My Topic
Utilizing Words Hunts to Make Word Study More Meaningful
Why I Chose This Topic
A large part of the first grade curriculum is phonics and word study. The curriculum that my district has adopted seemed way too easy for the vast majority of my class last year, while a few students struggled with the material. Furthermore, the students didn’t seem to apply what was taught in word study (through word sorts and other word work) to their reading and writing. Therefore, I decided to change my approach to teaching word study. I decided to utilize Words Their Way and Word Matters to create small-group instruction plans at students’ developmental levels. These small-group instruction plans would be taught in conjunction with the district-mandated phonics curriculum (however, some of the lessons from the phonics curriculum were omitted since they overlapped with student’s word study (i.e. word families).
Through the Literature Review, I found strong support for small-group word study instruction that includes word sorts. However, I also came across a new strategy that, although there has been limited research, is supposed to help students extend what they learn in word study to reading. That strategy is word hunts. Therefore, the focus of my study is to determine whether the inclusion of word hunts in word study instruction helps students apply what they’ve learned to their reading.
Writing my Proposal
The proposal writing was similar to the abstract writing done with science research reports. Determining how data would be collected was the easiest step (once I had decided on my final research question (see Writing my Literature Review). I knew I wanted to take a quantitative approach because it seems to be less subjective than the qualitative methods. The most difficult component of the proposal was defining my research design. My research design seemed to have features of certain designs while lacking other features. For example, it has some elements of quasiexperimental designs. However, rather than grouping students so that groups are similar, the variable and the control are applied to every student within their homogenous groups. I decided to go with this design and in writing my proposal address this difference and how it would be dealt with (only looking at trends within groups with each group having a control period and an experimental period).
Writing my Literature Review
The literature review was similar to a lot of the literature reviews I have had to do when doing science research projects. However, one thing that made the writing process easier than in those projects was grouping the research findings by themes and presenting each theme within its own section. This made it much easier to organize the vast majority of information.
Through the literature review, I found that my 2nd draft research question - What is the effect of homogenous grouping of students for word study on first grade students’ spelling accuracy? - had already been answered by many studies. It was unanimous that the homogenous grouping of students was the most effective format for instruction. Therefore, I had to tweak the focus of my study. I found my new focus also through the research, or rather lack thereof. In Word Matters and Words Their Way the authors mention utilizing word hunts. However, when I went to find research on the usefulness of this strategy, there was little to be found.
Peer Writing Feedback
The peer feedback helped me to think out some of the potential problems in my study and to make my research question clearer. It was also a “check” to make sure I had written explicitly enough so that it was clear that each element of the rubric was present. The peer feedback helped my research question evolve the most (the question itself probably went through 5-7 different drafts). My question changed scope and targeted learning goal throughout the drafts to make it more focused. I also found others in the class with similar research projects and we were able to share literature sources and ideas for making this research feasible in the classroom.
Utilizing Words Hunts to Make Word Study More Meaningful
Why I Chose This Topic
A large part of the first grade curriculum is phonics and word study. The curriculum that my district has adopted seemed way too easy for the vast majority of my class last year, while a few students struggled with the material. Furthermore, the students didn’t seem to apply what was taught in word study (through word sorts and other word work) to their reading and writing. Therefore, I decided to change my approach to teaching word study. I decided to utilize Words Their Way and Word Matters to create small-group instruction plans at students’ developmental levels. These small-group instruction plans would be taught in conjunction with the district-mandated phonics curriculum (however, some of the lessons from the phonics curriculum were omitted since they overlapped with student’s word study (i.e. word families).
Through the Literature Review, I found strong support for small-group word study instruction that includes word sorts. However, I also came across a new strategy that, although there has been limited research, is supposed to help students extend what they learn in word study to reading. That strategy is word hunts. Therefore, the focus of my study is to determine whether the inclusion of word hunts in word study instruction helps students apply what they’ve learned to their reading.
Writing my Proposal
The proposal writing was similar to the abstract writing done with science research reports. Determining how data would be collected was the easiest step (once I had decided on my final research question (see Writing my Literature Review). I knew I wanted to take a quantitative approach because it seems to be less subjective than the qualitative methods. The most difficult component of the proposal was defining my research design. My research design seemed to have features of certain designs while lacking other features. For example, it has some elements of quasiexperimental designs. However, rather than grouping students so that groups are similar, the variable and the control are applied to every student within their homogenous groups. I decided to go with this design and in writing my proposal address this difference and how it would be dealt with (only looking at trends within groups with each group having a control period and an experimental period).
Writing my Literature Review
The literature review was similar to a lot of the literature reviews I have had to do when doing science research projects. However, one thing that made the writing process easier than in those projects was grouping the research findings by themes and presenting each theme within its own section. This made it much easier to organize the vast majority of information.
Through the literature review, I found that my 2nd draft research question - What is the effect of homogenous grouping of students for word study on first grade students’ spelling accuracy? - had already been answered by many studies. It was unanimous that the homogenous grouping of students was the most effective format for instruction. Therefore, I had to tweak the focus of my study. I found my new focus also through the research, or rather lack thereof. In Word Matters and Words Their Way the authors mention utilizing word hunts. However, when I went to find research on the usefulness of this strategy, there was little to be found.
Peer Writing Feedback
The peer feedback helped me to think out some of the potential problems in my study and to make my research question clearer. It was also a “check” to make sure I had written explicitly enough so that it was clear that each element of the rubric was present. The peer feedback helped my research question evolve the most (the question itself probably went through 5-7 different drafts). My question changed scope and targeted learning goal throughout the drafts to make it more focused. I also found others in the class with similar research projects and we were able to share literature sources and ideas for making this research feasible in the classroom.
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