Well done classmates.

Congratulations to everyone on a job well done.  The opportunity to work with all of you has been a rewarding one.  I enjoyed everyone's comments and most especially everyone's posts.  Action Research (AR) is a new subject for me and I enjoyed learning about it.  There's so much to learn in the field of AR, and it's too bad the semester ended so quickly. 

Our on-line RA circle provided me with a lot of insight, and Dr. Rivera's barrage of helpful PDF files provided me with a wealth of knowledge that I can refer to in the near and distant future.

This is also my first on-line class, and although I prefer face-to-face human interaction, I did enjoy the luxuries of having this class on-line.  In fact, I don't think I would have been able to take this class otherwise.   Special thanks to Dr. Rivera for making this an on-line class and most especially for her patience and understanding. 

Joyce & Amanda - You were both instrumental in making this class a reality.  I remember last semester when you had asked if I was going to take this course, and how worried you were that we wouldn't have enough students.  I'm glad you both pulled through, and now you are on pace to graduate because of it.  You can now implement everything you learned and apply Action Research to continually improve your strategies and techniques--we will ALL do the same when our time comes.

I guess you could say we all worked well together; we collaborated.  We put our thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and points of view on-line for all to see and worked diligently towards a common goal.  Good luck to all of you and I hope to see you in the future.

Last day!

Wow, I can't believe that today is actually our last day for this course! It has been a roller coaster for me because this class was my first online class. However, this class has taught me so much! I learned so much from each and every one of you, from your responses and discussions on the forums. It has been great to read all the experiences you all have encountered, and the just the knowledge you all have shared. I truly have gained so much.
Anyway, today I turned in all my assignments! I am so proud of myself for finishing all the assignments, especially the Literature Review! Took me awhile to finish, but I finished, so that is all that matters. I'm really happy with the results I have created with all my assignments. I know that all the knowledge that I have gained from researching and creating my assignments will benefit me for the rest of my life.

It's been a pleasure to be a part of this wonderful course and I hope to cross paths with all of you again. To Dr. Rivera, thank you for giving me a new perspective of online classes, I learn just as much as I would in a face-to-face class.

Good luck and take care, everyone! :)

Farewell ED486 Bloggers

Hi everyone! Well it seems our time together in this course has come to an end. I just wanted to say enjoyed my first week with you all (even though there was only 5 of us). I wonder how this course would have been if we had an in class course. I'm sure we would have been an awesome team together. I am glad to be walking away this summer with new knowledge gained. I enjoyed reading all your blogs and posts in Moodle and Blogger. The highlight of this summer course would have to be the action research. I really enjoyed this assignment, because I had an opportunity to actually try it out with elementary participants. I would have been nice to have a class party to hear how everyone's action research went. (hint hint...blog about it so I can read) Anyway, I just wanted to say goodbye everyone and good luck next semester and in your classrooms (for our veteran teachers).

This is Amanda signing out :)

Action Plan Due!

Hello all! Today, I have finally submitted my Action Plan. It feels good to finally finish and I enjoyed conducting the action plan that I have come up with. I can't believe tomorrow is our last day for this class. These five weeks really did go by fast! Right now, I am putting some finishing touches on the rest of the assignments and will be turning them in soon.

I hope you all are doing good and have completed all your assignments! Good luck everyone! Final stretch!

Action Plan continued...

Today, I carried out majority of steps of my Action Plan. Tomorrow will be my last day for my Action Plan. I really have enjoyed the last few days and been really happy with results. My topic is Improving Reading Comprehension with Strategies for Struggling Elementary Students. I hope that I have made a little impact with the participants, their company has been a pleasure and they have been a great group to conduct this action plan.

I hope all of your action plans are going in the right direction. We are almost there, everyone!!

We're almost finished

Hello everyone! Well I proud to say I have submitted 2/4 assignments. I'm using this day to catch up on Moodle posts. Anyway I had so much to say about the results of the action plan...I treated it as a mini lesson. Unfortunately, the action plan document table did not go so well. I struggled in completing the form, because I didn't have a common core or GDOE standard to compare it to. My topic is more student self improvement related; elementary students' test anxiety...see what I mean. Anyway I just applied what I knew.

I hope everyone action planning paper is going well. I'm just finishing up some final touches, then I plan to submit it. I can't believe the course is almost over...it still feels like the beginning. Well enjoy the rest of the days, and keep working hard...it is going to pay off.

Action Plan

Hello all! How is every doing with their Action Plan? Hopefully good! Today, I actually did a few steps on my Action Plan. It went better than I thought. I had 5 participants, 2 are 5th graders, 1 is 3rd grade and 2 are 1st graders. 3 out of the 5 are actually siblings, so I can tell they were getting distracted because they wanted to see what their sibling was doing. I plan to carry out the rest of my steps of my Action Plan tomorrow and couple days after. I am excited to see what the results will be.
Good luck, everyone!

Data Collection and Reporting

Today I read and article about the data collection and reporting from the Virginia Department of Education. I am glad Dr. Rivera shared this article with us. It reassuring to know that people cannot just share information and label it high quality. There are certain guidelines and standards they must follow. This article will definitely be of great assistance when it comes time to collect information for our action plan. I will certainly keep all of this in mind.

On a side note, I hope everyone's  researching is going well. Has anyone started on the action plan with participants???

  

Progress with our action plan!

Hello all! I hope everyone is doing great! Today, we discussed what are progress is for our action plan. I have made more and more progress as each day passes. Also, today we discussed what are some of our activities we plan to do for our action plan. Since I am focusing on improving reading comprehension with elementary students, I have decided that I will make a survey, just to ask the students what they are interested in when reading, reasons on why they read and what I can do to help them with comprehension. Furthermore, I'd like to focus on the some of the strategies that I feel will help students with reading comprehension, such as paraphrasing, reciprocal reading, rereading and generating questions. I am excited to see what the outcome will be. Good luck to you all!

Graphic Organizers

Sorry for my late post, but for yesterday, we discussed Graphic Organizers and how they impact student learning. I, myself still use graphic organizers for my projects and homework. Graphic organizers are a great tool for students to help them turn complex information to simple information that they can understand. In the presentation provided for us, it gave us some different types of Graphic Organizers, such as Venn Diagram, the KWHL chart, Story Star, T Chart, and Mapping strategies. I find that when using Graphic Organizers help me be organized with my work and helps me with comparing different types of things. Graphic Organizers will always be a part of my life because it is such a great tool to use!

PIBBA CONFERENCE

Sorry for the late post everyone. Anyway here are some pictures from the PIBBA Conference. Just like Luis, I finally figured out what PIBBA stands for: Pacific Islands Bilingual Biculture Association. I attended the conference Monday with Joyce. Unfortunately, we got there during the lunch break. So we missed the beginning and most of the presentations. However, we did get to see the last part which took place at the Latte Stone Park. This ceremony was amazing. They acknowledged the ancient spirits by burning coconut leaves and blowing the Kulu shell. They also conducted the entire ceremony in the Chamoru language. So people had to translate for other around them. I thought this was a great idea for interaction. At this point also realized, I barely understand my own language..because I only understood bits and pieces. I am so grateful the conference was held in Guam this year, and that I had the opportunity to attend it. I hope more people take advantage of this the next time its held here. Its such a wonderful and enlightening experience. Plus it really makes me proud to come from a Chamoru heritage.

Differentiated Instruction Strategies

Today we discussed differentiated instruction strategies. Dr. Rivera gave us a link to a powerpoint she created targeting learning and participation among a classroom with diversity, specifically Pacific Island students (EL). The presentation mentioned what is differentiated instruction, what do we need to do as educators, and then it gave a brief list of different instruction strategies.

• Differentiated instruction is a type of structured instruction that is personalized (based on interests, abilities, and learning styles) to meet the needs of all the students. 
• As educators we need to address our students' needs, ensure that our student population meet district academic and content standards, know our students, provide them with opportunities, and evaluate ourselves as teachers.
• Strategies include hands-on-explorations that focus on comprehension, vocabulary building, problem solving, schema building, student interaction, cooperative learning, listening, and writing.

After I read this I selected three strategies that I thought would be beneficial in my action plan research. This article really helped in further narrowing my action plan research strategy. I think i'm going more in a discussion route with the students, as well as researching prior methods  that have been done to help cope.

Differentiated Instruction

Today, Dr. Rivera shared with us a presentation about Differentiating Instruction for Pacific Island Students. Guam has so many diversity, and by having differentiated instruction is great! All students learn at a different level, so differentiated instruction is a great way for students learn because we are able to create lesson plans to fit their need. Also, we shared which differentiated instructions will be helpful in our action plan research. Since, I am focusing on improving reading comprehension and some strategies and skills that might be helpful, I found that Picture Prompt, Punctuated Lectures and Think-Pair-Share will be very useful when doing my action research. It was great to read more about differentiated instruction and learn more about it.

PIBBA Conference

Pacific Islands Bilingual & Bicultural Association of Guam!  And now I know what PIBBA stands for.  I must admit, I had no idea that PIBBA even existed, and may not have ever known had I not taken ED486.  I had a great time!  There was well over 150 people at the PIBBA Conference to include University of Guam students, Senators from the different Micronesian Islands, Professors from UOG (both past and present), and prominent Guamanians all working together to promote bilingual and bicultural activities throughout Micronesia.  I had a chance to talk to a few of the members, and they are definitely on-board with trying to improve the quality of education here on Guam and throughout Micronesia.  If you are in the education career field, PIBBA is definitely something you need to be a part of.  There was a wealth of knowledge throughout amongst the crowd of conference attendees and they were all willing to share their experiences, and provide guidance.  Definitely a network of colleagues worth getting to know and become a part of. 

I tried to stay low-key and assist as needed, but the folks were so friendly and the opportunity to network with some great people was too hard to resist.  Make no mistake, however, there was a lot of work to be done, and I worked hard to keep up.  I purchased and delivered 10 cases of water and 4 bags of ice.  And I also managed the breakfast and lunch plate tables.  I kept busy and cleaned up the food room while people strolled in and out of the conference in between conference breaks; people drink a lot of coffee!  I had a lot of fun.  If time permits, I would definitely volunteer to work there next year.  I'll probably convince Bernie to join me.  BTW---I gave her the UOG Alumni application and I'm confident she'll fill it out and turn it in.  I'm going to get her on the wall-of-fame at UOG.   

PIBBA Conference

Today we met at the Latte Stone Park in Hagatna for the PIBBA (Pacific Islands Bilingual Bi-cultural Association) Conference. When we met, it was already about 1:30-2:00pm. At the Latte Stone Park is where they held the I Pa’ok, A CHamoru Cultural Experience, which was definitely a great thing to see. The Chamoru Culture Experience was mostly spoken in the language, Chamoru, so I did not understand what they were saying. However, Dr. Rivera mentioned that they were speaking to their ancestors. When hearing them speak, I felt that it was so passionate and respectful. Also, I do not really know what it is called, but I felt that one person was blessing each person who had Chamoru blood in them. They were given a card to write down a name that they'd like, or a name of something they like to do or what they enjoy doing. It was great experience overall.

Also, we discussed why fluency is important and what the connection and relation between visual and non-visual information with reading.

Communication Strategies, Reading Comprehension & Literacy Student Interview

Today, we talked about why communication is so essential, more important details on why reading comprehension is important and we did a Literacy Student Interview where we had to partner up with someone and discuss our answers.

With communication being so essential, I believe everyone is capable of reading, writing and communicating in an articulate and organized manner. However, there are a lot of students who actually lack the necessary skills needed for effective communication. Communication is the vehicle we use to convey information to one another. Reading comprehension is always going to be important because when we read, we want our students to understand what they are reading. Also, when students read is important for them to be successful in school. I partnered up with Amanda for the Literacy Student Interview, and when comparing our answers, the answers we had were very similar to each other. The information that I've collected I know will help me improve to become a better writer and reader.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

So much articles to choose from!

Hello everyone! How is every doing so far? I hope good! Anyway, today we are just discussing more about our Literature Review Research and the progress we are making.

As for myself, I have found a few more articles and will be narrowing it done by the end of this week so that I can start organizing and find the path I'll be taking for this Literature Review. We also received an email from Dr. Rivera regarding the Field Work which will be held at the Latte Stone Park. I am excited to attend and volunteer. I know that we will all benefit from this.

Good luck! See you all on Monday!

Yay, I found MORE articles!

Good afternoon fellow bloggers! I have great news I found additional articles. I am extremely excited about this. I decided to focus on the causes of student test anxiety and coping and preventative strategies for it. Due to this brilliant plan...I found more articles. Anyway just to reiterate my topic, its Elementary Aged Students Coping with Test Anxiety. 

We have all received an email from Dr. Rivera about the conference next week. It will be held at the Latte Freedom site. I can't wait for this conference. I am anxious to hear what the speakers are going to share with us. Hopefully I am volunteering at interesting presentation, regardless I am still excited. Yayy, our first educational conference!!! (at least for me it is)

Anyway good luck with researching everyone. See you all Monday :) Maybe we can carpool, let me know I will start an email or something.

In the process of my Literature Review

Hello everyone! How is everyone doing on their Literature Review? I hope you all are doing great. As for me, I've been doing some research these past few days, and since I am focusing on Reading Comprehension for my Action Plan Research, and just as Dr. Rivera has mentioned to try and make our Literature Research on the same page. I have decided to do that.

I am getting more intrigued and very excited to find out more about my topic. My topic is Reading Comprehension and what are some strategies that will target or help improve Reading Comprehension in elementary students.  I found a couple of articles that really caught my attention. There is just so much information out there that it's a lot to take in, but I know that this will just benefit my Literature Review. A lot of the articles mention that comprehension requires the reader to be an active constructor of meaning, which I interpret it to be that there a lot of students who do not simply recognize the meaning that is IN a text. However, I still am doing research on articles on which strategies worked and did not work when used on students. It's very interesting to read upon these articles, because every student is different. Nonetheless, every student has the capability to learn and improve every day. So with that said, I hope every one is doing well with their Lit Review as well as their Action Plan Research.

Good luck, everyone! :)

Literature Researching in the works

Hi everyone! Hope all your literature researching is going well. I have found three articles so far. One of the articles was about what can be done about test anxiety in children, another about the prevalence of test anxiety among children, and the last was about the causes of test anxiety among elementary and secondary school-aged children. I still need more literature research, so I plan to try using the library journal collection online.

Although I'm finding articles, I think I still need a better sense of direction. I am planning to create an outline to serve as map. I notice one of my weaknesses in writing is organization. Hopefully it helps. Good luck everyone. Remember we all have each others' numbers and emails, and we have this blog. Lets work together :)

Excellent Collaboration

It was nice meeting you all! I enjoyed our discussion and everyone has excellent ideas to share. With Dr. Rivera's tutelage and our support with each other we will be able to  complete this course. I look forward to working with you all in the school setting in the near future.

Oral Presentation Topics and Pizza!

Hi everyone! Today, we did our Oral Presentation Topics. We also had our a mini "pizza party". Thank you again to Luis, Fatima and Dr. Rivera, Amanda and I will treat next time! Anyway,  it was great to hear all of your topics you all have chosen. Fatima has chosen that she wants to focus on journal writing within K-1st classroom because she is teaching that grade for Summer School. Fatima believes that with Reading how very important it is, she also believes that Writing is just as important. Amanda wants to focus solely on elementary students and how to cope with test anxiety because she will be teaching elementary school level. Luis has shared his topic and what he would like to do for his action plan research, which is physical activity on self efficacy. He shared his personal experience and finds his inspiration from his children, who all have experience confidence on different levels. I am excited to see where and how all your research will turn out! Good luck to you all!

Oral Presentations

          Hello everyone. Today we all presented our action research topics. Fatima wants to focus on journal writing in the kindergarten classroom because of her observations in her own classroom teaching third graders and now kindergarteners. She believes that teachers have different priorities based on school standards such as success for all. Joyce is planning to target reading comprehension drawing from the experiences she had with her students from her methods practicum class. Lastly, Luis chose his topic on physical activity on self efficacy. He finds his inspiration from his three kids who are all very different in their confidence levels. Everyone who presented today were all very convincing. I can't wait to see what everyone presents. I'm excited to get started. Good luck everybody!

Mr. and Mrs. Mendiola

Sorry I missed class everyone! Meet my husband Christopher Mendiola :)

-Amanda Mendiola

Congratulations Mrs. Amanda Mendiola! :) 

Introducing the ED486 Team!

Pictured L-R:  Kevlyn Hebwer, Joycelynn Carlos, Amanda Ulloa Mendiola, Dr. Rivera, Josephine Camacho, Fatima Tibudan, and Luis Camacho.