The area I decided to focus my inquiry on is Math, more specifically word problems.
This is important to me because there is a common dip in test scores from 2nd grade to 3rd grade due to the fact that students have to read the math portion of the CST on their own, whereas in 2nd grade it is read to them. It's important for me to try to help my students come up with successful strategies to not only do well on the CST but to also know how to read a word problem and understand what it's asking.
The question I am asking is, Does drawing a diagram help students map out their thinking and how useful can it be towards helping a student solve a word problem?
The context I teach in is a Title 1, program improvement school. Our three biggest subgroups are Latino, English Learners and Socioeconomically disadvantaged. I teach 3rd grade and give bilingual support to those students who still haven't fully transitioned to English. I have 27 students, 17 girls and 10 boys.
The data I collected to answer my question are video interview with students and transcription, student surveys and 20 word problem worksheets that students answered throughout the course of the year and students' explanations of their reasoning.
The changes I have made in my teaching practice as a result of my inquiry are that I have gone over word problems with students in class to see their thinking. I've had them come up to explain their reasoning/answers to the class. I also moved away from giving release test questions and instead making up my own multi step questions and discussing those in class.
I have explicitly taught students how to diagram drawings since so many times they don't realize the importance of it. I've also gone about having students eliminate incorrect answers and do deductive reasoning instead of guessing.
The changes I have seen in my focal students as a result of my inquiry are that certain students are drawing out their answers to prove that it makes sense. Certain students still try to solve the problems in their head and as a result answer the problems incorrectly. In looking at my students' work over the course of the year I have found that they look more closely at answers and have to think more critically based on the types of questions I created. I still have yet to give them a final survey to see if they feel they learned things during the course of the year based on my study.
