this research and thus allowing the learner a point of view that underlies how the learner approaches living both within and outside of school. Naturally this requires a high level of engagement of all learners. This pedagogical base for learning transcends across all subject levels and across all age ranges.

This pedagogical approach to teaching and learning makes curriculum meaningful for students and allows them to choose ways of exploring and engaging themselves using existing knowledge and or applying new knowledge for example in writing workshops, literature circles, activity centers providing a variety of choices and meeting the different learning styles and academic abilities of a group of learners.

The IB supports inquiry based pedagogy as it believes it to be intrinsic to learning, as it provides amongst learners a collaborative process of connecting to, and reaching beyond current understandings within the learner allowing for exploration of tensions that are significant to the learner.

In this type of learning environment the engagement of the learner is heightened as inquiry is in fact natural to how children and adults learn outside the context of school. Throughout the process the learner follows a strand of inquiry but is constantly making choices, forming an

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opinion and having a voice in how and what they learn. Inquiries are personalized within the learner placing his/her choices at the heart of the learning. The learner is effectively empowered.

Often in schools there is too much to learn, furthermore the international student will often move around from place to place with his/her family and face new curriculums wherever he/she may go. Curriculum embedded with testing may satisfy state requirements however, it may not allow for the provision of the widest range of tools for assessing meaningful learning that has taken place within the schools community of learners. At KIS, in addition to inquiry based learning offering curriculum choices to our students, the staff also provide a choice of assessment tools to all learners. Of course staff must also ensure that the same tool is not used repeatedly by the same learner.

In the context of the principles and practices of the PYP, assessment focuses very much on work that originally came out of New Zealand and was led by Marie Clay, where a running record or miscue analysis was used to record individualized performance. This technique was originally used to keep records on students reading performance. It is a similar stance that the IB takes on assessment where staff are expected to keep a constant set of observations on every individual carefully tracking the learners development over time which an acute sense of exactly where the learners current level of development is. Using formative assessment strategies where learning expectations are shared with the learner, developing criteria for success with the learner that measure both the process and the product, analyzing real samples of work, self and peer assessment, goal setting and reflection and effective questioning, and observation using anecdotal records all lead to the creation of an accurate developmental picture of the individual. Add to that individual choice of tools over time by the learner and you have a very effective way of monitoring learning over time. The assessment for, of, and as learning, are at the heart of the PYP. When students and teachers are engaged in continuous reflection about learning processes that involve empowering learners with their own voice, assessment provides an authentic path for improvement.

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Signature of consultant:

Sonya L. Eriksson

Date: 25th March 2013