ENGAGEMENT
The theme of engagement was not initially a theme we, as teachers, had zoomed in on throughout the process. We thought students would be engaged with student-led inquiry and we were focused primarily on trouble shooting other areas. Because I was researching for my masters, I wanted to make sure we weren't missing any emerging themes, so I did an inductive analysis of my data. Right away, I saw that much of the student data I had was commenting on aspects of student engagement. When I looked further, 90% of the student responses around engagement were positive.
On the flip side, we observed times throughout the project when there were difficulties with engagement and clarity of what role buddies were playing. This was mostly because of a blurred vision of the project between the teachers. The main question was: Will students been given time outside of buddies once a week to work on their inquiry? If they were given time, they could come together and share and talk about their topic. Finding time for this with constraints in the older grades made this difficult.
If there wasn't extra time, then did we want students doing individual projects or a collaborative project? Is a collaborative project too difficult for multi-aged students? If they didn't work on it outside of buddy time, would they just be assisting their little buddy with their inquiry? These are questions we had to figure out!
For a short time, the project became the big buddy just helping the little buddy with their inquiry. While this was successful in some instances, the little buddies reported getting help with spelling, locating facts etc., other big buddies were “bored with how long it took their little buddy to write.” This was not inquiry for the older students. Several little buddies reported “feeling rushed.” Throughout all this we continued to collaborate and problem solve this process for our students. Each of has saw value, if we could just work through these roadblocks. We found ourselves, essentially, at a crossroad wondering how and if we should continue.
On the flip side, we observed times throughout the project when there were difficulties with engagement and clarity of what role buddies were playing. This was mostly because of a blurred vision of the project between the teachers. The main question was: Will students been given time outside of buddies once a week to work on their inquiry? If they were given time, they could come together and share and talk about their topic. Finding time for this with constraints in the older grades made this difficult.
If there wasn't extra time, then did we want students doing individual projects or a collaborative project? Is a collaborative project too difficult for multi-aged students? If they didn't work on it outside of buddy time, would they just be assisting their little buddy with their inquiry? These are questions we had to figure out!
For a short time, the project became the big buddy just helping the little buddy with their inquiry. While this was successful in some instances, the little buddies reported getting help with spelling, locating facts etc., other big buddies were “bored with how long it took their little buddy to write.” This was not inquiry for the older students. Several little buddies reported “feeling rushed.” Throughout all this we continued to collaborate and problem solve this process for our students. Each of has saw value, if we could just work through these roadblocks. We found ourselves, essentially, at a crossroad wondering how and if we should continue.
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Luckily, we worked well together as colleagues. We listened to each other and actively worked to find some solutions to the problems. Because the big buddy teachers were starting to see value in inquiry (some of their students were requesting time to work on it), they became more willing to allot more time for it. We decided that the little buddies would finish writing up their inquiry in the form of a book and the big buddies would do some research on their own to add to their little buddy's book. We also had the little buddies share their books, and the big buddies gave them 2 stars and a wish. From there, we launched into a creative, collaborative project with their inquiry buddy. This was very successful and students worked better than ever and were more engaged than ever!
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Additional Findings:
Also check out the references we used to support our findings.
