UPDATE on My Action Research Project...word walls and activities!

     My action research project is to increase reading literacy by using word walls and word wall activities to increase the reading literacy of my eighth graders.  I started the Action Research project on the second week of school with my word wall activities. Before school started, I decided what words I would tackle for the first unit. I picked the words and wrote the definition for the words and affixed them to my wall. Every day my students have a warm-up and they are to complete one of my activities that I used on the word wall list on my action research plan. I have found that my students want to use more time than I have allotted for my warm-up activity. The first week the activities were taking longer than the five to six minutes that I had planned. The activities that require a word or words to answer the warm-up are the time savers. The activities that I have planned that require at least a paragraph to use the word in the correct context require a lengthier amount of time and I have assigned those as homework assignments. I also have added one activity to my word wall activity list. I am utilizing the exit ticket strategy as a formative assessment. My students receive three to four statements that they agree, disagree, or put a question mark after they read the statement. Before they leave class they are to justify their answer either in sentence form or picture form. I have used this to introduce a concept or elaborate on the concept with the word wall words. It is quick and easy for the students to complete and quick for me to grade. I have documented my hours on my action research project as twenty hours. I have broken this down by ten minutes per class multiplied by six classes which equals one hour each day multiplied by five days a week multiplied by four weeks that we have been working.   I continue to use the word wall within my class during instruction, labs, and checking for understanding but I have set aside ten minutes each day for my word wall activity.  I have also administered quizzes over concepts that use the word wall words and my students scored well on the quizzes but the unit assessment is where their scores took a dive. I can only keep on trying different activities for my students to learn the words and have situations where they can apply the information.

Action Research: It is going....

     My action research project is going well. I started it the second week of school and so far the students are "doing" the assignments with minimal griping. I have found that the word wall activity needs to be shortened due to the time in my class (49 minutes for each period) and my students tend to write very slow when answering the assignment. I have given my students a quiz over the word wall words and they did "okay".  I am using the quiz (and other formative assessments) as the grounds for tutoring. However, I am looking for other activities to use with my project. I have not changed anything yet but I am thinking I will probably have to in regards to the activities. 
     Hope everyone is having a stress free start of the year!!! 


P.S. All Comments are welcomed!!!