Section 1: Academic Achievement - National Center for School ...

Cycle 2
Cycle 2 was about data collection. I collected data from the students to find out where my
students were in their sense of school community and how they felt about their peer and staff
relationships. Additionally I collected some data on what instructional strategies my students
found effective.
The first step was to determine where the H&HM students were on the continuum of sense of
community in their school. This was achieved by giving student surveys. I ended up
developing two surveys because I felt the 2 nd , 3 rd, and 4 th graders were capable of filing out a
more open-ended survey, but the 1 st graders needed a different format that required no
writing. (See Appendices 1 and 2).
What I was able to determine from my survey was that there was some reason that students
liked school. I has suspected most kids liked to come to school for a social reason. The
surveys confirmed my suspicions and results were varied. For some it was recess time that
motivated them. For others it was a certain game a teacher would play. For some it was a
place to see a friend, and a few even suggested they liked their teacher. They seemed to have
made some connection to an aspect of school. There were a few students that said they
enjoyed the academic part of school which is why they come to school.
When students were asked what they don’t like about school, there was a variety of answers.
About half the group responded to getting up early and being tired at school. Some student
answers suggested a breakdown in a relationship with a staff member (usually temporary) like
missing recess, getting yelled at, or not getting homework done. The last set of answers
suggested that the work that the teacher gives was too hard. I was very surprised at the
number of students that listed being tired in the morning as the reason they didn’t like to come
to school. I had suspected their answers would either be issues with staff/peer relationships or
academic difficulties.
The final part of the survey asked kids to identify what characteristics students liked about
their teachers/peers and what characteristics they didn’t like. It was no surprise to me that
students valued the teachers for personal relationship reasons. For some it was because the
teacher was nice. For others it was because the teachers played fun games or gave treats/let
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