What I am going to do!

In my action research study, I proposed to my principal to discover what learning styles students actually have as opposed to the learning styles that teachers think they have.

The significance of the study is this.  We have several teachers on our campus that teach 4^th and 5^th grades who “do what they have always done” regardless of the changes in educational theory or different times.  They just change the dates on their lesson plans from year to year. I am optimistic that by discovering learning styles (such as kinesthetic, visual, etc.). I can enable and encourage teachers to tailor their teaching to the children in their classes, rather than just teaching on repeat. 

Teachers will benefit from this information because knowing their students learning styles just might give them the “key” to that difficult student that they have yet to reach.  They will also gain instruction time, because they will not have to use the first 3-5 weeks “getting to know” their students.  In all reality, some of them don’t do that anyway at my school, so I feel that by giving them this information (rather than assuming and hoping they make the effort), teachers will be more likely to use the data when lesson planning. Students will benefit from this information because there will now at least be a chance of them hearing information in a way that they are able to not just learn it, but retain it. In 5^th grade, I feel that they are able to start taking responsibility for more of their own learning, and each student knowing their own style might make this easier for as they begin that process.

My initial goal is to administer a survey of some type to both 4^th and 5^th grade students and their teachers. When those results are obtained, I want to graph them in some way to show the different learning styles by both individual and class sets.  At that time, I will do a mini staff development on learning styles, possibly utilizing the following website http://www.tecweb.org/styles/stylesframe.html. My desired outcome is that teachers will see that their teaching may (or may not!) be conducive to student learning.  I hope that by doing the staff development, they will see how just because something works for them does not mean it will work for all of their students.  I just want to encourage teachers to teach to all students.  My secondary goal is to establish the student survey as a beginning of the year activity for each school year for grades 3, 4, and 5.  I feel that this will be invaluable information for each teacher as they begin new instructional years.  My thought process at this time is to make the survey a standard part of settling a new student into the school at any time they might enroll, just as we administer the SRI and SMI assessments to let us know where students are academically.

I am extremely excited about this project! I can't wait to see what we will learn! I am concerned about how to implement any desired change that comes from the resulting information, but I supposed that will come as we go along.