Phase 1 Results
Throughout my phase one, I have been collecting data using three different ways. The data consists of:
1. Behavior Observation Forms
In my behavior observation forms I see an overall change in severity in from comments in the “negative behavior”and “positive behavior" columns. My original negative behavior notes included “tattled for student a not sharing crayons” and “distracting friends with talking during guided instruction”. My original positive notes included “Asked student a to pick up class books from floor. Student a happy to help.”
On another day, I have negative comments that show “tattle-telling on student a without trying to solve problem” and “messing around with student a on rug” for certain students. Positive comments about the other students involved in similar situations were “tried to solve problem independently but needed teacher intervention” and “worked hard to solve problems on own and participate during group lesson” for others, all on the same day. The positive comments show students receptive to the lessons of phase one.
In the end of phase one, my negative notes mostly revolved around the same three students. As these three students were all in a social seminar support group, I am focusing on the other 21 students in the class. Many notes throughout the week show students encouraging one another to learn with “great job” comments when students share right answers and “smart try” when answers were wrong. On the last official day in phase one, I only have three individual negative comments and seven positive individual comments.
The negative comments included “throwing eraser at friend,” “trouble raising hand and shouting out answers”, and “inappropriate participation in lesson". The inappropriate participation was when a student responded “punch in face” as solution to solving a problem. The first student knew he had made a mistake, and lost a positive behavior star. The second student quickly apologized for stopping his friends thinking, and went outside and took some deep breaths to calm down. The third comment actually worried be, and thus took a tangent to our lesson. After addressing this solution as a class and deciding it would not help, but would hurt the problem, this student spent his lunch recess with me writing the class an apology letter for his poor actions and for not contributing positively to community learning time.
My positive comments on my last day all revolved around students solving their own problems, helping each other out, and positively contributing to our days lessons. Specifics include “ignored student rolling on rug”, “tried solving problems on own before asking teacher for intervention”, and “helped redirect student’s behavior on rug after he threw eraser.”
Using these notes, I found that the students who continued to exhibit negative behaviors were the ones who other students needed problem solving support and teacher intervention with. When taking this into consideration, I noticed that, outlier students aside, almost all of the students were using the problem solving techniques learned in our lessons to solve problems, and very few needed teacher assistance or intervention.
Examples of behavior observation forms are below:
1. Behavior Observation Forms
In my behavior observation forms I see an overall change in severity in from comments in the “negative behavior”and “positive behavior" columns. My original negative behavior notes included “tattled for student a not sharing crayons” and “distracting friends with talking during guided instruction”. My original positive notes included “Asked student a to pick up class books from floor. Student a happy to help.”
On another day, I have negative comments that show “tattle-telling on student a without trying to solve problem” and “messing around with student a on rug” for certain students. Positive comments about the other students involved in similar situations were “tried to solve problem independently but needed teacher intervention” and “worked hard to solve problems on own and participate during group lesson” for others, all on the same day. The positive comments show students receptive to the lessons of phase one.
In the end of phase one, my negative notes mostly revolved around the same three students. As these three students were all in a social seminar support group, I am focusing on the other 21 students in the class. Many notes throughout the week show students encouraging one another to learn with “great job” comments when students share right answers and “smart try” when answers were wrong. On the last official day in phase one, I only have three individual negative comments and seven positive individual comments.
The negative comments included “throwing eraser at friend,” “trouble raising hand and shouting out answers”, and “inappropriate participation in lesson". The inappropriate participation was when a student responded “punch in face” as solution to solving a problem. The first student knew he had made a mistake, and lost a positive behavior star. The second student quickly apologized for stopping his friends thinking, and went outside and took some deep breaths to calm down. The third comment actually worried be, and thus took a tangent to our lesson. After addressing this solution as a class and deciding it would not help, but would hurt the problem, this student spent his lunch recess with me writing the class an apology letter for his poor actions and for not contributing positively to community learning time.
My positive comments on my last day all revolved around students solving their own problems, helping each other out, and positively contributing to our days lessons. Specifics include “ignored student rolling on rug”, “tried solving problems on own before asking teacher for intervention”, and “helped redirect student’s behavior on rug after he threw eraser.”
Using these notes, I found that the students who continued to exhibit negative behaviors were the ones who other students needed problem solving support and teacher intervention with. When taking this into consideration, I noticed that, outlier students aside, almost all of the students were using the problem solving techniques learned in our lessons to solve problems, and very few needed teacher assistance or intervention.
Examples of behavior observation forms are below:
2. Teacher Reflection Journal
In my teacher notes I see a gradual improvement in the amount of interventions. Overall, I see that more students are participating in our lessons, despite having wrong answers. I saw an overall improvement in students’ attitudes towards one another, with positive comments about and towards one another often being shared on the rug.
At the end of the first week of intervention, and just two days after our Anger-Management Lesson, I had my biggest break-through with one of my more difficult students. He came to school and told me about a situation at his house the night before involving he and his dad. In short, his dad was angry and he told his dad to “stop, think how your body feels, take deep breaths, and count backwards from ten.” This student went on to tell me that his dad was very impressed with him, and told him he was very smart for thinking of those things to deal with being angry. For me, this was one of those Action Research Moments that makes you know that all of this hard work is paying off.
Also In my teacher reflection journal, I noted all of the different behavior awards we had received. Each week, one class in each grade level wins an award for best behavior at lunch, and in the first week we won recess play behavior and in the second week we won lunch table behavior.
Additionally, many teachers who I collaborate with and have my students for part of the day commented on the positive behavior and politeness of my students. They requested some of the community building activities we had been using, which tells me that this first phase was a success!
While I would love to share a visual of my teacher reflection journal, the identities of the students would not remain confidential. The students names are used throughout the journal, and covering each name would not provide much benefit to my readers understanding of the notes.
3. Student Reflection Slips
My overall findings from the student reflection slips were that the students really felt good about themselves when they helped others students. Through their writings, I learned that my lower level students often felt proud when they worked with the higher level students in reading and math.
These student reflection forms are the written equivalent to our Appreciation Meetings. For these forms, students are given short reminder lessons about what we learned during our lesson for our Appreciation Meeting. During phase one, I asked two specific questions. The first was “What do you feel proud about?” focusing on self-awareness and self-efficacy, and the second was “How did I help a friend today?”, focusing on other awareness and problem solving.
Our first question, “What do you feel proud about?” was lead with a brainstorm of different things the students could be proud of. After a seven minute brainstorm and the introduction of our sentence frame “I am proud because____.”, the students went to their desks to write. Once they had completed their writing I asked the students to read the writing to me in one-on-one discussions. I was surprised to find out how shy some of the students were about being proud, and also surprised to see how many were proud because of something they did that helped another student. Examples included “I am proud because I helped student a spell a sight word” and “I am proud because I did my homework”.
In my teacher notes I see a gradual improvement in the amount of interventions. Overall, I see that more students are participating in our lessons, despite having wrong answers. I saw an overall improvement in students’ attitudes towards one another, with positive comments about and towards one another often being shared on the rug.
At the end of the first week of intervention, and just two days after our Anger-Management Lesson, I had my biggest break-through with one of my more difficult students. He came to school and told me about a situation at his house the night before involving he and his dad. In short, his dad was angry and he told his dad to “stop, think how your body feels, take deep breaths, and count backwards from ten.” This student went on to tell me that his dad was very impressed with him, and told him he was very smart for thinking of those things to deal with being angry. For me, this was one of those Action Research Moments that makes you know that all of this hard work is paying off.
Also In my teacher reflection journal, I noted all of the different behavior awards we had received. Each week, one class in each grade level wins an award for best behavior at lunch, and in the first week we won recess play behavior and in the second week we won lunch table behavior.
Additionally, many teachers who I collaborate with and have my students for part of the day commented on the positive behavior and politeness of my students. They requested some of the community building activities we had been using, which tells me that this first phase was a success!
While I would love to share a visual of my teacher reflection journal, the identities of the students would not remain confidential. The students names are used throughout the journal, and covering each name would not provide much benefit to my readers understanding of the notes.
3. Student Reflection Slips
My overall findings from the student reflection slips were that the students really felt good about themselves when they helped others students. Through their writings, I learned that my lower level students often felt proud when they worked with the higher level students in reading and math.
These student reflection forms are the written equivalent to our Appreciation Meetings. For these forms, students are given short reminder lessons about what we learned during our lesson for our Appreciation Meeting. During phase one, I asked two specific questions. The first was “What do you feel proud about?” focusing on self-awareness and self-efficacy, and the second was “How did I help a friend today?”, focusing on other awareness and problem solving.
Our first question, “What do you feel proud about?” was lead with a brainstorm of different things the students could be proud of. After a seven minute brainstorm and the introduction of our sentence frame “I am proud because____.”, the students went to their desks to write. Once they had completed their writing I asked the students to read the writing to me in one-on-one discussions. I was surprised to find out how shy some of the students were about being proud, and also surprised to see how many were proud because of something they did that helped another student. Examples included “I am proud because I helped student a spell a sight word” and “I am proud because I did my homework”.
Our second question, “How did you help a friend today?”, was intended to focus the students on recognizing friends feelings and problem solving. We began this lesson by brainstorming ways we could help our friends. I then had the students spend two minutes of quiet thinking time, reflecting on how they helped a friend today. When they were ready they gave me a thumbs up and I gave them a paper so they could write how they helped their friend. Their sentence frame was “I helped a friend by ______. ”Once they finished their writing I had them read me their writing. I found that the students were very excited to write about this, as they loved helping friends and were very proud of helping each other.