Step 3

How will we answer this question?

We had to decide how we would carry out the test. As a class we discussed what options we had and eventually we came up with reading a story for both groups (control and test group) and then hand out test sheets with ten multiple choice questions to test their listening and concentration levels.

We also had to decide what type of fidgeting we were testing, as we realised though our discussions that if someone was clicking a pen or doing something noisy this would impact on the ability of others to hear the story. In order to eliminate as many variables as we could, we decided that we would investigate silent fidgeting so to this end we chose to use blu-tack as our fidget.

We researched lots of different types of texts online and in the end we chose a story from the Department of Curriculum Management in Malta. It was an assessment test for year four students on Listening Comprehension. We chose this one because we didn't want it to be too easy but also not too difficult.

Selecting population/participants

We also decided to carry out the trial on 5th Class - a group of 32 students. We chose this class as we knew that they didn't know anything about the research we were doing and because we thought that their reading ability would not be a factor in answering the questions as they would be old enough to be able to read all the questions easily.

How will we measure any impact?

Selecting Outcomes

Before we decided how to measure we had to choose an outcome, we decided on "to evaluate the effect of silent fidgeting on concentration levels."

We will measure the impact of our investigation by collecting the test sheets from the pupils and caluclating the number of questions that they got correct. We will then calculate the average result for each group. We will measure the impact by comparing the scores of each group.

Here are the resources we used to carry out our test.

Story and Questions taken from DIRECTORATE FOR QUALITY AND STANDARDS IN EDUCATION Department of Curriculum Management Educational Assessment Unit Annual Examinations for Primary Schools 2016

https://curriculum.gov.mt/en/Examination-Papers/Pages/list_primary_papers.aspx