RES 5040: Teacher as Researcher (spring 09)

Question:
How does the implementation of literature circles affect student attitudes about reading in a middle school classroom?

For this Action Research Project, I will actually be conducting research on two topics: one, how to correctly implement a literature circle unit, and two, how will it affect student attitudes about reading? I need to do the preliminary research to make sure that I understand the procedures and planning of an effective theme-based unit. After my unit is ready, I can proceed with surveying student opinions before the literature circles unit is actually conducted.

Setting:
The setting for this project will be Brevard Middle School in Transylvania County, a rural community in Western North Carolina. The school has approximately 600 students, with roughly 200 children in each grade level.

Participants:
To conduct this project, I will focus on eighth grade students; an interesting mix of developing young teens who are the "big kids" of the school, often with big attitudes to match. I teach Communication Skills (what most middle schools call "Language Arts") to about 75 students each day. My class load includes one inclusion class (with daily support from an EC teacher), one advanced class (attended by higher-achieving and/or AIG students) and two standard classes. At this point, I plan on focusing the study in only one of the four classes, though I honestly have not decided which class I will use. My first instinct would be to do it in my advanced class; they are generally avid readers. Upon further reflection, I realized it might be more beneficial for information purposes, and for student achievement to use a lower-performing class. I would like to use all four of my classes, but worry that it might yield more data than is managable for this study.

Final Thoughts:
I am excited about the possibilties of designing and implementing something totally new into the classroom. As chapter 3 of Stringer (2007) states, teachers need to boost our own creative energy. In addition to that, I want to gain some perspective on WHY literature circles are effective, particularly with middle school students. Do they really improve student attitudes about reading?

Amy Galloway