PART D - Findings and Implications

Formative:  Yes the project was implemented as planned.  It was a little difficult in some classrooms since there isn’t a consistent level of technology depending on what room you are teaching in.  However, for the most part, I was able to use the technology and implement my plan to engage students in transitional activities that in turn led to better classroom management.

Summative:  This project was somewhat difficult to show hard evidence that it worked.  Even through anecdotal records, the way that I had to implement this project made the results comparing apples and oranges.  I looked for and kept notes on number of disruptions, outburst and number of times students needed to be redirected.  I was looking for overall engagement and classroom management and I found these to be the most measurable indicators.  The difficulty in comparing the results came from the fact that as a substitute I was in a different classroom, with different students and sometimes even in a different school.  This made it difficult as I didn’t have a baseline so I couldn’t be sure if it was my project that I implemented that was having a real effect on classroom management.

In an ideal situation I would have been able to approach this project differently and used it in the same classroom.  I would have liked to have been able to have a before and after to compare things too.  In the project itself though, I would change the type of transitional activities that I focused on to see if I could find ones that would work the best.  For example, going into this project I had assumed that showing short video clips about the topic they were learning about would be the best.  They were often easy to find thanks to youtube and teachertube and I thought they would be the most engaging.  However I ran into some problems when trying to use videos.  First of all, they only work if all students finish an activity and are ready to transition at the same times.  And secondly, I found they aren’t as engaging as I had hoped.  Many students, since there was no activity or reason for them to be engaged and focused, still caused disruptions.  I actually found that using activities where I had students actively working on an activity and told them I would be collecting their results had a much higher success rate in lowering classroom disruptions.

I will endevear to do this project again and when I do I will focus on these more active and engaging activities.  Things like watching videos may be easier; however they are a much more passive activity.  Having an activity where students actively have to be engaged and produce something has a much higher success in classroom management.