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

strategies I felt would work well with these students, but I wanted to see where they were
coming from. I ended up giving an additional set of survey questions to address instructional
strategies.
What I found out was that the 1 st graders liked everything suggesting that the line of
questioning was beyond them. Most 2 nd graders preferred group work and hands-on
activities. The 3 rd and 4 th graders showed a real split between kids who prefer independent
work and kids who prefer group work. However, the majority of them did prefer hands-on
activities to seat work. Although most were not able to identify themselves as auditory,
visual, kinesthetic, or tactile learners; my observations suggested that most of them used an
auditory/visual combination of learning style. Since the students I worked with on a daily
basis struggled significantly with reading and writing, visual and tactile learning strategies in
and of themselves were not as useful. Kinesthetic activities seemed to work well, but were
not used as often. This will be discussed further in Cycle 3.
Overall, the surveys were quite positive which lead me to believe that the students felt a
connection with school community and their classroom communities.
Cycle 3
Once I had administered the surveys, my next step was to consider the next two factors for
resiliency: high expectations and connections to the curriculum. In this section, you will learn
of my struggle dealing with the Reading First grant our school implemented this year and my
work with Web-Based Professional Development Action Research Project.
The 2005-2006 school year started with some big changes in the way my school was
addressing reading instruction. This was our first year as participants in a Reading First grant.
The grant had some specific requirements that shaped reading instruction. The first was that
all students would be taught with grade level text. This raised the level of expectations for
some of the lower achieving students. Another requirement was that all students would spend
90 minutes a day in uninterrupted reading instruction. No grammar, spelling, writing, etc.
allowed during this time. This also helped to raise the level of expectations for both teachers
and students. In addition, all students performing below grade level were to receive 30-45
Action Research to Study Homelessness and High Mobility in School Communities 85