Formulating Lesson Summaries - Research Proposal Example

Practitioner Based Research Proposal for High School group This research proposal outlines a study on whether a learns and remembersmore if he or she formulates the lesson summary daily. The paper seeks to make a probe into the relevant literature on the research question and the results of the study will be highly useful to make the classroom instruction more effective and fruitful. The methodology of the study seeks to administer case studies on two separate groups of high school learners-one formulates their own lesson summary whereas the other group is assisted by the teacher. The research arrives at a finding through collection, analysis and interpretation of the data regarding the achievement made by each of the groups and moreover it seeks to put forward a new strategy of learning. Introduction The question ‘whether students learn more if they formulate their lesson summaries daily’ has become an important one as many learning strategies are experimented at different grade levels. So many types of learning strategies are being practiced today and all of them aim at the total learning of the pupils. It has been identified that students learn the most when they learn by doing and therefore when the learners themselves formulate their lesson summaries it is expected to accelerate student learning. In this regard it is worthwhile to quote the Chinese proverb ‘I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand’ (Ramsden, 1992, p. 263). In this connection it is meaningful to think of the learning outcomes of a group of students who are testing themselves everyday by creating questions on what they have studied on that day. Testing is a very important aspect for learning. Usually high school learners learn a particular topic in the classroom but their understanding in the classroom is prone to forgetfulness unless and until they revise at home. As with the curve of forgetfulness put forwarded by Ebbinghaus one makes out the level of actual learning in one’s brain. And he points out that if a lesson is revised immediately after learning it can be retained effectively. This revision, which is done daily, soon after the class makes students’ remembering and learning power more and more positive. The revision or making summary can be of different types. It can be assessment questions by the students and if teacher wishes he or she can formulate one or two sample questions to the students on which they can work on. This testing is an essential part of the classroom extension work. No complete learning is possible inside the classroom and this extension program becomes a catalyst for the overall learning. It is the ‘learning to learn ‘program. Three groups are selected namely student induced learning, teacher induced learning and topic induced learning. Among these three groups data collection is made and tries to find out how learning activity is enhanced through it. Research Question: The Research question is ‘Will students learn and remember more if they formulate their own lesson summary daily?’ Such question will have some findings by the assessment test formulated by the student at the end of a unit. The learning outcome of the students can be compared with assessment test of the teacher either at the end of the unit or at the end of a particular period. Rationale The information given here is best suited for both teachers and students. Both these categories aim at higher goals in learning. A teacher wants his or her students progressing in learning and students want the topics to be covered fully for good grades. The teacher assisted learning will have a fuller meaning at self stimulation on the students. A teacher can evaluate how much the actual learning has taken place among the students by the teacher formulated questions at the end of the unit or topic. Moreover teacher can make out whether the strategy used to impart learning is in tune with the progress of the students. Making variety of questions and placing them all among the students will make both the teacher and students thorough with the different aspects of the topic and finally it will enhance the learning capacity of the students and teaching ability of the teacher. A large topic can be arranged into smaller parts with the scaffolding of the teacher. As the summary or assessment is done daily it is very easier for the teacher to schedule the teaching methodology and further the teacher can make a happy link with the students on the style of the questions asked. Literature Review The main aim of this research is for the effective learning outcome of the class room discourse. As a beginner to teaching it shall be the duty of any student teacher to know how far his/her new teaching strategies are effective for the learning of the students. When the learners themselves make the summaries of the lessons, it offers opportunity for the student teacher for comparative and contrastive study. The teacher needs to employ different methods to enhance the learning outcome of the students. One should understand that mere listening from the classroom is not enough for a student to remember. We fall into forgetfulness very soon as it is clearly drawn by Ebbinghaus in his curve forgetfulness. “He memorized a list of nonsense syllables and then tested himself at intervals varying from 20 minutes to a month to see how much from the list he forgot each time. Forgetting occurred rapidly in the first few hours after learning but then gradually faded over time. According to his study about 66% of the items are forgotten by the end of a day. As the processes of learning and forgetting happen together it is recommended by him to revise the learned material to retain it” (Nevid, 2008, p. 226). The paper seeks to draw as many literature reviews possible to substantiate the different points discussed in this research. The research will draw all information to final findings and assessment. As a student teacher, the researcher is privileged to use his practice teaching effectively and during this time he will see how his research will have a meaningful conclusion. It has become a problem for many teachers to deal with the extension work of the learning-teaching process. Jane E. Pollock and Sharon M. Ford among paper-and –pencil strategies instruct summarizing or drawing conclusions of the topic. They introduce another strategy of ‘Index card progression’. In it they state that “Each student can write a summary for the day’s lesson on a large index card. This is repeated on the same card each day for three or four days, as different objectives are addressed for that benchmark. Some teachers ask students to use the index card to start the summary and then pass it to partners or team members to add to the conclusion.” (Pollock & Ford, 2009, p. 104). Similarly, summarizing a lesson seems to play a crucial part among the students. Some points are to be noted in this task. A number of researchers have highlighted the necessary steps to be followed in summarizing a lesson. They state that one need not have to summarize word by word. For those researchers, “students must delete some information, substitute some information and keep some information” (Marzano, Pickering & Pollock, 2001, P. 30). They elaborate this by giving the “Rule –Based” strategy of Brown, Campione and Day (1981). This aspect of summarizing and finding assessment questions is similar for all the subjects.. Gary Smith of Pomona College speaks out how to tackle statistics in his paper entitled “Learning Statistics By Doing Statistics”. Smith makes it clear that “one way to help students develop their statistical reasoning is to incorporate active-learning strategies that allow students to supplement what they have heard and read about statistics by actually doing statistics -- designing studies, collecting data, analyzing their results, preparing written reports, and giving oral presentations.” (Smith 1998). By this it is clear if a student wants to excel at studies he or she needs to have to summarize the topic and find out different perspectives of the lesson by asking a number of questions. The book ‘Lecturers Toolkit’ gives certain instructions to assess the students learning output through student and teacher induced questions. The author gives out different strategies to construct answers by way of asking different questions both by the students and by the teacher (Race 2001). Students do get much improvement if they formulate their own lesson summaries daily. It should be an on going process just like learning for maximum memory retention. We can just see how learning impacts the development of a student and how his or her progress results in the performance in the classroom through the help of the box. ASSESSMENT LEARNING DEVELOPMENT CLASSROOM The different words in the box are inter-related. Assessment leads to learning and development and these results in the total performance of the student. One needs to keep in mind that student assessment is an ongoing process. The aim of students preparing their own summaries of the lessons is to enable them to understand and improve their learning. The various interpretations of class lessons by the teacher and by the students will have more positive sided learning output. These interpretations can be assessed in a test which can be recorded by the teacher. I am sure that this on going process will have a finer meaning after completing my research findings. Making students assess how far they have mastered the contents of the given topic will create an excitement in learning and their learning will have longer remembrance and understanding. Methodology Data collection and analysis The methodology of the proposed research aim at conducting case studies on two groups of learners in the same grade. Each group consists of 7 members. The first group will be assisted by the teacher and the teacher himself will be providing them lesson summaries and questions to be answered after the lesson. The second group will have their lesson summaries and tests. Two types of data will be collected from these groups. 1. In the form of their answers on the paper. 2. In the form of marks. The methodology can easily make out the difference between these two groups by the above given methods. The student teacher needs to watch these two groups for four weeks very closely and record any findings or achievements made by both the groups during the stipulated period. The topics covered for both the groups will be the same for them to cover and of course, it which will be from their course book. Finally a teacher based achievement test will be carried out to see which group has progressed more. Planning and Time line To plan the research well the consultation of my supervisor is considered valuable. As this research is a straight one I don’t think any special permission is needed and if I feel so I can ask permission from the parents of the students. To speak with the research rudiments, let me tell you that it is good having a thorough awareness on the lessons prescribed for the class I am going to take my studies on. It is also good to get some similar topics from the literature sources. The data collection can be done in some of the hours of the practicum. The students’ daily lesson questions can be saved for evaluation tests. The achievement test can be conducted most suitably after the target unit. The grade of this can be marked or recorded as teacher guided questions and student formulated questions. Thus the difference can be made easily. The evaluation will be made after every unit/ period. Two units will be evaluated like this and will proceed to the final evaluation. Alterations Some alterations can be made based on the group capability of the students. First of all the two groups selected will be moreover similar in the learning capacity; if it doesn’t work the necessary changes should be made in the group to get two similar groups. Applications Two groups from 9 B were selected and group a is named ‘Group flowers’ are to be given questions made by the teacher every day and the teacher asks them to summarize the lesson on the basis of the questions asked by the teacher. This group is fully teacher centered. The teacher should state that they will have tests after the present unit. The second group is to be named as ‘Group wings‘. Here the students formulate their own questions by themselves and they are free to construct any questions and any type of summary of the lesson. It is a fully pupil centered group. The two groups are given different names so as to inculcate a team spirit among them. To both the groups teacher should state that they will have achievement tests after the present unit that they study. Findings After the achievement test conducted by the teacher it is expected that the student induced group could score higher than that of the teacher induced students. The answers of the pupil centered group will be dynamic and multi-faceted. The percentage of the students who scored the grades can be given through a pie diagram. The teacher induced group too may present the test well but may not have variety of points of view in their answers and it will lack the so called dynamism in their answers. Their percentage of marks too can be presented with the help of a pie diagram. Conclusions After the research it will be clear that pupil induced group has more positive sides towards learning. They could make use of every possibility of the topics by collaborative and cooperative learning. They may have more memory capacity on the topic. The different heads of the ‘group wings’ altogether can make wonders in the learning outcome. Even though the teacher induced group, ’group flowers’ too will succeed in the learning outcome even though their achievement and understanding level could be lesser compared to the learner centered group as they had little chance for free thinking and group dynamism. To sum up it has become very clear through the research that when the students formulate summaries of lessons themselves they are more likely to learn and remember. References Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D & Pollock, J.E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Illustrated Edition: ASCD. Nevid, J.S. (2008). Psychology: Concepts and Applications. 3rd Edition: Cengage Learning. Pollock, J.E & Ford, S.M. (2009). Improving Student Learning One Principal at a Time. Illustrated Edition: ASCD. Race, P. (2001). The lecturers toolkit: a practical guide to learning, teaching & assessment. 2nd Illustrated Edition: Routledge. Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to teach in higher education. Illustrated Edition: Routledge. Smith, G. (1998). Learning Statistics By Doing Statistics. Journal of Statistics Education, 6 (3). Retrieved 18 July 2010, from: http://www.amstat.org/publications/JSE/v6n3/smith.html Read More