Student Survey Sidney Ayakawa ITE 314 Cohort

Demographics School: Barber’s Point Elementary Grade Level: Kindergarten Number of Students: 22; Boys=11 Girls=11 3 ELL 1 receiving speech therapy MT has developed her own writing curriculum Assessment tools: journal writing/drawing, practice sheets, formative assessments of the alphabet, class discussions

Method 2 page survey 4 questions total Whole class participated at once Lead class (solo) Started by explaining what a survey was Explained that the survey was about writing and that in kindergarten, drawing is considered a form of writing since they are just learning right now Explained that the meant yes and the  meant no Told them to only circle ONE answer for each question Stressed that I wanted THEIR opinion, not their neighbor’s Read each question(sequentially) to class then waited till they selected an answer Reminded students to NOT skip ahead Instructed students to raise their hand when they finished answering to know when to move on to the next question Dictated what students drew for second page of survey (MT assisted) Collected surveys from class

Questions Asked 1. Do you like to write? 2. Do you think writing is easy? 3. Do you try your best when you are writing? 4. What do you like to write about?

Exemplars

Results

Analysis & Summary Attitude: My conclusion about my students’ attitudes about writing after conducting this survey is that they all, 100% of them, said they like to write, and try their best, but not all of them find writing to be easy. Two out of my twenty-two students circled “No  ” to the question: Do you think writing is easy; and 3 circled “No  ” at first for that same question, but then erased their answer and changed it to “Yes ”. My guess is that they looked at their neighbor’s paper and changed their answer, with the fear of getting the question “wrong.” After learning this, I hope to be able to change their view on the difficulty of writing and make them all feel more comfortable as well as capable of writing.

Analysis & Summary Interest: After conducting this survey and analyzing the results, I concluded that my students have a very broad range when it comes to topics that they like to write about. Some of their interests included: -family -the zoo -flying kites - “wishing stuff” -ice cream -fire trucks -riding a bike etc…

Analysis & Summary Learning Style: Right now, my MT is still in the process of getting students to learn each letter and what sound each letter makes. We just finished the letter-tracing worksheets for each letter. We still are reviewing the sounds for each letter everyday. We just started having them break apart words and sound them out to spell, but they all seem to be struggling with it since it is so new to them. Based on the results gathered from this survey, as well as my own observations, I have found that MUCH reviewing is a necessary learning style for the students so that they can remember all of the letters more efficiently. My MT also uses “zoo-phonics” which is animal names that go with each letter to help them remember each letter and its sound. For example, “Lizzy Lizard says LLL” for the letter “L”. I have noticed that when they forget the sound a letter makes, referring to the animal name of the letter helps them with remembering.

Analysis & Summary Work Habits: Referring to the question from the survey: “Do you try your best when you are writing?” they all answered “Yes ”. I have gathered that they all have very good work ethics and they seem very eager to learn to write sentences on their own. I know they are all more than capable of reaching this goal, but I know each student will accomplish it on their own time and from their own writing experiences. This pleases me to know because their eagerness and hardworking ethics will help them significantly when learning to become great writers.

Concrete Actions & Implementations to Help Students Some concrete actions and implementations I will take to help students in becoming proficient writers is first off, to continue reviewing the alphabet until they all know each letter and its sound. Secondly, I will focus on the students who are struggling with writing and also on the students who said they do not think writing is easy on my survey. I will encourage and support them so that they know what they are capable of. I will praise them in their efforts, and when they do well, so that they realize that it is not as hard as it may seem. I will also remind them that they are still just learning and that everything is difficult at first, and that they will all become great writers in time. Finally, I will show my MT the writing surveys and my results/findings, so that she can adjust her curriculum and best accommodate students who are struggling or finding writing to be a difficult task. I will also share with my MT the students’ interests so that she and I can better engage them in the writing lessons. This will also be helpful in allowing us to get to know each student better, which is beneficial to all areas of learning.

Works Cited 2 nd page of survey (drawing portion) -(Lucas) lucaskindergarten.wikispaces.com/file/.../Rea ding+Interest+Survey.docx via May Ann Kim