Module 10 - Create a Blog Detailing Key Analysis and Action Research Project

Hello! This blog is a story of a graduate student's journey through a Curriculum and Instructional Design for Diversity class which is part of an educational doctoral program. For the last 10 weeks we have been exploring effective lesson planning, needs of diverse learners and implementation of effective multimodal instructional methods. Let me start with an infographic that summarizes some of the key ideas from this class. 

Now, travel back in time with me to see how I got to this point. This blog will be in reverse chronological order, so please go the end if you want to start at the beginning. 

Here are some of the key findings from my action research project: 

The reading this week was a mixed bag of expectations, technology, and authentic learning. The video presentations were reflections on outcomes and multimodal strategies. Starting a blog was my technological hurdle. After messing around with Wix.com for way too long, I finally reverted back to what I know. Having kept up a quilting blog for the last 17 years, I am familiar with BlogSpot and new that it would be easy and quick to publish a blog here. This blog should cover key findings from the action research project that we completed in this class along with:

• student centered instructional methods
• diverse learner strategies
• teacher perceptions
• classroom management techniques
• lesson planning development strategies

Module 9 - Create and Share an Action Research Presentation

This week we put everything together to make a video explaining our action research project. After experimenting (and struggling) with several technology options, I ended up using Canva to make a video presentation which explained the key aspects of my project. Powtoons is absolutely adorable, and I spent most of Thanksgiving playing around with it. The limit of 3 minutes though, without a paid subscription was a deal breaker for me. The video summarizes the key aspects of the action research project which included both the survey results and key advice from the interview. 

The video presentations this week discussed quantitative and qualitative research as instructional strategies for diverse learners

Module 8 - Effective Student Centered Instructional Strategies

 The assignment this week was a qualitative interview with a teacher of diverse background. We lack a diversity of teachers on our campus. Which led me to seek out a teacher who had experience with diverse students. The teacher who took over my AP Biology classes when I left the classroom three years ago came to us from an overseas teaching assignment with a Department of Defense school in Dubai. Before that she taught in Shanghai. I leaned on her experience with culturally diverse students to gain some insight on classroom management in rigorous instruction. She is known for holding extremely high expectations for her students while running a highly engaged classroom. I was glad to have time to catch up with her and talk about strategies that I could share with our new teachers.

She relies heavily on constant movement within and interaction with students to help them stay on task and on the right track. She shared some great tips that will really help our new teachers to improve classroom management. This is an area of focus for our new teachers. As leaders and mentors in the new teacher induction program, we are both helping to support the ever growing list of new teachers at our school. Here are some of the key ideas that she shared: 

Reading this week focused on student engagement. The videos were about critiquing resources and engagement and rigor.

Module 7 -Managing the Learning Environmen

Classroom management was the theme for this week. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart as the lead mentor at our school. We have an abundance of new teachers and an increasing number who are entering the field with no formal training in education or pedagogy. I was able to create some infographics that could be used with these new teachers. 

Reading this week focused on classroom management as it relates to diverse learners and integrated curriculum. The video presentations talked about the balance of structure and flexibility and differentiated classroom management

Module 6 - Integrated Curriculum

 

This week we worked on Taking the previous lesson and integrating it to include multiple subject areas. I continued to work with my initial lesson plan theme of energy, but expanded to include social studies, math and language arts components while being tied together with the theme of Popcorn! 

I added some helpful tips for teachers who might want to work on an integrated unit of their own. 

Reading this week focused on students with special needs. Videos covered integrated instruction and evaluation frameworks.

Module 5 - Action Research: Analyzing Data, Presenting Results, and Planning Design

This week, with my new knowledge of WAC, diverse learner needs and effective lesson planning strategies, I finished collecting data for my action research project. I did some simple calculations  and made some graphs to get a better idea of the insight that could be gathered from the survey responses. 

I saw a fairly widespread use of multimodal strategies by experienced teachers at my school. 

 

I also found the most commonly used methods for these teachers. I think that the results would have been different if I had surveyed teachers from different subject areas such as science, art or physical education. 

Reading this week focused on action research with more articles on culturally responsive teaching and diverse learners. Video presentations this week talked about analyzing action research and interviewing

Module 4 - Multimodal Instructional Practice

This week we designed a survey about multimodal learning strategies to give to teachers at our school. I started targeting a few teachers that I knew would be willing to do a quick survey for me. I try to be careful about asking people to do favors for me. I am no longer a classroom teacher. I don't want to make people feel obligated to do things for me. I was glad to see that the survey didn't have to be excessively long or have that many participants, so I was able to just ask teachers who I know on a more personal level. This did mean that most of my survey participants are veteran teachers. 

 Action research is a flexible approach to that lets teachers improve their instruction by gathering and analyzing data. I designed a survey that could be used to gather data about which instructional methods teachers at my school use. It included both quantitative data in the form of Likert scale questions as well as open ended questions for more qualitative data. Then I wrote a research proposal explaining my plan and how I would implement this survey.

Our readings this week focused on Culturally responsive teaching and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The videos were about evaluating action research and evidence based multimodal instruction