Reflection

Impact of this Action Research

Conducting research in the classroom allowed me to provide my students with opportunities to improve their organizational strategies by introducing research-based strategies. Without the implementation of action research, my students would not have been impacted by research-based strategies that helped them to improve their academic achievement. Reflecting on this experience, I believe my students had effective and structured practice as to how they could organize their school assignments. Implementing action research in my classroom gave my students the opportunity to learn a new skill that they can now continue to utilize outside of my classroom. This has impacted my teaching and caused me to seek feedback from my students. I added a reflection portion to their bellwork, so I could analyze anecdotal data. However, after using this platform to get feedback from students about bellwork, I realized I should be using this strategy for other aspects of the classroom as well. I have already implemented exit tickets to get more feedback from students about their understanding of different content topics, how much they enjoyed a certain activity, and if they had anything going on outside of the classroom that might have affected their learning. This has become a consistent form of formative assessment that allows me to gauge student understanding and engagement consistently and quickly in the classroom. For my personal professional growth, I came to the conclusion that using research-based strategies to drive instruction in the classroom leads to positive outcomes for my students. More specifically, using daily routines in the classroom and targeting areas of improvement and finding research-based strategies to help students be successful is an imperative and rewarding impact.

What I Learned

The first lesson I learned during this process was the importance of asking for assistance from internal and external stakeholders. I was able to receive advice and guidance from educators and administrators that helped me create an action plan that allowed students to learn new organizational strategies. As a first-year teacher, I felt like I needed to prove that I could do everything on my own. I realized it was imperative for the success of my students to seek outside perspectives and new strategies that had worked for my colleagues.

Additionally, I learned that students respond well to being rewarded with positive reinforcements. So many of my students loved getting their stamp at the beginning of class and eventually, students were asking if they could be the person who stamped the bellwork sheets. I learned that utilizing positive reinforcement in the classroom can be an effective external motivation for students.

Lastly, I have learned the importance of data collection, research-based strategies, and reflection in the classroom. The process of conducting research seemed overwhelming at first. However, I believe this process can and should be implemented in the classroom, because the outcomes for students are worth the time and effort.

Questions that remain:

  • What other kinds of positive reinforcements would be effective or more successful in the classroom?
  • If action research is implemented closer to the beginning of the school year, how could that change the outcomes for students?
  • As a secondary educator, can implementing action research in the classroom create a more stable and consistent classroom environment when students are moving to a new classroom every 45 minutes?

Thinking About the Future

Implementing research-based strategies in the classroom was a difficult but rewarding process that I plan on incorporating in my practice. This will impact my future teaching, because I plan on continuing to utilize action research in my future classrooms. In the coming years, when I pinpoint areas of need in my classroom, I know the process needed to create an effective action plan and successfully implement research-based strategies in my classroom. However, one thing I would change is that I would not implement this action research for all of my classes at the same time. Moving forward, I think I would start by implementing a research-based strategy in one class. This would allow me to make changes and think through the best modifications for students before implementing it into all of the class periods that I teach. This would allow me to be more refined in my implementation and start to catch any changes that need to be made early.

Additionally, this process has changed how I think about making changes in my classroom. I now feel confident, when I see a need in my classroom, I will introduce a new strategy or change part of a routine. This process proved to me that changes should be happening naturally and when necessary in the classroom.