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What did I learn?

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I learned a lot about myself as a teacher and about my students as learners. Not only through research, but also through my own students, I learned that implementing sight word strategies can improve my students independent reading levels. The research taught me about specific techniques and strategies I can use in my classroom to teach sight words. These strategies included music, technology, kinesthetic activities, word wall activities, flashcards, and games. I learned that my students enjoyed learning sight words through these strategies and would find them asking me to do some of them. I also learned that these methods did in fact increase independent reading level, which was my purpose statement for this project. All of my students improved their reading level by one or more level. All of my students also increased their scores on identifying sight words.

 

I learned that data and graphs can truly help drive instruction. I found that putting what I learned from the assessments into a graph, it made it easier for me to see what we needed to focus more on. The data and these graphs helped me drive the instruction, which was something that was different for me to do. One last thing I learned was that there was a huge boost of confidence in my students when it comes to reading their sight words and reading in general. I saw this from the self-monitoring graphing that my students did, as well as from the post survey. 

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What were the challenges and successes?

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One challenge I had was figuring out the process and how I wanted to collect my data. I originally thought that I would collect morning work and work stations that had to do with sight words. However, as I started to collect those things I realized that the work stations and bellwork were not telling me anything. This was hard for me to figure out what I was looking for and why I was collecting these items. I found it difficult to manage because many were not putting their names on papers or staying on task during station time. I decided to take this data collection out of the project since I had several other ways of collecting the data. 

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There were many successes throughout the project. I was able to stick to my timeline, collect my data on time, all of my students improved their reading levels, sight words, and confidence, I was able to learn about myself as a teacher, my students reacted positively to the strategies implemented, and I was able to implement these strategies accurately. I was extremely happy with how engaged all of my students were during the implementation of the sight word activities. Another success was that my students were invested in their own learning. I had each student graph their progress for sight words and reading levels. I was amazed at how motivated my students were when they visually saw there progress on a graph. It was also a great way for me to analyze the data and progress each student made. The end result was the primary success! I was very excited to see each one of my students grow and learn over this amount of time. The progress that they have made has been amazing! Overall, it was a positive experience and there were many successes!

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What would I change in the future?

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There are a few different things that I would change about this project in the future. One thing would be that I would want to introduce these sight word strategies early on in the year and implementing the literacy stations in either October or September. I think starting early will only help the students in the long run. I would also like to get bins for each student to have their own drawer in the reading corner. These bins would contain activities or books at their level that the students would be able to do independently. I want to do this so badly because some of my students just grab a book from the library and cannot read one word. I want them to have easily accessible books and activities at their individual levels. I think this would also be a great expectation to set for when students get done with work early. Another thing I would change would be how my literacy stations were set up. It was not very consistent and I did not meet with every group each day. I know that sometimes this may not be realistic, but I want to do a better job at making sure I am seeing everyone for the amount of time they need. Changing how my stations are set up would hold me accountable for doing so. In order to do this, I need to allow a little bit more time for the station work. Although I would make these changes, I do believe that this project was successful and a positive experience! 

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How will the action research impact future teaching?

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For the upcoming school year I want to implement these sight word strategies. I also want to make the sight word games so that students can play them on their own. I did put some of the items in work stations after we implemented them in whole group and small group, but I would like to give them more opportunities to play these games independently. I plan to implement them at the very start of the year to change the way we discuss and work in reading. I will continue to monitor growth in myself and my students. Each year will be a continuance of my learning and growth, and each year will pose more challenges and more room for improvement. As a professional, I will continue doing action research when I see my students lacking in a certain area. It is the best thing I could have done to help my students. For next year I would like to find more strategies I could use for my lower kids who might need something else to help them get to that ending point. I would also like to continue to make graphs and charts for my data. I felt that putting the information and assessment data into a graph was eye-opening and helped me when I was analyzing the data. I will continue to have my students graph their own progress when it comes to sight words and reading levels. I was amazed with how engaged and motivated each student was to fill in their graph immediately after I assessed them. This was a self-monitoring and goal setting strategy for my students, but also made the data easy for me to read as well. 

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Overall, this capstone and CADRE experience have been eye opening. It has taught me so much about myself as a teacher and as a learner. There were definitely tough times, but I am happy with how we got through it and learned so much from it. I also learned so much from my cohort and will forever remember the things I took from everyone. This journey has been one I will never forget. I will only continue to grow professionally and personally each year I teach.  I am thankful for my experience in the CADRE program because it has given me the knowledge and ability to continue my growth as a lifelong learner, and to always strive to find ways to improve my techniques and approaches in my craft.