Some Thoughts

After looking over this weeks Student Journals, I noted five students who said they completed more homework this week with the increase in sticks.  I also had one student who wrote about how she wanted reading to go back to the old way we had done it, where students are asked to write a summary for their reading each night.  I found her response interesting since many students initially stated in the student survey that they wanted something different for reading, something more fun like the spelling choice board.  In looking back at this students survey, I noticed that she stated that she would not do homework if she didn't have to.  However, each week since the change in homework, she has completed spelling and/or math homework.  Her initial survey can be seen below.  This is the student survey I handed out day one of the research study, before I announced I would no longer require homework to be completed each night.

While making a better effort to familiarize myself with my data, I now realize that the way I have been collecting data may need to be changed.  I have been circling the assignment that students return as well as marking tallies with the circle to indicate if more than one assignment was turned in.  Then, at the bottom I have been totaling the number of assignments turned in.  When I have been totaling the number of assignments turned in at the bottom of the sheet (which can be seen below) I have not been adding in the additional assignments (if students turned in more than one each day).  I'm not sure that this is the best way to do this.  I think I will have to go back through and keep running totals for each week,  not each day.  I am not sure how to best represent my data for a quick glance at totals for each sheet and I do not want to wait until the end of the study to figure out how best to total them.  Hopefully this visual of the sheet that I am discussing will help to clarify my thoughts.

This sheet shows the running totals at the bottom of the sheet for each

day and assignment that was returned.

This sheet shows a closer look at the tallies I discuss above.  The students
with 3 tallies next to spelling turned in 3 spelling assignments that day.