Start of Research

Hello Everyone!

This is week 1 of my research study.

This past week, I surveyed my students interests. A majority of the students showed a strong interest in science for a favorite subject in school (excluding specials). This showed me a positive start to my research and is consistent with what I polled with my classroom from my last internship.

After reviewing these results, I started to implement an activity for my students called "Challenge of the Week".

Challenge of the Week
   This activity will be a weekly problem based activity that involves Science, Technology, Engineering, and/or Math. A poster is displayed in the classroom near my desk with background information pertaining to the question and the question itself. Students are to complete this question during free time, before school, after school, or at home. The students are presented with the information and question on Monday and have until Friday at dismissal to turn in an answer. The problem will be related to a topic or skill that the students learned in the past week.

2/12-2/15 Question:

A person uses on average 80 gallons of water a day! Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) use only 3 gallons of water a day! Compare the two numbers. What percent of 80 gallons of water does an astronaut use? Convert the percent to a decimal and a fraction. Create a diagram of the fraction. 

This particular problem relates to fractions, decimals, and percents. This past week, my class learned about how to convert a fraction to a decimal and a percent.

 

After giving the students two days to look over the question, I showed a video provided by NASA eClips entitled "Our World: Recycling on the International Space Station". This provided students with more information pertaining to the problem.

Out of my 23 students, 12 students attempted the challenge.  Out of the 12, 1 student had the correct answer.

Reflection:

When I presented the "Challenge of the Week" the students jumped with enthusiasm. They wanted to start solving the problem that minute. Not only did the it pose the students with a challenge, but it was a topic that intrigued them. It connected to what they learned in math and a strong interest they have. 

After looking through the answers, I saw that there was a common response. 10 out of the 12 students responded with 27%. At first I was confused and thought that maybe I had calculated the answer wrong. However, one student wrote how they solved the problem and I noticed what the students did. Instead of solving the problem as 3 ÷ 80, the students solved the problem as 80 ÷ 3. Therefore, the students received the answer 26.66 (rounded to 27). This informs me that students need further instructing into calculating percents and decimals from fraction form.

I feel that this is a good starting point. Even though the students did not quite get how to solve the problem, they did attempt it and showed knowledge that they knew what steps to take. They just need further instruction as to the order of the numbers when they are dividing. The students showed strong enthusiasm for the Challenge and I hope that more students will start participating. 

A look into next week:

Next week, I will be co-teaching a lesson on using text features in a non-fiction article. I will be using a article that is science based and student friendly.