Research Proposal

Yesterday I presented my research proposal...hopefully I won't have to change anything!
my question is: "what happens when English Language Learners are taught to blog?"
my sub questions ask:

• Will writing achievement be affected?
• will students see them selves as part of the classroom community?
• Will students be more reflective about the content?

All of my students are ELL who are facing "double the work." According to Short and Fitzimmons (2007), the country is attempting to find solutions to trying to teach content, literacy and language to students at the same time. High-Stakes testing has created an environment where language learners must perform on tests in their second language. They must learn to read and write as adolescents in their second language at a time when they should be using reading and writing as a learning tool. On top of that, they must learn the content provided by the state and district standards.

My plan is to teach them to blog. I will slowly implement blogging as a reflective tool in my social studies classroom. My hope is that by the end of my research they will not only respond to teacher questions but, summarize, reflect, and internalize the course content. I also hope that they visit the blogs of other students to comment and connect.

Blogs and technology are an important tool and resource for our students to learn. Due to technological advances jobs and expectations of employees are rapidly changing. According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, I am preparing my students for jobs that do not exist yet.

Okay, small "trailer" of my research. I'm hoping to being to quantify what we all know: technology makes a difference in the engagement and achievement of our students. After watching Darren and other educators successfuly integrate blogs I am excited to capture this process in my research. I believe that blogging creates an atmosphere of collaboration where, as Darren puts it, students become the experts!

Action Research

To complete my MAE I have to undergo a year-long research project. I love research. I'm a bit of a nerd I guess, but I love looking at what works, with which kids, and why. I'm particularly interested in the why! There is no magic formula in education to make all kids love learning and learn every day...but if we look at why we uncover a whole bunch of truths. Why brings us as close to that magic formula as we will ever get...for our own kids any way!
I need to pick a topic for my action research project. I've thought of a few topics:

• the use of blogs to increase achievement for low-language students
• phonemic awareness for adolescents
• improving literacy for adolescent language learners
• balancing a secondary classroom with both language learners and low language students
• countering "mochismo" to create a learning environmet

My assignment requires me to journal for the next week and look for patterns in what I am noticing and annoyed by in my classroom. My subject can be either me or my classes. So, for the next two weeks I will blog ...of course...to come up with the focus of my research.

So, please if you are reading this and you notice patterns or have ideas please leave me comments. I really want to do something that will be worthwhile for me, my students and my school. Hopefully, this can be something I use later on down the line when I go on for my doctorate degree.