From the prior week of data collection, I had collected a reflective journal of my experience implementing the transition strategies to my class. Even though a reflective journal is valuable data, you can miss some important information because you are unable to see everything that is going on at every moment while teaching. Since I want to see how the students react and what they do during the transition I thought that the best action to take was to collect data through a video. This will record not only time of the transition, but it will also allow me to view what may be affecting the time and analyze how it is affecting the time.

After the data collection that I had made last week, my next decision was to take a video of the students during an entire transition period so that I could truly see what each student does during the transition. I took the video in the morning during the students’ center time. Since I can’t post the video due to confidentially and privacy, I can explain how the transition is structured. When my CT finishes in small group she tells the students to “alright everyone, clean up”. With that cue, the students rush to either put their book boxes on the self (if their read to self or read to someone), put their cards, worksheets, stories, or sight word papers in their cubbies (if your work on writing or word work), clean up all the materials from the word work buckets and place them back on the shelf (if their word work), or they just go to the carpet if they were working with the teacher. There are a lot of things going on during this “clean up” time, but the students are walking—some even scurrying—to do their practiced transition. Once students sit in their designated square on the carpet, they are supposed to await the teacher to come and send them on their next center. The video showed that some students were talking while on the carpet, not fully engaged and waiting quietly. My CT didn’t say anything to them until she got in front of them. There were some stragglers getting to the carpet as well who were making sure the room and tables were clean and organized. Even with the stragglers, my CT started to refocus the students to transition into their next center. I stopped the video while she was talking to the students about who would be reading with who, (according to the cards they placed prior to beginning centers) since I wanted to focus on the movement and the engagement right after the transition. When she was sending the students on their way for center number two, I began the video again so that I could see not only the transition to the carpet but also the transition from the carpet to the next activity. I did this so I could see the full extent of the carpet transition. It isn’t just a transition that is a one step process, it essentially is three steps: getting to the carpet, refocusing, and leaving the carpet.

From what I saw in the video, the students were a little more distracted than usual, I’m not sure if this was due to me recording or if it was just a fluke. The content that I recorded lasted for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. This includes getting to the carpet portion and leaving the carpet portion. The majority of the time in the beginning did come from my teacher cleaning and coming to the carpet as well. Thus it wasn’t just the students being inattentive and not following directions. For kindergarten, I feel as though this time is quick because they are so young and they are having to do a lot before getting to the carpet. They aren’t just moving straight there, they have to clean up. This piece of data allowed me to get a better visual on the students’ engagement, movement, and time during the carpet transition. I would like to collect a couple more videos of their transitions but vary the time of day and the reason for transitioning.

The other piece of data that I collected were observational notes made by my supervisor. Since I was going to be teaching a lesson, I figured having an outsider observe the transitions during my lesson would provide me with insight into my inquiry. In my lesson I read the students a book on the carpet and then informed them that we would be doing an activity at their seats. From the notes, my supervisor mentioned that the transition from the carpet to the tables was under one minute, which is very quick. He added that might also have been influenced by the students excitement to get to their tables to start the activity. After the activity, instead of going to the carpet, I told the students just to get out their yellow science notebooks and a pencil. I informed them that when they had done this and they were ready to give me a thumbs up. My supervisor noted that I did use a reward incentive when I did this because I told a couple students who were ready first to go clip up (the reward/punishment system within the class). This could have also influenced the time of the transition. Even without the carpet transition in this portion of the lesson, the students still managed to transition quickly which makes me think that there might be more to the carpet transition than just having movement. I think that my next step is making this observations and videos of how the incentives within the carpet transition influences the time as well. Additionally, I think that having student input is always beneficial for any type of research that is being held in a classroom, so I plan on getting one of the student’s views on the transition to the carpet. Their information and opinion may give me a new perspective on the transition that I hadn’t thought of or realized.

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