Project Summary

My action research project seeks to answer the following question: which strategies for teaching vocabulary produce the greatest gains in student retention of concepts and performance on standards based assessments? The project was conceived in the midst of a campus push to increase performance on science tests, whether they were district or state assessments. My principal decided to focus teacher efforts on the retention and subsequent use of vocabulary on assessments. The end goal of posing such a question is to effectively increase student retention of academic science vocabulary and subsequent application of the terms on district curriculum based assessments thereby increasing performance on the state exam. Currently the project consists of seven steps or segments. First I will assess the current levels of retention and application using district 5E lessons with a sample group consisting of the seventy-five students in my three sections of science. Subsequent steps include researching methods to increase retention of vocabulary, implementing three researched based strategies, disaggregating the resulting data, compiling a report, and presenting my findings to the staff at my school. Each strategy will be tested and assessed separately to increase the accuracy of resulting data thereby reflecting on the effectiveness of the strategy. While the presentation of the data will focus on the strategy that achieved the best results, all the strategies tested will be represented in the findings. It is my belief that there is no “one right answer” in this situation. Learning styles vary and the application of teaching strategies will vary with them. I think it will be interesting to see how the data reflects performance when focusing on an individual student from case to case.