Wow What A Relief!!!!

It was a lot harder than I originally thought to chart the path and make sure all the details were covered to start implementing my action research plan.  It will be interesting to see how this all turns out.  It will also be great for my campus to see and experience differentiation instruction in action.

Hear is how some of my thoughts came together for this project...
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Let’s face it, motivating Jr. High Students to finish their class assignments is a tormenting task for many teachers.  My experience has been this task becomes even more difficult in the mathematics classroom because a majority of the students feel they do not like math and are intimidated with math problems. This is where my questions and research could help the teacher find out if using some elements of differentiated instruction would help motivate their students to finish class work. Students finishing their work would provide more practice which in the end would help their grades.  These thoughts led to the overarching question: Would the elements of student choice and differentiated tiered assignments motivate our 6^th graders in Academic Math to finish class assignments in a timely manner?

Other questions to consider that will help ensure the overarching question is implemented:

• Do the teachers understand some of the elements of differentiation that the school will be focusing on?
• How often will the teachers use differentiated instruction during a 6-week period?
• What type of assignments will we target to provide more student choice?
• Do the teachers understand tiered assignments?
• Who will support the teachers in 6^th grade if they have questions?
• What resources have the district provided under the differentiation umbrella to help the teachers understand differentiated instruction?
• What type of data collecting strategies will this project use?
• How will teachers track student assignments for completion in a timely manner?
• Did students completing more assignments directly impact their grades each 6 weeks?

Success in this project will help show different ways students were more motivated and less intimidated to finish math class assignments.  Differentiation is a district and campus initiative this year.  Our campus will be following a district initiative in a controlled environment that will give us valuable information to share with the rest of the campus.  In the end, my hope is teachers find another way to motivate our students and raise students’ understandings of mathematics.