Project Proposal
Inquiry Question
Can early childhood educators promote students’ literacy learning by having daily student presentations?
Can early childhood educators promote students’ literacy learning by having daily student presentations?
Rationale
I chose this focus for my project because the literacy program I am working with involves a lot of peer discussion and sharing time. I think both my Kindergarten and Grade 2 students could benefit from having consistent and designated times to speak and act in front of the class as a whole. These two groups seem to be very eager to present their written work to their class already. However, most need more practice doing so in a way that acknowledges the needs of their audience. My students need to be given regular opportunities to give and receive constructive and complimentary feedback so that they can learn to use these comments in a way that results in personal growth academically and socially. I also hope that having daily presentations will help students understand that their ideas and opinions are meaningful and have an impact on others. My main goal by the end of the semester is to have encouraged my students to take more pride and responsibility for their literacy learning.
Activities and Processes Involved
-Provide students with multiple resources to refer to while writing and spelling tricky words. Two ways this will be achieved is by creating a classroom word wall and teaching students how to use dictionaries to help encourage more independence.
-Readers theatre: individual & small group (involving students in minilesson demonstrations during daily writing and reading workshops)
-Weekly student book talks (comprehension check, retelling by summarizing main events and recommending books to peers for specific reasons that they highlight)
-Daily sharing of student workshop writing (practicing being an audience member and a presenter, giving and receiving oral and written feedback)
Links to the POS for K & 2
Kindergarten SLOs:
-Shares ideas and information: shares ideas and information about topics of interest.
-Appraises own and others’ work: makes statements related to the content of own and others’ pictures, stories or talk.
-Presents information: shares ideas and information about own drawings and topics of personal interest.
-Enhances presentation: uses drawings to illustrate ideas and information, and talks about them.
-Celebrates accomplishments and events shares stories, using rhymes, rhythms, symbols, pictures and drama to celebrate individual and class accomplishments.
Grade 2 SLOs:
3.4 Share ideas and information: share, with familiar audiences, ideas and information on topics
- Clarify information by responding to questions
4.1 Appraise own and others’ work: identify features that make own or peers’ oral, print or other media texts interesting or appealing
5.1 Celebrate accomplishments and events: participate in shared language experiences to acknowledge and celebrate individual and class accomplishments
Some Potential Benefits of Daily Sharing to a Large Familiar Group
-Practice and develop public speaking skills (projecting voice, rehearsing)
-Encourages students to work hard during designated class times to make sure they have something to share
-Teaches the importance of keeping audience in mind (while writing & when speaking)
-Strengthen classroom community (promoting positive communications among peers, showcase student interests & strengths)
-Gives reluctant students opportunities to see the benefits of presenting to others (people ask you questions about things you’re interested in, presenters get applauded after, everyone gets a chance to be the centre of attention)
-Students learn their peers are learning resources
-Learning behaviour skills developed (sitting quietly while others share, looking at the speaker)
Possible Issues to Consider During Research and Practice
-Classroom time (how to fit this into schedules)
-Students are put in vulnerable positions
-The importance of consistency
-Allowing students to have the option to pass
-Investigating why a student is continually choosing to pass (not using class time efficiently on their work, pushes them too far out of comfort zone)
-ELL students & students with speech impediments
I chose this focus for my project because the literacy program I am working with involves a lot of peer discussion and sharing time. I think both my Kindergarten and Grade 2 students could benefit from having consistent and designated times to speak and act in front of the class as a whole. These two groups seem to be very eager to present their written work to their class already. However, most need more practice doing so in a way that acknowledges the needs of their audience. My students need to be given regular opportunities to give and receive constructive and complimentary feedback so that they can learn to use these comments in a way that results in personal growth academically and socially. I also hope that having daily presentations will help students understand that their ideas and opinions are meaningful and have an impact on others. My main goal by the end of the semester is to have encouraged my students to take more pride and responsibility for their literacy learning.
Activities and Processes Involved
-Provide students with multiple resources to refer to while writing and spelling tricky words. Two ways this will be achieved is by creating a classroom word wall and teaching students how to use dictionaries to help encourage more independence.
-Readers theatre: individual & small group (involving students in minilesson demonstrations during daily writing and reading workshops)
-Weekly student book talks (comprehension check, retelling by summarizing main events and recommending books to peers for specific reasons that they highlight)
-Daily sharing of student workshop writing (practicing being an audience member and a presenter, giving and receiving oral and written feedback)
Links to the POS for K & 2
Kindergarten SLOs:
-Shares ideas and information: shares ideas and information about topics of interest.
-Appraises own and others’ work: makes statements related to the content of own and others’ pictures, stories or talk.
-Presents information: shares ideas and information about own drawings and topics of personal interest.
-Enhances presentation: uses drawings to illustrate ideas and information, and talks about them.
-Celebrates accomplishments and events shares stories, using rhymes, rhythms, symbols, pictures and drama to celebrate individual and class accomplishments.
Grade 2 SLOs:
3.4 Share ideas and information: share, with familiar audiences, ideas and information on topics
- Clarify information by responding to questions
4.1 Appraise own and others’ work: identify features that make own or peers’ oral, print or other media texts interesting or appealing
5.1 Celebrate accomplishments and events: participate in shared language experiences to acknowledge and celebrate individual and class accomplishments
Some Potential Benefits of Daily Sharing to a Large Familiar Group
-Practice and develop public speaking skills (projecting voice, rehearsing)
-Encourages students to work hard during designated class times to make sure they have something to share
-Teaches the importance of keeping audience in mind (while writing & when speaking)
-Strengthen classroom community (promoting positive communications among peers, showcase student interests & strengths)
-Gives reluctant students opportunities to see the benefits of presenting to others (people ask you questions about things you’re interested in, presenters get applauded after, everyone gets a chance to be the centre of attention)
-Students learn their peers are learning resources
-Learning behaviour skills developed (sitting quietly while others share, looking at the speaker)
Possible Issues to Consider During Research and Practice
-Classroom time (how to fit this into schedules)
-Students are put in vulnerable positions
-The importance of consistency
-Allowing students to have the option to pass
-Investigating why a student is continually choosing to pass (not using class time efficiently on their work, pushes them too far out of comfort zone)
-ELL students & students with speech impediments
Project Progress
In the activities I had proposed that we do, I replaced 'book talks' with story vines. Below is the story vine I created and used to model how to retell a story with it. The top of the vine is where the character and beginning of the story is introduced and by touching all the visuals, you remember major points of the story while you work your way to the ending at the bottom of the vine. The story I used was 'This Moose Belongs to Me' by Oliver Jeffers.
Below are some of the story vines that my students created. I allowed my students to choose any book that they enjoyed reading.
Students had to first make a plan for their retelling before constructing their vine. Below is the sheet that each student received to do their planning. I gave students the option to use their planning sheet for their vine to help them remember the main points of retelling, or to use their plan as a reference as they represented their main points in pictures. We filled this one in as a class with 'Pigs' by Robert Munsch. We had used this book for a read aloud book together, so student were familiar with the story.
Assessments
I used this as a formative assessment and as a resource to refer to for any of our oral presentation activities. I found this sheet useful for helping me keep the skill development expectations I had for my students in mind throughout the inquiry, while also making notes on individual progress. I also made a story vine rubric that can be found under my 'planning and assessment' tab on my website's tool bar.
Visuals used
Students put these concepts and skills into practice during daily workshop sharing, discussions that followed read alouds and partner work.
Additional activity
We had ongoing discussions about reading with expression and fluency, and closer to the end of the inquiry journey we played a game that had specific ways of talking for students to try while reading aloud a favorite part of a book from their book bag. Like all of my oral sharing and reading activities, students had the option to pass. However, with this game all of my Grade 2 students asked to have a turn trying it out. Students rolled one of our big dice and randomly received an emotion to read with. If they felt uncomfortable doing the one they got, they could pick any of the options they liked.
Final report
How this Proceeded
My Grade 2 students were my primary focus for this project. Working ‘share’ time into each workshop was usually not a challenge. If we began the class with presentations students could gather writing ideas from their peers that they could immediately try out that day, and if we ended the class with presentations I could use that as a way to reward hard workers during independent or partner writing time.
Readers’ theatre was not something that I ended up doing, but I had student volunteers help me model things like what the expectations were for being a kind audience member before we had our whole class share times. A rule that I had to introduce was that you have to be a good audience member in order to then take your turn as a presenter. A few times I had to end share time early because students were not showing respect to the presenter, by interrupting them or creating other distractions that took away the spotlight from that student. I made sure to explain that each time someone takes a turn to share they are being brave and deserve our full attention.
We did many class activities where students practiced giving specific and helpful feedback, using examples of Grade 2 writing that needed revising. Questions I asked my students included “What could we suggest that they add or change to make their reader feel like they are in the story with them?” and “How could we help them make their writing easier for someone else to read?” To follow, students would be put in small groups and help their peers fix up their writing. Before sending students off, we discussed how feedback should not make anyone have hurt feelings. We also discussed how talking about our work with other writers is an important part of the writing process and that writers can agree or disagree with feedback they receive from a peer because we are all in charge of our own writing. Time to ask each presenter a question, say a comment or give a suggestion was regularly part of the closures of our lessons.
Many of my students are visual learners, so I replaced ‘book talks’ with a Story Vine project. Story Vines use a variety of visuals to retell a story and I thought this project would result in more student participation and make my students feel that they could be successful with it because of that. All of my students did create a vine for a story they read and presented it to others. This project also allowed for a lot of student choice. The book selection, how the project was presented and how the vine was constructed was all up to the student to decide on.
One way that some students worked on acknowledging their audience, was by speaking louder and clearer when presenting. I found that giving students the option to use a foam microphone while reading their writing helped some of my quieter students speak up in front of an audience. Making elaborate cover pages with detailed coloured drawings became something that a lot of students liked showing off while sharing. However, sometimes that was an issue because less focus was on their story content. I encouraged my students to work on organizing their work time to ensure that more of it was spent on stretching their stories and using their pictures as part of the planning stage.
A major goal for this inquiry was to have my students take more pride in their work and to see improved writing confidence. After a few students spent multiple workshops quickly jotting down their ideas or only adding artwork to their writing pages, I made a lesson that focused on the power of words and the impact they can have on others when we use them. To help me teach this lesson I used the book ‘Malala’s Magic Pencil’ because that provided a real life example of a youth impacting the world with the voice they were given. Eventually I did see students independently implement revising techniques like rereading and checking spelling with their dictionaries. Before asking to share, some students got in the habit of rehearsing and would ask me to listen to them read their stories out loud first.
Conclusions
Overall, I think daily presentations were an effective way of promoting literacy learning in the classroom because they gave my students something to look forward to and work towards. The variety and number of stories written increased with most of my students and many of them requested to share almost every day. I still had two students frequently pass when asked if they wanted to participate in our whole class share. The involvement both students had in small group sharing became more productive and I was able to understand why they were making the choice to pass during my circulations and one-on-one check-ins. It was exciting to have my students that had been reluctant writers at the beginning of the year ask me if they could share their work in front of the class. I think that writing confidence did improve in my classroom because student’s efforts were celebrated and praised regularly to show them that their individual learning progress is valued by our classroom community.
My Grade 2 students were my primary focus for this project. Working ‘share’ time into each workshop was usually not a challenge. If we began the class with presentations students could gather writing ideas from their peers that they could immediately try out that day, and if we ended the class with presentations I could use that as a way to reward hard workers during independent or partner writing time.
Readers’ theatre was not something that I ended up doing, but I had student volunteers help me model things like what the expectations were for being a kind audience member before we had our whole class share times. A rule that I had to introduce was that you have to be a good audience member in order to then take your turn as a presenter. A few times I had to end share time early because students were not showing respect to the presenter, by interrupting them or creating other distractions that took away the spotlight from that student. I made sure to explain that each time someone takes a turn to share they are being brave and deserve our full attention.
We did many class activities where students practiced giving specific and helpful feedback, using examples of Grade 2 writing that needed revising. Questions I asked my students included “What could we suggest that they add or change to make their reader feel like they are in the story with them?” and “How could we help them make their writing easier for someone else to read?” To follow, students would be put in small groups and help their peers fix up their writing. Before sending students off, we discussed how feedback should not make anyone have hurt feelings. We also discussed how talking about our work with other writers is an important part of the writing process and that writers can agree or disagree with feedback they receive from a peer because we are all in charge of our own writing. Time to ask each presenter a question, say a comment or give a suggestion was regularly part of the closures of our lessons.
Many of my students are visual learners, so I replaced ‘book talks’ with a Story Vine project. Story Vines use a variety of visuals to retell a story and I thought this project would result in more student participation and make my students feel that they could be successful with it because of that. All of my students did create a vine for a story they read and presented it to others. This project also allowed for a lot of student choice. The book selection, how the project was presented and how the vine was constructed was all up to the student to decide on.
One way that some students worked on acknowledging their audience, was by speaking louder and clearer when presenting. I found that giving students the option to use a foam microphone while reading their writing helped some of my quieter students speak up in front of an audience. Making elaborate cover pages with detailed coloured drawings became something that a lot of students liked showing off while sharing. However, sometimes that was an issue because less focus was on their story content. I encouraged my students to work on organizing their work time to ensure that more of it was spent on stretching their stories and using their pictures as part of the planning stage.
A major goal for this inquiry was to have my students take more pride in their work and to see improved writing confidence. After a few students spent multiple workshops quickly jotting down their ideas or only adding artwork to their writing pages, I made a lesson that focused on the power of words and the impact they can have on others when we use them. To help me teach this lesson I used the book ‘Malala’s Magic Pencil’ because that provided a real life example of a youth impacting the world with the voice they were given. Eventually I did see students independently implement revising techniques like rereading and checking spelling with their dictionaries. Before asking to share, some students got in the habit of rehearsing and would ask me to listen to them read their stories out loud first.
Conclusions
Overall, I think daily presentations were an effective way of promoting literacy learning in the classroom because they gave my students something to look forward to and work towards. The variety and number of stories written increased with most of my students and many of them requested to share almost every day. I still had two students frequently pass when asked if they wanted to participate in our whole class share. The involvement both students had in small group sharing became more productive and I was able to understand why they were making the choice to pass during my circulations and one-on-one check-ins. It was exciting to have my students that had been reluctant writers at the beginning of the year ask me if they could share their work in front of the class. I think that writing confidence did improve in my classroom because student’s efforts were celebrated and praised regularly to show them that their individual learning progress is valued by our classroom community.