Reflecting on Challenges

When I look back on the last few weeks I think the biggest challenge of this project was managing behaviors. I initially designed this project with a specific type of student in mind. These were students who:

Ø  struggled with reading

Ø  did not make adequate progress with other interventions

Ø  enjoyed music and singing

Ø  had a difficult time sitting still

Given all of these factors, I thought using music would:

Ø  be motivating

Ø  provide students with an outlet to move around

Ø  increase reading fluency

Ø  expose students to new vocabulary

Although these things did happen, what I did not expect was that the program could also be over stimulating which required a lot of redirection on my part. The most difficult part was getting the whole group to focus on learning at the same time. Eventually, I changed directions and became more individualized and occasionally split the group into two. This seemed to help them maintain focus and reduced some of the personality conflicts that were happening in the classroom.

The other part of my research was using music to help calm students and reduce aggressive behavior. During independent work, I would put on classical music and I noticed there was usually a reduction in the frenetic level of the room. One of my biggest challenges with implementing this strategy, however, was that I only had one CD player and it was frequently used as part of the listening center. It was also located clear across the room (plugged into my one and only outlet) which made it difficult for me to turn the music on without leaving the small group. My original hope was to have an Ipad or some other form of technology that I could have at the small group table where I could play music to help keep students focused. Unfortunately, funding was not in my favor. Maybe next time!

Measuring Student Growth

Part of my job as an interventionist is to monitor progress to ensure that the interventions I am using are effective. Using my own curriculum has made this process challenging. In an attempt to match instruction with assessment, I had to decide which progress monitoring tool would work best. In past years, our school used Dibels and since I was primarily teaching students to blend sounds, the Dibels Nonsense Word Fluency worked well. This year, we no longer use Dibels or Aimsweb, replacing it with the Fountas & Pinnell benchmarking system. The question became - do I have students complete a fluency passage with text I have taught or should I have them participate in a "cold read" of a text on a similar level?

Fountas & Pinnell recommended one read through and then follow up with the same text by doing a running record. I decided to go with this approach with slight modifications. There are baskets in my room with leveled readers appropriate for each student in my group. Each week, I give students the option of reading through these books during self selected reading time, though I do not actually "teach" the book. The story songs that I am using for teaching are slightly above their instructional level; however, they are repetitive in nature and so far, students have been successful at reading these books independently. To date, I have administered three running records for each student. The first one was with a practiced text and the second two were at a slightly lower level but unpracticed. Here are the results:

Student 1: 9/19 - Level C (practiced)       97.4% accuracy
                 10/1 - Level A (cold read)       96.0
                10/10- Level B (cold read)       95.0

Student 2: 9/19 - Level C (practiced)       No accuracy reported (frustration too high)
                 9/28 - Level A (cold read)       96.0
                 10/9 - Level B (cold read)       96.0

Student 3 9/19 - Level C (practiced)        98.4
                10/1 - Level B (cold read)        98.0
              10/10 - Level C (cold read)        97.0

Student 4 9/19 - Level C (practiced)       No accuracy reported (student is distracted)
                9/28 - Level B (cold read)       83.6
                10/9 - Level C (cold read)       91.0

Student 5 9/19 - Level C (practiced)       93.5
                9/27 - Level B (cold read)       90.0
              10/10 - Level C (cold read)       89.7

Student 6 9/19 - Level C (practiced)     100.0
                9/27 - Level D (cold read)     100.0
                10/9 - Level E (cold read)       98.0

I am excited that students are able to read more difficult text with little drop in accuracy. One student actually made gains with a higher level text. There was also not a significant difference between the practiced text and the unpracticed text which indicates that most students are able to transfer and apply what they learned with a slightly higher level text to one that is somewhat easier. Although there are other factors that may have impacted results (such as student motivation, distractions in the classroom, usage of picture clues, etc), the initial results are encouraging. My plan is to administer two more running records over the next two weeks to see if students can maintain growth without losing accuracy.

Changing Behaviors through Music

One thing I have observed is that music can change the behaviors in my room. Music can be quite motivating, however, it can also be overstimulating for students who already have little control over their behavior. This was an aspect that I had not fully thought about when I began my investigation. I knew there was research that showed music could be motivating resulting in increased engagement (Fonseca-Mora, 2011), but I did not anticipate that I would also need a method to decrease engagement. This week, the students were engaged in an activity that was too motivating. We started by listening to the song/rhythm, "Peanut Butter & Jelly" After listening, I reviewed the rhythm pattern and modeled for the students how to clap their hands and slap their knees to the beat. The students were engaged in this activity, attempting to follow the rhythm and reading the story with me. Once we finished the story, I tried to get students settled to complete a vocabulary activity, however, this proved difficult. One student wanted to hear the song again and turned the CD player back on. This caused the other students to begin singing again. At first, I thought this seemed like a positive response but then I realized that nobody was able to complete the assigned task with the music going on in the background, and I began to observe more off task behaviors as well. At this point, I turned off the PB&J song and turned on a relaxation CD. After a few moments, students began to calm down and about half of them turned back to the task of completing the vocabulary activity. The remaining students began rereading books in the reading center. As I observed my group, I realized their behavior was related to additional resarch by Fonseca and Mora (2011) indicating that relaxing background music can reduce agressive behavior. In futre lessons, I will be more intentional about including a combination of energizing music to encourage engagement and relaxing music to help students decelerate their behavior.

Focus on the Positive

After reviewing my fieldnotes over the last two weeks, I noted that there were many negative responses. I began to wonder if anything positive at all was happening in my classroom. I made a decision to intentionally look for positive behaviors vs. negative ones and keep a tally record. Last Tuesday I recorded my observations. During the course of the small group, I noticed 10 positive responses vs. 3 negative responses. A sample of some of the positive responses consisted of the following behaviors:

While I am reading aloud:
1 - Student responds with a rhyming word
2 - Student predicts what word comes next
3 - Student shows understanding of a new word by demonstrating using hand motions
4 - Student is chorally reading with me
5 - Students corrects another student who misreads a word
6 - Student anticipates what the text will be on the next page

While we are playing a word game:
4 students were able to verbalize what strategy was used to read a word on the game board

The negative behaviors were limited in comparison and consisted of 3 examples of off task behavior. All of these behaviors occurred during teacher modeling time when the student was not actively engaged.

This information tells me a couple of things. First, the students enjoy being together as a group. During the read aloud time, all students were gathered closely around me and looking intently at the book. They liked the fact that they were allowed to participate and they felt confident about sharing their knowledge. It also tells me that responses are generally more positive when students are actively engaged. I also noted that most of the positive responses occurred when students were involved in a structured activity. Center time seems to be difficult for these students who are not naturally self-starters. I believe I need to restructure my group time somewhat to reduce the amount of time spent in independent work each day. Next week, I will try to reduce center time to five minutes.

Finally, it should be noted that one student was missing from group. This is the student who is generally the most disruptive and has a tendancy to cause others to feel insecure. It may be that this student is mismatched for the type of activities that are happening in my classroom. I need to consider if it is in this student's best interest to continue to be a part of this group.

Transferring Knowledge

As a non-classroom teacher, one of my job duties is to monitor students before school starts. Since some of these students have to sit in the hallway for quite a while, I usually bring a book or two to keep them occupied. This morning, one of my small group students asked me if she could read the book. The book was, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss. As I listened to her sitting on the floor trying to read, my first thought was, "Wow - she's really struggling with that text." My second thought was, "But she's not giving up!" Her perseverance was something I had not seen in the past. And then, the magic happened. She stood up next to me and pointed to a word in the book. She said, "Look, Mrs. Clausen, there's the word that we learned yesterday in class." I asked her what the word was and she read, "all." Now that may not seem like a huge word, but for this student, it was like a door had opened. One of my major concerns about my project was, would students be able to transfer what we were doing in class to other settings. This was my first bit of "proof" that what I am doing is having a positive effect.

Searching for Patterns

Patterns are everywhere and kids are always so motivated to find them. Today I was reading a story with my small group and the first thing a student said was, "Look, there's a pattern!" I am excited when students notice the patterns in a predictable text. It is what I had hoped for. Finding patterns in my research, however, is somewhat more elusive.

After spending some quality time reading and rereading my fieldnotes, I did notice some patterns begin to emerge. Although I have several (and I do mean several) codes, there are some that recur more often than others. I have also started to organize my observations into four separate categories:

1) Instructional Responses that are related to my research question (MR - music related)
2) Instructional Responses that are not related to my research (NRM - not music related)
3) Behavioral Reponses that are related to my research
4) Behavioral Responses that are not related to my research

Within each category I have color coded (because I am a teacher and that's what we do) what I feel are positive and negative responses. Positive responses are highlighted in pink and negative responses are highlighted in green. Although you can't tell from the picture what all the codes mean, you may be able to see that there are some specific trends. It appears that I am observing more behavioral responses than instructional responses and, as of now, the negative responses seem to have the lead. As I reflect on the reasons why, I wonder if it is the natural tendancy to record what stands out. Maybe I am simply not noting as many of the positive responses because they are not catching my attention. I will try this week to be more intentional about looking for the positive. I'll let you know what happens!

If You're Angry and You Know it...

This week our focus was on the story,  If You're Angry and You Know It written by Cecily Raiber. If the title sounds familiar, that's because the pattern follows the song "If You're Happy and You Know It." A large part of my instruction is matching the familiar with the new. Students activate their background knowledge about the song and then use the familiar patterns to read the story. In order to make sure students are transferring their knowledge from the familiar to the new, we engage in lots of practice. This week we:

1) Introduced the book by listening to the song without any words. Once students listened a couple of times, they began to sing the familiar, "If You're Happy and You Know It."
2) I show students the book - we discuss how the title and some of the words are different. I read the book, pointing to the words as I read.
3) I write out the book on sentence strips and students practice chorally reading using a pointer finger. While the word pattern is still familiar, the removal of pictures provides students with the opportunity to think more about the words.
4) We practice word families that naturally occur in text. This week we talked about words that end in -ow and make the long /o/ sound (such as "know" and "show"). Students use magnet letters to make new words and then write the words down in a Word Family House. We also include words that don't belong in the house such as "how" and "now."
5) We practice sight words that naturally occur in text. Students point to words on the sentence strips and make their own flash cards for independent practice. Sight words are put onto the word wall after they have been introduced.
6) By the end of the week I want children to practice what they have learned through writing. Students may write a journal entry about the song or they may write their own version of the story. Many of the books I am using have multiple versions. This story also has a Jungle Edition.

In addition to these teacher led activities, students have ample opportunities for independent practice during center time. This week, I provided a computer center with a virtual keyboard where students can play the song on the computer. I printed out the sheet music for the song and then wrote the corresponding musical notes underneath. Although this new activity required teacher support, students were very motivated to create their own music!

So...How many of you are singing the song in your head right now?


This story is a version of the song "If You're Happy and You Know It" I thought this would be applicable since many of my students frequently deal with angry emtions.

Sheet music for the song - I provided notes in letter form so that students could play independently.

Virtual Keyboard website where students can play songs using the computer

Sentence Strips - Students take turns pointing to the words and reading chorally.

Word Family House for words ending in -ow

 



Adding Quantitative Data

This week I completed a running record with each student for our introductory story, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Martin, Jr., 1983). In order to determine what strategies the students were using, I removed the pictures by retyping the story in text format only. The attachment below shows the results.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13GdiZNScUrvjO3x7c6dYt8Q5XXul3_SnVCmesTxOXFc/edit#

Overall, the results were positive. Most of the students began reading from memory but then stopped and used visual strategies to read the words correctly. Two of the students were able to read the text with few errors despite the removal of pictures. They also completed reading the entire story.  One student stopped toward the end because he was getting frustrated. I noticed him rubbing his eyes and I attributed this to his need for glasses (which he does not currently have). Another student seemed to have a difficult time tracking the smaller print. He asked to read the story from the book (with the pictures) and I allowed him to do this. He was able to complete the entire story using this method. The final student who could not finish the story seemed to be distracted by other activities going on in the room. This student was also absent twice since we began meeting.

Although this was our first week of instruction, I felt the students made some reading gains. The students were motivated to read the story independently and appeared to have confidence in their ability. The methods I used, which were based on Fischer and McDonald's (2001) research on using music to teach early literacy skills, may be the reason for these gains. My methods follow their recommendations for beginning a new story: 1) listen to the music, 2) teach the words, 3) have the children engage in word play to develop phonemic awareness.

Next week, I will introduce a new story using the same instructional method. Each week, the stories I choose will be at a slightly higher reading level to encourage reading growth. I am encouraged by the initial results and will keep you updated as I gather more results.

Trying to find the silver lining in all the clouds

Getting this group started has become quite the challenge. I am trying my best to establish routines but the constant disruptions have made this difficult. This week our group time has been interrupted by a field trip, an unplanned scheduling meeting and several emergency drills. We can add vision screenings and grandparents day to that list as well. I would love to just have five consecutive days where I see my entire group for the whole class time. Alas, I know the chances of this happening are not high.

It appears as though the lack of routine is exacerbating the behavior problems I am having with this group. The daily trend seems to be that at least one student has a difficult time following directions which then becomes a "domino effect" that causes at least one other student to become off task. Some days, I feel like we could spend the entire 30 minutes discussing behavior. I knew when I put this group together that they were a lively bunch, but I didn't imagine we would spend so little time on actual instruction.

Although I am not a huge fan of giving students tangible rewards for making appropriate behavior choices, because things were so out of control, I decided this was something I would try for this group. I began to give out "Wildcat Tickets" to students who were making good choices. This is a school wide system so students already have an understanding of how it works. Once a student earns a ticket, he or she will put it into a collective jar where I will randomly select two students who will receive a prize (such as pencils, candy, etc.) at the end of each week. So far, all this has done is cause the students who are not receiving tickets to become angrier and students who are receiving tickets to become anxious about getting a prize. Since we have yet to meet on a Friday, I plan to wait until the end of next week to see if this starts working better. If not, I will adjust my behavior plan and try something else. I will say that a couple of students really do respond well to verbal praise and this is something that I am trying to use more of.

One thing that seems to work well is allowing students to have center time at the beginning of class. In past years, I have always reserved center time for the end of class resulting in only those students who finish work early getting to go to centers. This year, I am committed to all of my students feeling successful and so I am beginning the lesson with student directed activity (with guidance on my part). This also ensures that I am getting some individual time with students during centers. Last week, I videotaped my class. My intention was to have a video record of the assessment I was administering to two students. What happened instead was that I was able to hear what was actually happening in the learning centers. Students were actively engaged in reading and listening to the book that I had read earlier (Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin, Jr). What I had thought sounded like random laughing and general fooling around was actually students talking about the book, laughing together and singing the words. Yes, there is a silver lining somewhere in those clouds -engaged students who are actively participating and being responsible for their own learning! Here's hoping that's a continuing trend.

Getting Ready for Instruction

Thick Descriptions, Part Deux

There's an old saying that goes, "Man makes plans and God laughs." Well I can definitely relate to that adage this week. Looking back at my carefully constructed lesson plans, I wonder how I ever thought it would all work out.

This is my first week to meet with my students as a group. On Monday, I thought I would spend a few minutes allowing students to explore the room and then play a name game with them. The first activity was to have students put the letters of their first name in order using letter tiles, then glue them onto a folder. I thought to myself, "they're second graders, how hard could it be." Then I remembered why they come to me. Okay - let's start at putting letters in order from left to right...As you might have figured out, we never even got to the game.

I also have some unexpected behaviors in my class this year. Since I had a good knowledge base of five out of six students from last year, I thought behavior issues would be minimal, but apparently, they learned some new ones over the summer. Because of this, I had to create a behavior chart for the first time. Of course, since this was something new, the interest was more tuned in to who was getting on yellow than what was going on in the lesson.

The good news is, putting on music seems to be having the desired calming effect. On Monday, when one particular student was very "energetic," I put on some classical music and he seemed to relax pretty quickly - even though it was only for about five minutes. The other students also calmed down and became more earnest about working. We were able to complete the letter tile activity without any further major interruptions.

On Tuesday, I pretty much tossed my plans aside and went on instinct. Since I knew the calm music had a desired effect, I tried it again - this time with the music to our first book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin, Jr. I put the song on as soon as the students entered the room and asked them to listen to see if they recognized the song. All of the students began to listen intently and I saw some smiles of recognition appear on their faces.Although my little energetic friend chose to segregate himself at a work table away from the group, I noticed him singing away as he busied himself with some letter sound manipulatives. The rest of the lesson went pretty well until I tried to administer the initial assessment. I asked the students to spread out around the room and gave clipboards to a couple of students who were not at a table. Bad idea! This was definitely too much freedom and resulted in way too much off task behavior ("How come she has a clipboard?", "I want to sit over there." "I'm moving!")  to the point that I had to abandon the assessment and have another chat about behavior expectations.

I have decided that I will try to assess students two at a time instead of all six at once. Although this will put me a little behind on my timeline, I think it will provide me with more accurate data. I'll keep you posted and let you know how it goes!

Thick Descriptions

I am a natural puzzle solver and so I love thinking about the "why" of things. This week I began collecting data with my small group in the form of reading benchmark assessments and a music attitude survey. As I collected the data, I kept thinking about the possible reasons why a student would respond in one way or another. While administering my music attitude survey I had a lot more happy faces than sad faces (40 to 6). Hmm - is it because 2nd graders prefer happy faces over sad faces or did they genuinely agree with the question?

As I look back at the data, I see one student has answered with all happy faces. Although I prefaced each question with the statement that there was no right or wrong answer, I wonder if this student thought the happy face was correct? This was also the only student with whom I did not have a previous relationship. I wonder if she was trying to please me? Since I could not see my own face during the survey I also wonder if my facial expressions were swaying her answers.

I would say that most of the students who were surveyed were able to justify their answers (with some prompting on my part) - at least, in the manner that second graders do that. Some examples of responses include phrases such as, "it makes me happy," "it's fun," and "because I can." Unsurprisingly, a couple of my more familiar students went on to make some good connections between their reasoning and their personal experience.

I would also say that environment plays a role in the data. My room is in a new place this year and I have added in some new elements as well. Even though most of my students were familiar with me, the room was new and, therefore, students were curious about it. I began each survey by telling students they would have a chance to explore after they completed the survey. Looking back, I think I may have gotten better attention results had I allowed students to explore first.Time of day also played a role. Four of the six students were surveyed in the morning and two were surveyed toward the end of the day. The students who met with me at the end of the day exhibited more fidgety behaviors and required redirection several times. Since all six of these students are natural movers, I have to conclude that the end of the day was not the ideal time to conduct a survey. Fortunately, when I begin my actual instruction, I will be meeting with these students at 10:00 each day.

Okay, enough of my pontificating - here are the survey results:

All six students like listening to quiet music (this is something I like also!)

Five out of six students enjoy: singing with friends, moving while singing and feel like they can easily remember words to songs.

Four out of six students like books with music, sitting and listening to music and singing alone.

Three out of six students like popular music (there were some very strong reactions to this question)

Two out of six students like silly songs and loud music (but I LOVE silly songs!)

One final thought - When I consider the home environment of most of my students, it is not surprising to me that they like quieter music. Many of them live in chaotic households with people coming and going at all times. Most students like the feeling of calm that they get when things are quiet and consistent. As I begin the instruction phase of my project, I will definitely try to keep this information in the back of my mind as I plan for their success.

Week Two - Reflection

This week my focus was on observing my chosen students in their regular classroom. My purpose was to look for behaviors that would indicate that these students would be a good match for my action research project. Because my project incorporates music and movement, I felt that students who had a natural tendancy to move around would be good candidates. It appears that at least five of these students are having difficulty sitting still, especially during whole group instruction.

I also noticed a prevailing theme in that many of these students are having difficulty getting themselves started on independent work. Some of my first thoughts are that the work is too difficult for them and/or it is unmotivating.

Next week, my primary goal is to join classroom teachers while they administer running records. As we both listen to the targeted students read, we will be able to compare our data and discuss possible reasons behind the observed reading behaviors. Additionally, I will be seeing the targeted students one at a time to administer the music interest survey (see attachment from previous post). My goal for this is to determine if these targeted students already share an enjoyment of music.

Music Survey

The link attached is the music attitude survey that I will be administering this week. Look for results posts next week. I am anxious to see what my students attitudes about learning through music are!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14ifavGGtYArH6RRg6LY4-vo66xVOAkDV-5fY853S1Ik/edit

Getting Started

Well, I knew this action research project would be messy, but I feel like I am up to my elbows in mud! My finely detailed plan already needs to be tweaked somewhat since a couple of my targeted students  no longer qualify for intervention services (a good problem to have). Of course, I will have no shortage of customers to take their places. I will, however, have to spend a little more time up front getting to know the newer students. On top of that, our school is adopting a new benchmark process, so I can add training on benchmark administration to my "to do" list. On the positive side, I believe the new system, which was developed by Fountas & Pinnell, will provide better information about my students' specific reading needs.

I am anxious to get started with my group. After completing the benchmark assessments and analyzing the data, I will begin my research with a music attitude survey. Look for the survey to be posted here soon.

Action Research Proposal

The title of my action research is:
Can't Get That Song Outta My Head: How Will Integrating Music with Reading Instruction Affect Students' Decoding Skills?

My purpose is to help 2nd grade students who are in Tier 3 reading intervention and have not responded to a scripted intervention program. I am integrating music to help increase phonological awareness along with motivation. I will be teaching six 2nd grade students in a pull-out setting. All of these students have participated in at least 15 weeks of prior interventions with little progress; however, they are not yet in the evaluation process for special education.

My approximate timeline:

• Week of September 4th - Complete benchmark assessments. Observe students in regular classroom. Obtain consent forms.
• Week of September 10th - Begin meeting with small group. Teach routines, administer music interest survey and pre-test (Orton-Gillingham assessment). Analyze all quantitative data. Begin implementation of intervention.
• Week of September 17th - Begin collection of qualitative data in the form of observations/fieldnotes. Record and analyze quantitative data in the form of weekly formative assessments (the exact type of assessment has yet to be deteremined and will be based on individual student needs). Continue this process through October October 26th, evaluating, reflecting and adjusting as assessment indicates.
• Week of October 29th - Administer post-test (same as pre-test). Administer benchmark assessment. Analyze data.
• Week of November 5th - Comple all information and complete journal article.