A redbrickED article by Joshua Sollie
ANALYZING THE
VALUE OF CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
The effect of
daily repetition of vocabulary with picture associations.
During a recent institute at our school Jim Burke was the
featured speaker. One concept which he
repeated several times and stuck with me was that we should be analyzing our
classroom procedures and activities to determine which ones are effective and a
good use of our time and resources. In
other words, which activities are actually valid and help the students?
With that in mind, I
decided to analyze a daily practice in my classroom which takes between 3-5
minutes a day. To practice vocabulary, I
have created PowerPoints with the vocabulary words in the form of flashcards
with the slides including the word and also a picture. We go over the words at least once every
class period. It is a simple repetition
exercise that probably takes between 3-5 minutes each class period during which
the students repeat the words while viewing the PowerPoint. In practice I knew the repetition and
picture association should help the students produce the words (the students
are given the words in English and have to write the Spanish equivalent for
their quiz), but had never analyzed this practice. To test whether this was a valid exercise, I
did not do the repetition exercise for the last lesson of this quarter;
although I did create flashcards that the students could view online to study
on their own. I was unsure what the
results would be, but was not surprised by the following:
PERIOD
|
QUIZ 1 W/ PPT
PRACTICE
|
QUIZ 2 W/ PPT
PRACTICE
|
QUIZ 3 W/ PPT
PRACTICE
|
QUIZ 4 NO PPT
PRACTICE
|
1ST
|
Mean:9.7
Median:10.0
|
Mean:9.8
Median:10.0
|
Mean:9.0
Median:10.0
|
Mean:8.4
Median:9.0
|
5TH
|
Mean:8.8
Median:9.0
|
Mean:9.3
Median:10.0
|
Mean:9.1
Median:10.0
|
Mean:8.4
Median:9.0
|
6TH
|
Mean:8.9
Median:10.0
|
Mean:8.4
Median:9.0
|
Mean: 9.5
Median:10.0
|
Mean:7.9
Median:9.0
|
While I am sure there are several variables at play, it is
significant that the lowest mean score for each
class is the quiz where the
students were not presented with the words and phrases in a repetitive manner
through the PowerPoint exercise. I am
going to continue monitoring this practice throughout the fourth quarter and
continue to analyze the value of this practice. It also made me think about the other
activities I do in class. If an exercise
that I do for three to five minutes a day has this type of an effect on student
learning, what about the rest of the
procedures and activities that I do in class.
Are they as effective and do they provide the same types of
results? If not, why? Even more importantly, why do I continue to
do those activities?
