PDF superior What can I do to improve my 7th grade's reading skills?

Action Research gives the possibility of stopping for a second and start observing carefully the problems and issues one is facing every day in a complex place that is the classroom. It gives the opportunity of being an agent of change for your students’ learning process and to make teachers’ practice more pleasant and better by proposing changes and intervention. By exploring literature, one gets to intervene with basis and select carefully what authors propose based on your context. Additionally, what is more valuable of Action Research is that as you are the teacher and the researcher, you are able to craft carefully interventions based on your context and the characteristics of the group you are applying this research for.

When it comes to motivation in Education Turner (1995) defines the concept as “voluntary uses of high-level self-regulated learning strategies, such as paying attention, connection, planning, and monitoring” (p. 413). Whereas Turner’s definition states a particular set of behaviours that can be identified by an educator in a classroom context, when I think about how much time the children spend on their school demands, and how their involvement is then rewarded via awards, report comments, or grades I realize there are more complex issues related to this definition, so that simple compliance is incorrectly recognized as motivation. At the same time as the obedient student may do well in school, by mistaking conformity and obedience for motivation we miss out on the real benefits of genuine engagement.

I also would like to honorably mention my family; firstly my little sister, who had made me laugh even when I just wanted to collapse, you are of those people who do not care about anything but seen your love ones happy. To my older sister and my nephew, who always had a word of encouragement, and a hug full of love that made me feel accompanied. I also would like to give a huge “thank you” to my parents, because even though you have never been through this kind of situation, you always gave me the space to work and never demanded anything from me, thank you for being such wonderful parents and give me everything I needed and more, thank you for your love and comprehension.

some helpers inside the class. For example, if they finished earlier a certain activity, they could go and help their classmates. So that, they can all work together, boosting each other’s confidence and giving peer feedback to achieve a certain task. My idea is to include all my students in the same class, making them feel that not only the teacher is able to teach and help, but they also are able to do it. Besides, I would like to implement projects in which students could feel they need to use English to communicate. For example, as a warm-up activity, pick up two or three students and make them talk for 5 minutes, interacting among them if they were in a supermarket, in a mall, cinema, another country, so on.

Before the intervention, there was a group of students that was quite disruptive along the class. They used to watch videos, listen to music, chat, and play with their mobile phones or bothering other classmates. Nevertheless, when the intervention started, these “disruptive” students started working concentrated and quiet. The interpretation of this fact could be that, in this entry, as they have the possibility, to watch videos in YouTube, they did not get distracted by listening to music. In this case the students had to open YouTube to look for videos related to the class. If there is another more positive reason, perhaps the students focused on the task, because the students like listening to music. Therefore, they feel more motivated to work on something related to what they like when they have classes in the English laboratory.

Finally, in terms of the whole process, I can notice that my teaching practice has improved, due to the fact that anxiety and frustration are no longer present in the post-classes- application feeling; instead, I feel more engaged with the classes, with students’ development and also with the planning’s creation. Frustration was a feeling that accompanied me for a long time during this process, and because of the research that I made in order to improve my practice, I can reflect that it was just my lack of knowledge and tools in terms of my teaching practice in general, that provoked the wrong focus and mistakes that I had at the beginning of this process.

material was introduced to them. This time, I did hear some comments of some students, complaining about how boring was working with the book, and I did see other students not working on the assigned task, leaving their books under their table, or just throwing them to the floor. In the middle of the class, my guide teacher asked some students to go out of the classroom, and to go and play in the playground. I was wondering why when my guide teacher and I got out of the classroom, and she asked me about my impression regarding the group. I told her I thought they were very active, that they were constantly moving around the classroom, extremely talkative, but I did like the group, I thought that I could do a great job with them, and then I asked her why she told me that that group was different. She replied that this group was different because what I saw, and that there are some students with special needs, so I asked her about them, how teacher work with them, and she told me there was no plan, and they should adapt themselves to the rest of the group, and the class prepared for the whole group, and if they did not, they went sent outside to play, or to breathe some air and go back to the classroom. I was sort of shocked regarding her answer, but right after that I told her that I would like to do my Action Research Project with that group, with 1 st grade B, because I felt we could improve things in the classroom, and prepare material suitable for all of them, thinking on their age, their needs, and also their likes. She agreed, looking at me enthusiastically.

3 A few teachers require that understudies figure out how to compose accurately in an English class, as well as ever, science and possibly math class. That bodes well: When understudies put what they have perused into their own words, they will probably ingest and hold it. What's more, figuring out how to making sense of how to form evidently obliges making sense of how to think unmistakably. At the point when understudies fathom the possibility of a sentence, they can make sense of how to use conjunctions, for instance, "in any case" and "in light of the fact that". By then they can make complex sentences, joining that begin with subordinating conjunctions, for instance, "regardless of the way that" or "despite" to bring combination into their composed work. Overall, understudies need to make sense of how people create as different to how they talk. We ought to see created composed work, different segments that obviously reflect strong affiliation and style.

After concluding this process of collecting data, I would say that the objective of this research was partially achieved. That is to say, I improved my lesson planning skills, but there is still a huge amount of things to learn in this aspect. For example, I have learnt how to imagine a class, how to plan it and the amount of activities needed in order to cover the whole class. However, I still have to consider possible problems that I may face during my classes, for instance misbehavior or disruptions related to different contexts or activities that the school may have, such as school celebrations, inspectors’ interventions or other teachers’ interventions. Furthermore, my students have noticed that the amount of activities during the different classes while and after interventions have increased in comparison with my first classes at school.

This Action Research is going to be focus on a 10 th class which is characterized by being a quiet but participative class. In this class, I have 44 students divided into 26 boys and 18 girls. The relationship between them is quite good and they are always interested in working in groups. According to what I have experienced with them, students have a very good communication with some teachers and they are very honest, it means that when they have problems with a subject or they do not understand something about the class, they make teachers know about it. Talking about language skills, students are very well prepared in terms of English. They are able to understand what the teacher is saying in the classroom and also they can communicate and share their ideas with their peers, especially in a written way. Besides I have seen that most of the students really like to learn English which is demonstrated in their interest to understand songs, movies, short films, and even when the teacher is speaking. Although not all the members of the class understand English easily, the positive characteristic is that they show an open mind to learn many things and they always work in order to be better.

When we think about language we shall think on communication as a human systemic method, either written or spoken. Moreover, according to the online Cambridge Dictionary, language is a system of communication consisting of sounds, words and grammar, that is to say, a system to express feelings, opinions , etc ,either verbally, written or any manner that you choose to do it. Hence, we need to understand the importance of language as a tool of communication, especially, when teaching and learning a second language, which in this case is English. As teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL), we need to ensure that all the abilities that concern language, that is to say the four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing, are correctly achieved in order to have a prosperous communicative relationship in the classroom. Therefore, I have realized that speaking performance is one of the weakest of the four skills in the class I will analyse throughout this research, and it needs to be ensure carefully and dynamically taught in order to keep our students interested and challenged. We as EFL teachers know the burdens when getting our students to produce and achieve a suitable level of proficiency when they have to express themselves orally or answer inside the classroom in a language that is not familiar for them.

Turning to the relevance of the problem in this specific context, the research will help “Colegio Técnico Las Nieves” community to improve EFL teachers practice and student’s target language learning in terms of time spent during lessons with different strategies that I will find out in order to improve communication among students. For that reason, the relevance of the problem is merely related to improve strategies for acquiring language in order to make a transition between a grammar-approach into a communicative-one. Additionally, it is important to mention that “the purpose is that students could continue developing English skills in order to communicate in real life situations and to access knowledge that contributes in a bigger develop for their academic life and future work.” (MINEDUC, p.238, 2013) As it was pointed out, the relevance of achieve a communicative approach is related to a national consensus for improving an approach that help students develop their communicative skill in a context of real life.

To begin with the data collection process, the first step consisted of a video recording                               of the intervention, which was planned by an extensive and careful process according to what                               was concluded from the literature review. The learning objective of the class was focused on                               reading comprehension and the selected reading passage was a story called “A London                           Lifestyle”, a simple reading comprehension based on a girl called Paris’s , and her lifestyle in                                 London and her adventures through the city and it included the present perfect tense. At the                                 end of the lesson, students will be able to understand the present perfect tense through                               activities that include sentences, readings and filling in blanks. Also, students will be able to                               create their own version of the story, giving opinions, suggestions and comments with their                             partners. The idea is sharing their thoughts with their classmates and the teacher. According                             to Dobson (2005), the idea of “comments” in all conversation is one of the major instruments                                 to help students develop facility in commenting in English, with a special result that is                               important to encourage communicative skills, and then avoid distressing silence. For that                         reason, it is important to mention that the learning objective is focused on group work as an                                   important way to promote students’ participation,. Also, what students expect from the                         English class, having different activities in which they engaged their communicative and                         cooperative skills. Furthermore, how they can communicate or express an idea related to the                             activity with their groups, and how they can develop their own ideas in a group.   

Additionally, Epperson and Rossman (2011) state that clear instructions lead to successful activities. All in all, the best activity could fail if the instructions are not well formulated. Besides, another essential point that is repetitively covered by this set of strategies is the fact of using CCQs in every single class, in order to boost student´s participation and check if the instructions are clear or not (Epperson and Rossman, 2011).The Ministry of Education (2015), through the program English Opens Doors, supports the use of CCQs as a way to increase student´s involvement and comprehension about the topic. Furthermore, it categorizes three types of CCQs: Yes/No questions, discrimination questions and limited answer questions. In this way, at the end of an instruction – giving it is useful to use questions like these: Do we have to write? or do we have to circle or underline?. During my classes I asked my students what do you have to do? but now I see that maybe was not enough for our context.

instructions and the language as much as understandable. It is important to realize that students comprehend what is being said in order to complete the natural approach process properly, if students comprehend what is being explained they will rapidly and naturally imitate what is being done. Asher (1969) writes that the optimal language acquisition experience goes in this order: comprehension before speaking. People can observe this with little kids. For months before even babbling appears, there is a silent period in which the infant seems to be listening to directions from caretakers, in which someone speaks and the child responds with a physical action. According to Asher’s theory (1969), comprehension goes before speaking and total physical response is the children’s act that can show up how the acquiring process is working. The total physical response also works when teachers teach the language as an acquiring process, as a moment to enjoy and do not feel pressured by external requirements; such parental requirements or school requirements. Students have to acquire the language instead of learning it since by acquiring the second language holds well. After comprehending the language (listening process) engage your students to take risks, to speak the language without being afraid of making mistakes, foster your students during the second language acquiring process in order to strength the meaning of English classes. Asher (2003) points out an important comparison between learning and acquiring that holds previous statements.

Classroom management is a topic which has been vastly discussed by several authors. According to Everston and Weinstein, classroom management can be defined as all the actions taken by the teacher to ensure the learning environment (2006). This definition puts the teacher in the centre of the classroom management. On the same line Marvin (2003) states that “Classroom management deals with how things are done…… has to do with procedures, routines, and structure.” Marvin also separates the concept of classroom management from the concept of discipline stating that “Classroom management is the teacher’s responsibility; discipline is the student’s responsibility”. (Marvin, 2003, paragraph. 7. in Walters and Frei, 2007). This last definition is one of the motivations for this action research. Scrivener (2005) puts the classroom management focus on what the teacher does inside the classroom not only in terms of teaching but also in terms of the psychological and emotional side of the teacher. For example his or her teaching beliefs can guide their classroom management style, the communication with the students, teacher – student relations, etc.

the topic, students have the possibility to share ideas as to what actions people should do in order to protect the planet or the importance of maintaining a good equilibrium in nature to avoid possible damage. Taking into consideration the instances this topic provides for students to share ideas and opinions; I decided to create a project based on green issues. Students need to create an NGO with an idea that would sustain our planet positively. Students must work in groups in order to reach an agreement among all individuals’ opinion and decide on what idea they want to carry out in order to help our planet from future damages. As Brown (2007) exposes, “creating projects can be of great help when it comes to hand-on approaches to language”. Students learn while raising environment awareness and increasing interactions while working together. Following the line of thought of Brown, as learners get absorbed in purposeful projects, both receptive and productive language is used meaningfully (p. 184). Students need to create short NGO projects that can help our planet. Each group must work cooperatively to reach the final goal. Strategies to provide successful instances will be applied during all the lessons of the unit. Roles in group members, seating arrangement to provide better management of the classroom, structure of activities and rules during all the lessons, as well as clear objectives are the main ideas to ensure a positive outcome and effective process during the implementation of the action plan.

After unit 1 I noticed that it was necessary to encourage my students more and get them involved with their reading process. I thought about the importance of letting them know how they did on their first diagnostic test, thinking this will empower them more and get them on track more. I started with a thinking routine asking them to think about their experience with the platform the day before, how they felt? How did they think they did and what can they improve on? Students were very honest and share their experience some of them saying they needed headphones to concentrate more, others they needed to sit on the floor away from their friends to concentrate, and most of them said they needed to read the questions again in order to understand them better. After the discussion was finished, I told students I was going to be showing them the results of their first diagnostic test and will be going over them individually. First I showed them the overall results were they identify the areas they needed to work on and asked them how they think they can improve, they all came to the conclusion that they needed to read more and read the questions carefully and going back to the story to answer them.

To establish what is an effective activity, it is necessary to define what activity on EFL means; Scrivener (2011) states that an activity is ‘‘something that learners do that involves them using or working with language to achieve some specific outcome.’’ (p. 37). While Brown & Lee (2015) define activity as ‘‘a reasonable unified set of students behaviors, limited in time, preceded by some direction from the teacher, with a particular objective.’’ (p. 220). Taking into consideration these definitions, activities should have a specific objective, which should be clear when planning such activity. According to the research question, the skill that the activities should reinforce is writing. In addition, the time provided to students is important and the directions should be regarding to the written process such as, gathering ideas, order the ideas and so on.

The interview was orally employed -recording students’ responses-, since as it was explained in the data collection instruments, young learners neither produce extensive written responses nor oral ones. Nevertheless, through oral interviews they could be guided by the researcher in order to clarify the focus of the questions presented in a fluent way. For this, the participants were taken out of the classroom, so as to avoid the noise produced within it and possible distractors. The interviews did not exceed the number of five questions, providing enough time so students could respond it calmly. Just as in the survey applied, this employed interview pointed to identify participant’s feelings towards the English class, even so, interviews delved into a deeper