I
have been working on my Action Research Project little by little. Fortunately,
for me, my school year has begun well, I have a great group of kids that are
very motivated to learn. It is still time demanding, but nothing I can't
handle! This has helped on my journey to conduct the first steps in my action
research project.
I began in July with the searching for
literature and other resources on this research topic. There are so many
resources to pick from and so many ideas and opinions to read through and it has been
very overwhelming. I have also conducted interviews with a few bilingual colleagues
of mine to get an idea of what goes on in their bilingual classroom and how
they confront these issues, especially at the beginning of the year. Because of
the large number of bilingual students that we have at our campus, I have
decided to only focus on bilingual children in our first grade level.
I
begin by document and analyze reading levels of the selected incoming bilingual
students. We have recently completed our first round of TPRI testing and so now
I have data to record and look closely over. For the most part, the students are reading at grade level or slightly below but are really struggling with comprehension.
I
have discussed with the other first grade bilingual teacher the types of
strategies and skills she focuses on when working in her small reading groups.
I have to say that she has been such a big help when it comes to brainstorming through ideas or analyzing the data. Soon I will begin choosing the types of interventions that I would like to
focus on.
Something
special that I'd like to share is that this year has brought a
"first" for me. I have enrolled in my classroom a student from Central America,
who has never had any schooling and who should in fact be in second grade.
Parents requested that he be placed in first as a personal request. I have
worked with bilingual students since the beginning of my teaching career, but
working with this child has been very eye opening. He has an appreciation to
learn that I feel most of our kids do not. For example, he is thrilled with the
little games and routines that I have in place for the students. He gets so
excited over something as small as our classroom library. I am so glad that he is a part of my classroom this year as I know that it will be a very rewarding experience for all of us.
