Workshop Research Cliffnotes

(1) Your research question 

What are the best practices and methodology for upper elementary students in Common Core State Standards to be successful in reading and writing? 

(2) The intended population you wish to study (examples may include my 3rd grade students, my fellow teachers, my school's curricula/standards, etc.).

My population will be focused this fall on my 4th grade students, but will also look into the practices of other teachers within out school. We are just now switching to Common Core and I am curious to see how reading and writing instruction changes to reflect the changes in the standards. I will implement workshops in my classroom and use the results to show growth versus my instruction last year. 

(3)  What you plan on measuring in your study (student learning, teacher attitudes, history of an educational practice, usage of technology, etc.).

I will measure student learning in regards to their ability to read and write. The basis for the change in curriculum and practices is based upon the educational research and theories that have been published in the past. 

(4)  How you plan on acquiring the data for your study (a test, a survey, historical documents, etc.).

I will collect writing samples from the beginning of the year, as well as previous year's writing samples from their student portfolios. I will use research based measures for data improvement such as Reading 3D and rubrics to show the students' growth. I plan to survey teachers on their practices, while following my counting plan, to find out how much time is truly dedicated to literacy each day in every class. 

(5) Which general form of design you intend to employ

This study will primarily be qualitative, although I feel that there should be some quantitative data used, for reading I would use data and I would survey teachers and students to get their take on the workshops. As for qualitative, this may involve a variety of data collection. For example, through interactive, I would observe the collective classroom as a social group and the conversations had through ethnographic research, but also may have a specific case study of students in my classroom and possibly others. Ideally, I would achieve a triangulation design for research, so that there is less subjectivity in the qualitative findings.