Students in a 5th grade classroom were falling behind same age peers on areas of comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. Despite a change in methodology and a switch in teaching methods, students did not show improvements over two terms and they were losing morale and interest in their language arts subject. In order to pull up the grades and do a revamp of teaching curriculum, the Head of department decided to engage in a research project and implement a new workable solution to current and future classes of grade 5 language arts. This project was eventually presented at an Education conference with a workshop and poster presentation.

Formative Assessment

Planning

Implementation [Treatment Group]

Post-Implementation Evaluation

Implementation [ Control Group]

Summative Assessment

Post-Assessment Evaluation

Reporting and writing of Curriculum

Gather secondary data via Literature review

Gather primary data onsite via two terms of:

recorded classroom lessons,

onsite surveys,

semi-structured interviews with teachers and students.

Analyse transcriptions of interactions between teachers and students and measure actual instances of 1) teacher’s informing, 2) teacher’s elicitation, 3) children’s bidding, 4) teacher’s nomination, 5) children’s replying, 6) teacher’s acknowledgement, 7) teacher’s directing and a 8) predominant Initiation-Response-Follow-up pattern.

Preliminary projections and conclusions indicated that most of the successful elicitation took few and short turns. A closer examination further revealed that the most prevalent teacher’s elicitation acts were 1) checking elicitation and 2) multiple elicitation.

The prevalent teacher’s acknowledgement acts were unqualified accepting or relaying, and evaluating. This pattern led to students not asking questions and relying on peers for vocabulary acquisition and clarification of comprehension skills.

Since peer to peer interactions were strong, the research team decided to capitalise of the strengths of their discussions. More team / group work was introduced and comprehension questions were to be answered in teams. We ensured that teams were not identifiable by individual members, hence, reducing the personal stress and embarrassments on students when they get the answers and vocabulary items wrong.

• Class was divided into 3 sub-groups. 1 group was the control group. 1 group worked in a 2 person team and the other group worked in teams of 4-6 people.

• Field testing of new strategies/alternatives with groups and rotating groups 1, 2, & 3.

• Surveys and semi-structured interviews with students and teachers.

• Triangulate quantitative data, qualitative surveys and data from implementation stage.

• After evaluation, efficacy of new strategies was reported to be high and teachers consider that strategies are viable in the long run in language arts classes as well as classes with similar teaching and learning dynamics.

• Generate full report based on APIE cycle.

• Draw conclusions and propose future research plans.