Revisiting My Inquiry

REVISITING YOUR INQUIRY BLOG POST DESCRIPTION

1. During this course, I hope to learn about how to properly research an area that my students are having difficulty with, collect data, and analyze my data in order to make improvements in the classroom. I expect to grow professionally by using resources available to me in my new school and by gathering specific data that I know will be helpful in my research. I expect to grow personally as I learn about my passions and strengths, areas for improvement, and personal goals after this inquiry.

2. I have a few concerns when I think about beginning this course. I worry about connecting my inquiry from fifth grade to my new kindergarten classroom, having the time to collect data while I am teaching every day, and researching new strategies outside of the classroom on top of my teacher planning. These are all things that worry me about this class and my inquiry during final internship, but I know I will find ways around these challenges that will make me a better teacher.

3. Last semester my wondering was: How can I implement collaborative learning strategies to improve my fifth graders’ reading comprehension? The moment when the inquiry process made the most sense for me occurred when I found ways to gather my data and make sense of all of it, because I could then see that my strategies were effective. One change I made that related to my practice was collaborative learning. We have learned so much information about this method of learning, and since I was not seeing this in my classroom, I decided to make that change. The most powerful learning moment happened when my students would connect something they learned to a previous reading they did collaboratively with a classmate, which helped me understand that they comprehended the past and current readings. One thing my supervisor needs to know to help me “create a space” for my inquiry in my classroom is that my students are very young, so we have a lot of behavior issues, which may make this inquiry a challenge for me. I am focusing on comprehension, and it will be an extra step to handle the behavior problems before we can even get to the academic step. One thing my course instructor needs to know to help me write-up and share my inquiry with others is that I will be struggling at first to figure out how to make my inquiry work in this new classroom, so I will be asking many questions!

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