The Beginnings of Inquiry

This week I began further exploring the inquiry process by completing my first draft of an inquiry brief. My ideas have all been swimming around and I now finally had a place to organize them. Being in a classroom for longer each day, and more days out of the week, gives me an opportunity to have more wonderings based on more significant observations than I had last semester. I am more involved in my classroom, working directly with the students, and truly taking a teacher role in the classroom.

Being in the classroom since January, I have witnessed a round of FAIR testing, and helped to administer running records for each student. This happened so early on that I only knew the students for a short period of time, and did not know what scores to expect. My mentor teacher, co-teacher and myself worked together to organize literacy groups based solely on these scores.

However, as the weeks went on, and I implemented UFLI with my small groups, I saw a lot of focus and improvement. However, back in the classroom during whole group instruction I didn't see the same attitude from certain students. I started to notice a pattern of these students working hard during any type of assessment or small group with a teacher, but not during whole group. Then, even effort in small groups started to decline as the students became more comfortable with my co-teacher and I. They were not working as hard to impress us. It became clear to me that these students were not intrinsically motivated, and therefore were not working to their full potential. Unless there was a grade associated with the assignment or someone is making a big deal and pushing the students, they did not try or challenge themselves. These students are very smart and it is hard to show my teacher that I feel that they have more potential, when they don't show her in whole group instruction.

My wondering is, can a positive behavior system extrinsically motivate these students to work to their full potential?

I have learned about motivation and reward systems and how implementing them with the appropriate weening system can be a great thing to motivate struggling students. After working with my peers, I have designed a system to implement during small groups with these students  to try and motivate them to focus and work hard in class. If they see that they can do it, and are rewarded for this effort, then they may apply it to other class time.

My wondering is not compete for this blog, but I feel more confident in my idea, and am excited to begin working on my inquiry in the classroom.