In cycle 1 of my Action Research, I will try different ways to motivate my students to love math. The students I have this year scored below the 29 percentile on the CRCT last year. In this cycle I will try to learn my students what they like, their strength and weakness.
On Oct. 1, 2009, I discovered that 75% of my students did not know basic multiplication facts. I found this to be a serious problem. Math can be very difficulty for a fifth grader if they know basic multiplication facts. I encouraged students to create and make up rap songs for multiplication. I used heterogeneous grouping for this assignment. After each group completed their rap, they had to perform the rap before the class.
Students love competition I encouraged students to compete using magic magician on the computer the competition became very strong. The Boys competed against girls and visa versa.
On October 9, 2009, the students were administered a speed drill over facts 2-6. My average students scores were up by 15% my lower performing students increased by 5%. I knew I needed to keep working at it so daily for 10 minutes I would have my higher achievers serve as tutors and drill in pairs. I also used some of my average students as tutors to help motivate them a little more as well.
This turned out to be very successful for my average group of students they increased by 30% this go round. I decided to stay with the pair tutoring because of the success. My lower performing students only increased by 2% I was not happy with this. On Oct. 16, 2009, I had students to create their own flash card and only the facts that they were struggling with for them to study over the weekend and I would drill them on Monday, Oct. 19, 2009.
Monday was like starting all over again but I knew something had to be done to help the student’s success with multiplication. I contacted parents and asked them to come in for a conference. I only had one parent to show up for the conference. I continued to work at it using paired tutoring and daily one on one drills.
I tried giving them a fact to learn per week I did begin to see some things happen.
On Oct. 26, 2009, I begin using concrete models and multiplication drill on the computer. I would work in small groups with concrete models with students. I really saw the need for them to visualize multiplication. I do a word problem a day with my students where they have illustrate the problem and identify the Who, What, important information and clue words in the problem before actually solving. I notice some of my struggling students that struggle with multiplication were drawing pictures to help them multiply to find the product.
November 10, 2009, the countywide benchmark administration begins. I will use the results from that and compare it with the results from the Success Lab. Checking the Success lab reports weekly was a great help with keeping track with areas of difficulty for my students.
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