I ran into some major kinks at the end.  I was using data from the six classes at my school that were using FASTT Math.   on November 15th one of the teachers whose data I was using completely disappeared.  She had gone into the program to change one of her students from addition to subtraction and accidentally changed the entire class, which lead her to have to change all her students back to addition and therefore canceling out any growth they had made.  She didn’t let me know about this problem, but when I was calculating the data I noted that the fourth grade students had made much less growth than the 3rd and 5th grade students.  This lead me to dig deeper into the data and I found her students’ start dates were only a month prior.  As a result of this I ended up contacting a teacher at a school with similar demographics to mine and pulling a fourth grade classes data from there to complete my report.

I realized while completing this project that I really would benefit from a basic statistics class.  I was never required to take a statistics class and never felt a need for one prior to my graduate work, but more and more now I’m realizing if I had a stronger statistics background I’d be able to do a better job with projects such as this.  Thankfully I work with a very supportive staff, many of which are also going through their Master’s programs right now, that could  bring my data to and say, “Something, doesn’t make sense here, could you recheck my work?”

As I got further along in my FASTT Math Evaluation I started to get more resistance from the district.  I think that this is unfortunate because I feel as though my evaluation could have been of benefit to the district, and as they became more and more nervous every time I asked them a question I also found them more resistant to answer my questions.  I think there is benefit of having surveys done by fellow teachers because it is less threatening to the teachers and they feel they can be open without being targeted for being negative or questioning certain processes.  I was unaware of the amount of paperwork the district required to the survey other teachers.  In the end I simply used the teacher database to find the other fifth grade teachers and send the survey out myself rather than getting assistance from the district to send it to all teachers that were teaching FASTT Math.  Unfortunately this is the district’s loss because I could have provided them with a great deal of data that they don’t have, but then again perhaps they didn’t want the data either.  I still may be asking forgiveness for sending out the survey at all, but we’ll deal with that when and if the time comes.

At this point in time I do not plan on leaving my teaching position to be an educational technologists.   I love what I do as an all girls 5th grade teacher, I love the kids and can’t imagine myself going down to the district office world.  The educational technologists in my school district have no special training and spend their time at the central office managing technology problems with no student contact–this is not where I want to be.  I do feel however that I am much better equipped to evaluate programs that I have implemented in my classroom after taking this class.   I would love the opportunity at my district to do more evaluation, but at this point I’m not seeing that opportunity opening up at a district level, but perhaps at a school level, which I would welcome.

• Does the program increase student fact fluency?
• How are teaches perceiving the FASTT Math Program?
• How are students perceiving the FASTT Math Program?

To evaluate the effectiveness of the program I’m using a report generated by the program called the “Student Response to Intervention”.  Additionally I’m using baseline fact assessments from the 5th grade students.  The other grades chose not to do a paper and pencil baseline assessment so I can only use it for 5th grade.

In regards to teacher and student perception I am using a Google Survey to collect data.  The students will be the 3rd-5th grade students at my school.  As far as the teachers I’m opening the survey to all teachers using FASTT Math.  Right now I’m struggling with how to gain access to those teachers.  My preference would be to have the program coordinator send my survey to the staff using the program, but I’m unsure if she will be willing to do this.  If they are unwilling then I will need to simply go through the staff e-mail and find the teachers that are using the program and send them the survey.

Much of the student data has been gathered, however I’m working on putting it together in a usable way.   I’m struggling because I don’t feel like the program truly provides a baseline assessment since it doesn’t assess all the students’ fact knowledge at the beginning of the program.  Although I’m running into glitches around these topics I guess that’s partly the point of the evaluation: to determine what is working and what isn’t working.

I feel as though I have all the pieces of the evaluation I simply need to synthesize the information into a cohesive piece.  I feel like after our adobe connect meeting last week I have a better understanding of how to make that happen.

The program I am currently evaluating is FASTT Math by Scholastic.  This program is new to our district this year and lately there seems to be some grumbling about the program’s effectiveness.  I personally enjoy using the program, but one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard seems to tie back to Problem Analysis.  Many staff members have concerns over the fact that this program was purchased on a large scale (district wide) without any trial being done.  The main goal of the program is to increase student math fact fluency.  Although many of us in our district can see that there is a need for increased fact fluency in our district there was no true needs assessment done.  With no needs assessment  being done it was then very difficult to define the real problem in terms of numbers.  For example, the team that chose FASTT Math didn’t define the problem using data such as, “32% of fifth grade students are not proficient on addition math facts.”  Had the team completed this part of the problem analysis we would have a clearer picture of what the problem is that we’re trying to solve.  Additionally rather than identifying possible resources to solve our problem the math team saw a product they liked and jumped on it, purchasing it for the entire district at a high cost.  Now that the program is in place it’s hard to go back and determine if it is truly meeting goals due to the fact that no initial data was collected on a district level to compare against.  I believe this is a case of when problem analysis was skipped and therefore now people are questioning whether this large purchase was a wise choice.

A more positive experience I’ve had with problem analysis is the data retreats I’ve been a part of as a teacher at my school.  As a Title 1 school data is very important to us.  Each year we are required to hold a data retreat where we examine data such as student attendance, behavior, as well as academic data.  We then as a staff determine which area we feel the need to focus on, examine more thoroughly the problem, determine a goal, brainstorm ideas, identify and implement plan for change, as well as evaluation procedures.

Problem analysis is an ongoing process for a Title 1 school as we evaluate what is working and what isn’t.  We do this on a large scale level, but also on a smaller scale level where we look at how programs are impacting particular students and what else needs to be done.  For example, we have monthly intervention meetings where we look at low-progress students, analyze the data for that student, and then come up with a plan to help that student.  At each subsequent meeting we analyze the new data and make adjustments to meet the student’s needs.

In regards to the progress of my evaluation project and interesting kink in my system popped up today.  I’m evaluating the use of Scholastic’s Fast Math program in regards to student progress in fact proficiency.  While exploring my students’ reports this week I noticed that several students were being listed as not completing any lessons.  I found this perplexing since I had witnessed the students doing the program and I know they enjoy the program so they are putting forth effort.  With more exploration with my co-workers I found that they too had students in the same situation.  We believe we narrowed down the problem and determined these students are simply missing one button at the end of their program, which therefore renders their lesson incomplete and prevents them from moving forward in the program.  As I read more of the other Evaluations in the coming few days I will interested to see how these Evaluations address user errors such as this one.  Since my goal was to determine the effectiveness of the program on student fact proficiency I will need to make some decisions about how to handle the data of students who have been making this user error.  Needless to say I have a few things spinning in my head as my evaluation project takes on a few new factors.

In general I’ve really enjoyed being able to apply everything we’ve been discussing in class to making improvements in my classroom.

As I was reading this week’s text I found myself chuckling to myself a bit.  The area my students seem to struggle with the most in math is what we refer to as data landmarks.   In an attempt to help my students make sense of the data landmarks I created the above image this weekend, little did I know that I’d be reading about mean, median, and mode myself this week.  Perhaps sharing my reading with the students will help them to see the purpose for mean, median, and mode beyond just completing their assignment.  One thing I personally learned about mode this week was that it can be used with non-numerical data.  If presented with narrative data and asked to identify the mode I’m sure I could have easily done so, however I never truly considered the fact that mode provided the flexibility to work with narrative data.  Additionally I feel as though I now have a better understanding of how mean, median, and mode can be used for specific purposes.  I feel like this understanding will help me to better teach these skills to my students.  I know  at least one of our math lessons asks the students to determine which of those three data landmarks would be the best choice for determining how long a student should allow themselves to get ready for school.   Prior to now I knew the answer was mean, however I couldn’t provide a good explanation to my students in regards to why mode and median were not the best choice.

I found the evaluation report chapter of the text to also be very interesting.  This past June I had to write an evaluation report for a grant I received last year.  The foundation I received the grant from is the Women’s Fund of Greater Green Bay, which is part of  The Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, a distinguished organization that focuses its energies on philanthropic efforts.  Many of the recipients of the grants from this organization have grant writers on their staff that are versed in both grant writing and evaluation techniques.  As I reflect now I can only imagine how pitiful my evaluation report must have looked compared to the others.  I guess I should be thankful that they look more at the heart of my programs than my evaluation skills, because they were also the ones to give me a grant this year.  I’m really looking forward to being able to write a quality evaluation report for the grant I received this year based on the outline I read about in the text.

Overall I’m really enjoying the practicality of the text in relation to my needs.  As a teacher at a low-income school that has more ideas than money to fund them with, I feel like this class is better equipping me to both write grants and evaluate them.  I know that grants are the key to providing my students with experiences they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have and I also know that as a teacher of an all girls class I have a special niche’ that allows me to tap into unique funding sources, therefore I’m really looking forward to implementing everything I’ve been learning about evaluation for the benefit of my students and school.    As we move forward I’d like to explore the application of this process in my classroom–something I’m sure we’ll have plenty of opportunity to do.

“In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this program pre / post fitness tests will be administered.   Additionally students’ Body Mass Index will be calculated at the beginning of the program and the end of the program.  Both student and parent surveys will also be used to collect data in regards to the effectiveness of the program.  Students will also maintain a blog to share about their experiences throughout the program.”

Had I had the opportunity to read this text prior to writing that grant I do believe my evaluation section would be different.  In the past two weeks I’ve learned about the different types of evaluation as well as the difference between qualitative and quantitative data.  If I were to go back to my grant proposal I think I would have addressed the use of quantitative data versus qualitative data.  For example, the measurement of body mass index would represent quantitative data and the student blog would represent qualitative data.  Although I’m thankful I received the grant I think that in the future I’ll better be able to describe how I’m going to evaluate my program.  As I read I was really interested in the different types of evaluation and I’m looking forward to learning how I can apply these different types of evaluations to programs I work with.

Teaching thematically is not something I do on a very regular basis.  I like the concept of thematic teaching and plan to implement it more often in the future.  I’d like to spend some more time adding to my thematic unit and perhaps even use it as a year long classroom theme.

Since I was taking Educational Learning Theory alongside this class I found myself thinking about learning theory often.  I have studied dual coding theory quite a bit this semester and I’ve been thinking about that as I try to incorporate in learning that involves multiple modalities.

Blog Self Evaluation:

To begin with I think it’s important to acknowledge that my blog is the place where I’ve had to let go the most this semester.   As I went into survival mode I kept up with the projects, but my blogging was not the quality I would generally expect from myself.  With that said here is my assessment:

Content: Proficient

Reading and Resources: Proficient

Timeliness: Basic

Responses to Other Students: Basic

I began by reading  Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence by Pachler, McDaniel, Rohrer,and Bjork.  The authors of this article reviewed the available research on learning styles in an attempt to draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of learning styles.  What did the researchers find?  They found that there is no scientific evidence of the benefit of teaching to learning styles.    Although there is no scientific evidence that learning styles benefit students it would be easy assume that teaching to learning styles doesn’t harm students, but that too can be considered a misconception.  The form of this “harm” comes in misdirected funding.  The authors of this article believe that the funds that are currently being directed towards teaching of learning styles  should be redirected towards instruction that can be scientifically supported.  To some this may not seem like true harm to students, but in a time when every penny is counted in school districts and teacher jobs are being cut every year we can’t afford to be spending money on instructional strategies that are not scientifically sound.

So, if learning styles aren’t effective why do teachers continue to focus on them?  I have some personal beliefs on this.  To begin with we have teachers, like myself, who have gone through their undergraduate program being instructed on the theory of learning styles.  The reality is as a teacher there is limited time to dig deep into research and with the desire to what is best for students we as teachers continue to institute this strategy.  Another thought I had about why learning styles remain as a commonly utilized strategy is that parents like to see their child receive individualized attention.  If during parent teacher conferences I presented to the parents that I had tested their child and determined they were visual learners and then explained how I used that information to specifically teach their child, which parent wouldn’t be impressed?  The reality is as class sizes get larger, parents get nervous and if I can explain to them how I am personalizing instruction to meet their child’s needs they are more likely to be put at ease.

As I researched learning styles further I was surprised to find how many articles offered strategies for teaching to learning styles as well as different testing devices for learning styles, but as the authors of Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence claim, there wasn’t any scientific research to support learning styles.  I was surprised to even find a book entitled, “Black Children: Their Roots, Cultures, and Learning Styles,” by Janice Hale Benson.  The abstract available through Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) states, “This book describes the roots, culture and learning styles of black children. It is written to promote awareness that black children differ from other children in ways which are relevant to education. These differences must be known and acted upon in order to provide black children with an appropriate education.”    I have not had the opportunity, nor do I personally want an opportunity, to look at this book, but I was appalled to see that learning styles are being applied to a specific race.  Are we going back in time?  I’d personally like to see what type of research this author has conducted to prove that black children have a specific learning style.

As I examined all this information I came to one pretty obvious conclusion and another perhaps less obvious conclusion.  The obvious conclusion would be that learning styles are not scientifically sound.  The perhaps less obvious conclusion is that I need to be more dedicated to making sure the instructional strategies I’m using are scientifically sound.  It is difficult to stay up to speed with current research while juggling everything else on a teacher’s plate, but the reality is, if I want to do what’s best for my students it’s my responsibility to stay in tune with current research.

I found all these articles quite interesting and applicable to what I experience in my daily teaching practices. Teaching an all girls’ class I spend a lot of time considering how I can engage the young girls in STEM activities. While researching strategies for STEM integration the Lego Robotics came up as a great way to help students to participate in higher level, constructive thinking. Of course my next barrier was trying to find the money to purchase the Legos. Low and behold I found out the middle school had an entire class set of Lego Robotics unopened and unwanted. Upon receiving the Legos I quickly became aware of why they were unopened; the Legos were deeply intimidating. With that said, I’ve been diving in and figuring out how to use the Legos and plan on implementing them in my classroom this coming year. I think that Chamber and Carbono were right on when they designed a class that not only taught how to use the Lego Robotics, but also taught the teachers about constructivism.
While the Lego article discussed constructivism, the next article I read tried to delineate a different theory from constructivism and that was connectivism. As I read through that article I found myself asking, “What does this theory have that constructivism doesn’t have?” I disagree with Kop and Hill that there will be a day when instructors and institutions no longer have a role in learning. The volume of knowledge that exists in our world today is vast and I do believe that new knowledge we gain connects to prior knowledge, but I don’t personally feel connectivism has enough depth to stand on its own as a distinct learning theory.
Lastly I’d like to address the Learning Style article. I find that parents like teachers who focus on their child’s learning styles. There is a school in our area that assesses student learning styles and tries to utilize them throughout the school year and parents rave about how their students are being catered too. I believe strongly in teaching in multiple modalities and that has been reinforced through my new learning about dual coding theory. I found the research in the Learning Style article incredibly interesting. Although I have no doubt that the article I read was credible, I would like to read more studies about the research behind learning styles before I form a true opinion on the matter. In the meantime I think it’s important to continue to teach in multiple modalities because the research does support increased learning when information is taught in multiple modalities due to the dual coding theory.

The second article I’d like to discuss is “Constructing on Constructivism: The Role of Technology by Nanjappa and Grant.  The article points out that constructivist strategies, “exploit technologies for greatest impact in learning.”  Constructivism focuses on the use of tools for learning and technology is clearly a tool that can be easily manipulated to meet the needs of learners.  Additionally the role of the teacher is critical to the connection between technology in constructivism.  In constructivism the teacher is seen as the facilitator.  The use of technology in the classroom frees up the teacher to be a facilitator of learning rather then the holder of all the information.

What I found very interesting this week was that these two articles seemed to contradict each other at times.  The first article was entitled, “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem Based, Experiential, and Inquiry Based Teaching.”   The second article ended by stating, “By integrating technology with constructivist methods, such as problem-based learning and project-based
learning, learners are more responsible for and active in the learning process (Grant, 2002).”  Teaching in a technology rich school that focuses on inquiry based learning these two concepts put me in a predicament.  My personal experience is that Problem Based Learning has been a powerful tool in my classroom, particularly when enhanced with technology.  At the same time I think what students learn is more varied when using a PBL process due to the minimal guidance; students seem to walk away from a PBL unit with more concept knowledge vs. specific standard and benchmark rote knowledge.  Due to these contradicting views I believe I will be more reflective about my teaching and students learning as I go into another school year embracing inquiry based learning.  I feel as though I will be looking at my approach to instruction with a more critical view as I try to evaluate what really is best for my students.

Our school is in the process of becoming an elementary International Baccalaureate School.  IB schools are driven by inquiry based learning.  I feel as though as we move forward in discussing this as a teaching staff I’ll be able to contribute perhaps some “food for thought” to the group in regards to the varying view of constructivism and inquiry based learning.