Data Collection Week 6

This week our twitter session was very informative. I collaborated with some peers and helped define deadline dates and certain locations for resources. The school week with my students was very short. Our district had Parent Teacher Conferences two days and my students were at school for only half days. We had two full days during the week and no school on Friday. I was able to collect some data on the first two days and the conference days, not very well. My students were full of energy and excited to go home. My students were in my classroom from 9:00 - 12:30 without any breaks. They didn't get their pull out or have recess. Data these days, were not of the norm. Analyzing the data from the past few weeks, I have started to notice that my students are engaged when they are up out of their seats and moving. All of the brain break songs for this week, were songs with instructions in them. Tooty Ta, gives rhythm, beats and instructions for the students to follow along with. I played the Casper Line Dance and the Cupid Shuffle. The Casper Line Dance all students were engaged and completed the instructions. With the Cupid Shuffle, I had six students off task and not following directions. I had a conversation with these six students after an exit ticket. The conclusion was, the song was too repetitive and it got boring for the students. With the Casper Line Dance, the students didn't know what was coming next, so they were all engaged and waiting for the next instruction. It also had them clap to a beat, count and learn new dance moves. During lunch this week, my students were in the classroom. I had the lights on and let them eat with their friends. This didn't work. I found free animated books online. I played the book on my interactive whiteboard and turned the classroom lights off. Immediately my students were engaged in the book, the noise level had dropped and all of my students were in a seat eating. The animated book, played as a movie. The characters moved on the screen and a narrator told the story. The stories were aligned with Social Emotional Learning. I wasn't sure if my students' were going to like the books, but they all did. When the story was over, every single one of my students asked to play another one. The stories are quite short. They only last for ten minutes. The students liked these stories so much, that when one finished a student got out of their seat and clicked on a new story.  I have found my students are responding and engaged when they are up and moving and watching an online story. I read a story to my students and found half of my students were not engaged. When I played the same story online, through wegivebooks.org every student was engaged and listening to the book. The survey I sent to my colleagues has a few responses, I'm hoping with a full week and conferences complete the survey will receive more responses. At this time, I don't think I have enough data to analyze from my survey. I will continue to explore new songs with instructions and fine different ways to keep my students engaged using our interactive whiteboard.