Part D - Findings and Implications

• Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?

Yes, my project was implemented as planned. My students spent the last 25-30 minutes on Raz-kids instead of independent reading. Although we had a few hiccups, we are working through those to make sure the students are engaged in reading leveled texts for a substantial amount of time daily. The hiccups included having enough headphones that work, getting microphones so that students can record their reading, and finding a solution to loging in quicker. 

• Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice

The problem in my classroom is that students were not engaging in a correctly levelled text during independent reading time and students were also spending more time finding a book and a place to sit, that they were not engaging in reading for the 25-30 minutes of classtime that I was giving them. In my observations, students are excited to read in Raz-kids. I was able to input their level for books based on previous reading assessments done at the beginning of the year. I am better able to monitor what the students are reading or listening to through the teacher features in Raz-kids. So far, my students are spending a lot more time engaged in reading than before I began this project. Not only are they engaged, but I know that they are reading books that are appropriate for their reading level. The students are enthusiastic about reading - which is something I have not seen from this group before. They are even asking to do Raz-kids at other parts of the day on top of the time they are given. 

How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?

When approaching another project of the type again, I would try to find a way to gage the success of my students better. It was such a short time frame that it would be difficult to measure based on their reading levels, but I could have possibly counted minutes of quality reading time prior to and after implementing the Raz-kids program. So, if I did a similar project, I hope that I would be able to have some concrete data from my project that would support what I did. (This would be good for grant purposes!)

• What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?

The lessons I learned from this project is to think ahead of problems that may come up. For example, I did not think that headphones wouldn't work or that we would have difficulties getting logged into the program in the computer lab. I ended up having to manually help each student get logged in. I could have prevented many problems if I had thought about them before hand. 

• In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?

I will go through this process again. I managed to take an ineffective time in my classroom and make it a productive time using technology. I am sure that there are other parts of my day that could be addressed using technology to allow my students to be engaged in learning. The process of finding a problem, developing a solution, and assessing the solution to determine the effectiveness is a process that should be used all the time, especially in schools.My goal is to be an effective teacher and repeating this process will benefit my students. I am going to continue this project with my students using Raz-kids in place of independent reading, however I do think it is important that my students read regular books as well, so we will use a combination. I will hopefully find a happy medium so that my students have a good variety of reading daily.