What problems in your classroom might point you to your driving question?
Many of my students come from a low socioeconomic background. In most of these families both parents work and some even have more than one job to make ends meet. This means that mom and dad are not around much for support with schooling. My driving question will originate from one of two areas of interests for me. These interests originate from the needs of my students one being wellness and the other being play. Wellness is something that I started teaching in my classroom about 3 years ago. Many of my students come to school with an "invisible backpack" on and they carry around extra baggage from lack of routine, lack of sleep, and so many other factors. The teaching of wellness techniques has always seemed important to me, but I was never sure what its impact on learning and social and emotional health really was. That sparked an interest for me to go and find out. As far as my other potential driving question I had the pleasure of working with someone who was from the Queen of the Valley hospital and would come once a week to work with the 1st grade students. She taught them how to play games that were geared toward gross and fine motor development. The benefits for these students was endless. We got to talking about the importance of doing exercises that crossed the mid line. These exercises are imperative for the development of an area of the brain called the corpus callosum. I have heard that the corpus callosum plays a heavy role in reading and writing ability. In 1st grade these two skills are in their developmental stages. I am wondering if an increase of playtime and exercises that help with the development of the corpus callosum would in turn affect reading and writing ability.What will you “Need to Know” to answer that question? Before I can even begin to start answering either of the two questions of interest I will need to get baseline data to show where my students started from academically. I will need to have a group of students that I will observe and keep record of to see how their progress changes depending on the input that is being given. I will also need to see what research is out there that is already out there about this topic. What do you already know (from your own experience and from reading about)? I already know that both wellness strategies and play have positive effects on learning. I know that in most cases children will learn in a vacuum. Despite what strategies you impart on them they will make growth. I already know that a lot of learning and growth depends on what takes place at home which I have absolutely not control over, but as a former administrator once said we have to take action over the variables that we have control over and that is precisely what I intend to do.
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AuthorI am a first grade teacher who is passionate about her students and learning new things! Archives
January 2019
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