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!