Dec 6

My inquiry question is….

Where is the evidence of community of learners in my classroom?

The learning goal for my students is to work together, cooperate, and help each other, listen to each other when someone is talking, be a community member.

My criterion for student success would be when my students are able to show respectful behavior, support each other in the times of need, not…

Focal students – Aaron, Ellie, Charlie, Gracie

Data Sources—Video Data, Weekend journal, Reflection, Questions, student interviews

Where I am now

I feel I have moved along in my inquiry. I realize that I need to teach my students the conversational moves--teaching them to not only listen to their classmates (that are sometimes non measureable) but also teaching them to agree and disagree in respectful ways and be able to articulate that. I think that would be one way to help them grow as a community of learners.

I also feel that by using more explicit ways of giving "I messages" using a manipulative and modeling that, I will give the students vocabulary for their thoughts and feelings and others to acknowledge that.

I would like to implement the "Reflections Sheet" idea where students have an opportunity to relfect on a problem they might have had/are having with another student and their thoughts on it and what happened and what they would do differently. I would really like to have that structure in my classroom for that to happen--time wise and logistically but I will try to figure how to make that possible.

I do think that my inquiry is hard to measure but I keep feeling that it is an important one. I think I am trying to create a classroom culture and trying to improve the quality of my classroom culture. It is still somewhat unclear if the question focuses on the student learning or my own. If I try to reiterate my question, it would be... What are some ways my students are showing that they are a communtiy of learners?

November 15, 2010

This is my question right now:

Are my students operating as a community of learners? What can I do to promote and develop a classroom community of learners?

Being as specific as I can be I want my students to learn and do is ...
to work together and support each other, care for each other, stand up for each other, learn to be civil and polite and be good human beings, take other people's perspective.

I would know that my students are accomplishing this goals if I saw them or heard them...

listen to each other when other students are talking, problem solve together, imbibe life skills,

I would be able to see these things if I could collect information about this by observing them throughout the year by seeing their growth by what they share at class meetings, the friendships they form, kind of problems they have with each other and how they solve them.

How to go about data collection...?

I would like to look at student thinking. I want to get to data collection and see evidence of how students think of our classroom. Do they think of it as a safe place where they are helped and supported by other students? The kind of data that I can collect are watching student interaction through video tape and comparing it from time to time, informal note taking but the one I would like to get is some sort of written response to a target question that would give me evidence of how they feel about their classroom community. I wonder if I asked them, “What is something you have to do at school that you don’t like and why?” would that give me any insight into their perception of their voice and degree of participating in their own learning. Maybe that is the data that I will collect and see if that was useful data or not.

Some ways I am trying to build community are…

Class Meetings, where everyone shares (or chooses not to) something when they come in first thing on Monday. I model by sharing on a variety of subjects including something we had donated to our class, issues I am dealing with—things working or not working, talking about what I am learning from someone else—a student or another teacher, questions about how to figure something out, something I bought for the classroom, dilemma about issues or just some wonderings. The goal is to model for students how you can bring your thoughts to the group and discuss and figure them out together.

Getting student Input on life skills awards. Instead of me suggesting names for those who should get an award for using a certain life skill, I have asked for names from students of their classmates who they have seen use certain life skills. That went well so far, but I am not sure how that will work if the plan is to give each student an award for at least one life skill. Hopefully I will be able to help them see strengths in each of them. We’ll see.

Classroom arrangement, atmosphere, partnership with the reading buddies, star of the week, songs and music, hug or handshake on Friday, asking for feedback on how they want their birthdays celebrated, and assigning table monitors are some attempts at helping create teams, cooperative learning and release of responsibility.

My current question is..

I have decided to narrow down my question. My original question was, "What is the evidence of community in my classroom?" and "What is the evidence that my students are learning to be critical thinkers?"

At this point, I am feeling I want to focus on just the community building aspect in my classroom. By having two big questions, I was unable to focus on either aspect. It was too confusing to think about those two aspects simultaneously.

Why is it important to operate as a community? What benefits do I see for students if effort is put into building community? How would my classroom look different from one where I am not making a special effort towards this goal? What am I doing differently this year and how are students exhibiting any signs of increased comfort level, empathy and caring for their peers?

Although I am not consciously thinking about my question each day as I go to work, there are some things I am consciously doing with the intention of building community. I start Mondays with a Class Meeting and allot ample time to the meeting itself for its own sake. In the past, meeting was something I did for the sake of the kids so they could get their sharing out of the way and we could start the week. Now, I take the time to listen to what they share, what is important to them and take the time to teach students to participate in the sharing, how to allow students to share uninterrupted, the order in which I facilitate sharing, how they ask questions and/or piggy back on other people's ideas.

In the process of figuring out what kind of data would best give me evidence of how children perceive our group, it was pointed out to me that it was important I hammer out the definition of a "community of learners" which sounds on target to me. My next step is to identify my own vision of what a community of learners looks like.

Your thoughts now?

Get started identifying students whose data I am going to collect.

Current Draft of question

What is the evidence that my students are a community of learners and critical thinkers?

How does this connect to your area of interest for your study this year?

I really want to see evidence of community in my classroom, as well as, evidence of critical thinking. This will give me an opportunity to see and document and analyse.

What did you learn from the data exploration today?

It was very helpful to have my small group members give ideas about what kind of data I can collect since I didn't have the more typical kind of data. I also found out about what data might look like for my question and how to maybe start with data collection for my subject of inquiry.