Reflection and Revision

Ah, the two r's: reflection and revision! I think that is what I have had to do every step of the way during this research class! I knew we were in for a tough class...it is Grad school after all, but I don't think that I was fully prepared for how much time I have had to put in to make my paper the best it can be. Today I submitted my reflection on my needs analysis data. It was a short assignment that took me about 40 minutes to complete and submit, but it really gave me something to think about. I love that my data lends itself beautifully to my topic and am really excited to implement my plan with my students and see if their final assessment shows a benefit....or will it show nothing? hmmmmm Of course I think it will have a positive outcome but, will we really know before we review our final data? Here's hoping for the best!

Chapter 3

So, methods and procedures can be checked off my list of chapters to complete! Yay! I think I might actually be getting the hang of this research paper writing! Well, almost....I do still need to make minor revisions but, after 3 hours of locking myself in my room to write chapter 3 I have found success! It wasn't as scary as I thought it was going to be. NOTHING has been as scary as chapter 2's literature review!  haha.  
I do feel as if I am making some progress in this paper and really do appreciate having the assignments broken down into more manageable parts and of course, getting useful feedback for making corrections!  Thank you Amy for your clear and concise comments for corrections, it is really helpful, especially when I hit a wall with my writing!
I have now started to compile my approved paper parts and think I may even have come up with a title!!!!

I can't believe we are almost done with research and I have to say that we made an excellent decision by taking this class in the fall! Can you imagine if we had less time to write, edit, re-write, edit, re-submit, compile and resubmit? I am thankful for the full semester's worth of time :)

Yay, chapter 4 was a good one!!!!!

Check, check....one, two, three

Yay!   It took me a long time (three hours) to write my chapter 4 evaluation tools, but the time spent seems to have paid off!  I just revised my paper and the revisions were minimal!!!! I have to say, I am very excited that this section went so well, I struggled with writing it correctly for some reason and had a hard time getting it done but, all's well that ends well :)

Now it's time to go back and make revisions on every paper that I have not revised completely yet...ugh, why do I wait so long to get things done? 

Well, I have good house progress news so I think I have been preoccupied with that: I found out that I have an appointment with the RREM grant people tomorrow and hopefully that means that they will be getting me the funds I still need to proceed with my rebuild!! I may not have any furniture when it is finally done but, I am having a big party anyway! We can just sit on milk crates....maybe I should have a bring your on chair party? 's

Learner, Context Analysis and Goals and Objectives

So, I am not sure if I am on target with my papers due on November 1st or not....I seem to question myself every time I turn in an assignment. Hmmmmmm

I turned in two different assignments on the same night, actually one day ahead of schedule, which made me feel happy, and then I got my feedback, ugh.

Half way right is better than not right at all I guess but it didn't make me happy to realize that I flubbed these two papers a bit.  Thankfully Sue S. lent me her IDD book (I have moved way too many times this year and have no idea where mine is!) since I have to revisit parts of Dick and Carey to get me back on track with learner context and objectives!  I actually switched the word objectives in my head and wrote instructional strategies....well, at least I will have them ready for that part of the paper!

Well, back to work I go to revise, review, resubmit!

Statistical Data????

Thank goodness Teia is taking a statistics class in HS! I know nothing of statistics and was a tad bid nervous to write my needs analysis data. It is sort of funny when you ask your 14 year old daughter to help you understand standard deviation and help you create a data table! Hahaha or jajajajaj for all the Spanish speaking readers :) I have to say.... I am really quite impressed with what she has learned in one marking period of HS AP Stat class! (quite cool!) After my child helped me understand how to represent my information, I didn't feel that this part of my research paper was too difficult. I think overall, since I had already compiled my data (I did it last year with my 4th quarter classes!) I only spent about an hour and a half writing my findings..... I sure hope that they were written well!!!! I still can't quite grasp APA 100%, although I am getting better at it with each paper edit! Thanks for the guidance Amy!

Literature Review

I don't think that I have ever spent so much time on one part of a paper before! So, I am thankful that I didn't wait until the very last second to work on my lit review since I think it took forever! I imagine that I spent several hours just looking up key words in EBSCO and summons to find articles that I found useful to supporting my research and theories. After finding 15 useful articles, I went about the task of reading each article in detail to make sure that it really was helpful, I highlighted specific information and made colored note cards for different points of discussion. I think after 9 hours of reading and writing note cards I had about 40 of them, scattered in different spots on my bed (My desk :) ) Next came the writing part....4 hours later I only wrote 6 pages but had found common points of studies that had been done that supported my research project and the need for further research in Spanish language pronunciation. I hope I can pull this whole thing off!!!!

Article Critique

Wow....I have now learned how much time goes into researching your articles!  I spent 3 hours reading different articles to find an article that I actually want to use for my paper.  I was happy to have Amy's sample to guide me and the practice one that we did in class in groups.  I still found that I had some difficulty with the difference between research methods but I think I might have worked it out! I think!!!!

Tools...

I love polleverywhere.com! I wrote my needs assessment tools portion of my paper in a little under an hour because I thankfully had compiled prior info last year for my research paper.  I used polleverywhere.com to survey my students in class about their fears/weakness in Spanish. They loved using their phones in class to take the survey....

I also had used my PLN on edmodo.com to survey other Spanish teachers to find out their findings on sounds that L2 students struggle with. I got a lot of responses and great feedback as well.

My third component of my tools was also gathering actual speaking tasks from the students.  I used Google voice, voki.com and PowerPoint with microphone audio recording to gather all of my data.  That data was probably the biggest help to realize the gap in pronunciation for L2 learners.

I hope I can organize my data, that is a weakness for me!!!!

Revision and needs assessment

So, this week was about revision of my topic paper.  I had to do a lot of reading to find articles that will be useful to substantiate my research on pronunciation enhancement in my Spanish 7 cycle classes.  I found some that will be useful but must have spent about 8 hours just looking through a lot of articles! I am glad that we did that assignment in class to learn about article evaluation, that was really helpful as I was going through all of my readings this week.

So I have submitted a revision, and also a needs assessment (twice) since my first one didn't work out right, I hope the second one is better but, I'm not sure yet.  I am greatly helped by Amy's comments in the topic paper....They were quite helpful in creating my revision. I hope that it is better now!!!!

I am happy that I knew what topic I wanted to pursue since last year, that was really helpful in knowing some background information and already having some data collection from previous classes and online survey data from my edmodo Spanish teacher share learning network.  Now to keep moving forward. 

I hope I am in the right direction!!! I am a little nervous!

So I have finished the rough or first draft of my opening proposal.  I think I have a good grasp of the topic that I am choosing but I am sure that Amy will guide me if I am too big or off track! I think I spent about 2 hours writing the two pages, luckily I did this topic for IDD and had already had some information for my Spanish pronunciation topic.  I am not altogether sure that I did the right thing with my definitions section but, luckily it is a rough draft and I will have the opportunity to make it solid!

Hold on to your hats folks.....It's research time!