When I was formulating my research question I knew I wanted to do something about choice in the classroom. Throughout my many practicums I hadn’t seen much choice and I wanted to see how choice would make an impact on students engagement, motivation, and learning. I also wanted to dabble a little in themed activities and if the activities were tailored to a specific student would they be more willing to participate. I started with a rough draft of how I wanted my research question to touch on. My first draft was:
“How does choice and themed activities that reflect students interest help them academically?”
Once I started working one on one with a student and tutoring them I got to know their interests and what they don’t necessarily like. I then gave them choice on what type of activities we do, how we do them, and in what order we do them. I also saw that they had an interest in basketball so when we needed to sort word we would sort them by shooting baskets. I noticed that my student enjoyed their activities and we continued to do them, the student was reminded that at anytime they got sick of an activity we could do something else. I stated “You name it and I’ll do it” We played basketball for multiple weeks until I noticed her motivation was lacking and she wasn’t grasping the material. I asked her if she wanted to do something else and she said yes. She wanted to do something with hula hoops and it was my job as her tutor to figure out what to do. From this point on I knew I had to change my research question. I no longer wanted to know about the order in which she wants to do the activities I wanted her to pick between activities. When lesson planning I would make two options for each component of the lesson and she was able to choose which activity she wanted to do. I edited my research question to the following:
“How can giving students choices help motivate them to complete activities?”
From here I continued to keep my research question the same and collected memos based on my question. If you’d like to read more about the memos I collected click the tab “Research Memos”.