The past 10 weeks I have really been digging deep into a problem of practice I am currently experiencing: I have students who are not learning. In an attempt to find a working solution to this problem I have gone through a process of empathizing with my students, truly defining the problem, brainstorming things to try, and finally to build my first prototype.
The students are struggling with the content, and since this is mandated by the State of Michigan I cannot change that, but what I can do is change the way I am teaching. Some of the new activities I will be including:
Addressing different types of learning:
* Rather than just talking about the sound each letter makes, we are going to turn it into an art project. I designed these worksheets so students can color the small pictures, cut them out, and paste the ones that begin with the big letter onto the letter. This is meeting auditory learning by saying the words and listening to the beginning sound, visual learning with the pictures, and kinesthetic learning by moving the pieces around in a picture sort before gluing them down.
*Songs and hand signals: I noticed a few of my students were able to remember hand signals but not the actual sound of the letter. I found this song that goes through each letter, its sound, and gives the ASL sign for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP1blVh1ZQM I will be using this song with my students to help reinforce the letters.
* I already use sight word songs and dances by Heidi Songs, and it seems to work well so I will continue to use it. These are short videos on the smartboard of a person spelling the sight words and a dance goes with it.
Adding in some fun:
* Game time! This game works like Heads Up. One child will hold a letter up to their forehead without looking at it. Their partner will have to do the Zoophonics hand signal for that letter or say the sound the letter makes so that partner 1 can guess which letter it is.
* Another game I will use is beginning sound BINGO. Each student will have a BINGO card in front of them with various pictures of objects on it. I will call out a sound and they will have to see if anything on their card matches that sound.
Increasing Motivation:
* My students don’t always want to meet with me in small group or work toward a goal. I will be starting this badge system, where students will get to add a badge when they’ve met a certain goal. I also want to include badges for meeting in small group 10 times (for example) or maybe giving a sticker each time they meet with me to add to their badge. I’m also open to adding some other, easier to obtain badges for my students who are having a hard time earning these so they won’t feel left out. This is version #1 of this idea:
Reflecting
When I began working on this problem of practice I was mainly concerned with the lowest scoring students. I meet daily with 8 students in small groups and they are not making adequate growth, which is very concerning. Each child is dealing with separate issues and it was hard to find one working solution that covered each individual problem, but a common theme is that my students 1) Do not have fun in school, 2) lack motivation to learn, and 3) Are all different types of learners. During my incubation and brainstorming sessions I realized that I don’t like to do things that aren’t fun either, I need meaningful motivation, and I personally need to see things visually for it to make sense. With these discoveries, it was quite easy to have empathy for my students since I could see myself in them.
My prototype involves adding different types of activities to my teaching to try and incorporate some of the things mentioned above, while still covering necessary content. Initially I was only going to use these activities during small group time with my lowest scoring students, but I believe that all of my students would benefit from them.
References
Jack Hartman Kids Music Channel. (28 Sept 2017) See It, Say It, Sound It|Letter Sounds | ASL Alphabet . Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP1blVh1ZQM.
Jessie's World 