Methods/Procedures

To gain insight into my wondering of how project-based learning affects different

aspects of the classroom, I implemented many actions to produce data. The driving
factors in implementing these methods are increasing accountability of the students in
their lack of student engagement and motivation, realizing an abundance of unacceptable
behavior, and the drive to boost the students academic success. First, I implemented the
actual project, which is the Second Grade Post Office. Second, I created a pre and post
attitude assessments. Then, I gave formative assessments on content. Lastly, I recorded
percentage of completed homework by the students, and logged student behavior at the
end of most days.
To implement project-based learning in the classroom, I discovered a project
called The Second Grade Post Office. The method implemented of the Post Office
happens throughout the inquiry process of implementing other methods. This project is
the heart of my inquiry project. All other methods are implemented to reveal how
students respond to this project-based learning strategy.
The Second Grade Post Office involves the students in my class as well as the
students in the six other second grade classes. This project requires the students to be
socially and academically involved. Most importantly, the Post Office project also
requires accountability and motivation, socially and academically, which is why I thought
it would be a great project to implement to answer my wondering. The Second Grade
Post Office project is fun and engaging for students because it involves real life
interactions and experiences such as working with other students and buying stamps and

envelopes with money that they earn. What makes the Post Office so engaging is that the
students in my class run the Second Grade Post Office.

Motivationally, the students are hired into jobs within the Post Office that they
have to prove that they can acquire through being accountable for their classwork,
homework, behavior, and engagement. There are about 7 different jobs that the students
can fill. Some students sell stamps and envelopes to other classes as well as students that
deliver and collect the mail from other classrooms. Within the motivation aspect of the
project, another classroom management method is implemented to accompany the current
clip chart system. For example, when students clip up on the chart, they earn 5 cents. So,
students are rewarded with various amount of money to use in the Post Office when their
behavior is good. This method inside the post office project helps to increase motivation
and accountability to make good choices.
Academically, throughout the curriculum of this project, students are taught how
to write friendly letters, address envelopes, and how to count coins and make change. All
other second grade classes were taught this content, but I only analyzed my own
classroom for this inquiry. Once students were taught these key aspects in class, students
were given formatives, as mentioned as another method in this section. After receiving
the scores, I hired students to their positions. There are students that sell stamps and
envelopes as well as students that deliver and collect the mail from other classrooms.
There are Nixie Clerks that decide if the envelopes are addressed correctly and sorters
that sort the mail into the correct outgoing mail box. Academically, the Second Grade
Post Office is a way for the every day curriculum to become intertwined into a project. In

math, students are learning about money in the real classroom curriculum. The project
brings a real-life aspect to what the students are already learning in class as well as
helping them make a connection between school and community.
The first action within the Post Office project that I took as I conducted my
inquiry was implementing an attitude assessment about the project that I would be
implementing in the following weeks (Appendix C). I created this attitude assessment to
see how my students felt about the post office project and if it motivated them in any
way. Before I gave this assessment the students had a clear understanding of the project
and how each student needed to be held accountable for their actions in order to fully
participate. The students understood that they needed to be held accountable for their
behavior, turning in homework, and staying on task in order to receive a job. The attitude
assessment asked the students if the post office project motivated them to complete
homework, try their best in school, or to keep trying when material got hard. It also asked
if the students felt excited about writing letters to their friends and if they are more
willing to try their best in class to get the post office job that they want. I recognized that
this 10-question assessment would only take a maximum of 10 minutes since it only
required the students to read the questions and circle a smile face or a frown face to
answer how the particular question connects to their feelings. I implemented this
assessment during morning work. I had the sheet lying on their desk as they arrived in the
classroom. I collected the assessments the students completed them and I reviewed the
papers during the 30-minute break while my students were at specials.
The second action I took as I conducted my inquiry was giving formatives while
the students were learning the content they needed to know for the post office project.

The first was understanding how to write friendly letters and address envelopes and the
second was understanding how to add coins and make change. Before giving these
assessments, I created 5 mini money lessons and 5 letters and envelope lessons. It took
me a total of 10 days to teach the lessons during the 30 min RtI block.
I then created two formatives assess the important content of the project that I had
taught. The first formative was given after I finished teaching the lessons on how to write
friendly letters and address envelopes (Appendix B). The second formative I gave was
given about a week later after I taught the students the lessons on how to add coins and
make change (Appendix A). The formative asked the students to add similar and different
coins, make change when given the story problem, and creating different ways to make a
certain amount of money. I gave these assessments during the 30-minute block that is
allocated to Response to Intervention (RtI). I arranged and planned for these assessments
to not take time away from other activities. The purpose of these formative assessments
was to record what information my students had mastered to they would be successful
with the project. my students retained when a project was in mind.
The third action I took while conducting my inquiry was recording the percentage
of homework completed every week. When I started colleting data before I implemented
the PBL, I noticed that only half the class would bring in their homework completed
when it was due. I used the post office project to motivate them to bring in their
homework. As an action, the whole class and I created an anchor chart naming the
different ways to stay accountable for their good behavior. The discussion was lead with
the idea that if the students followed the chart expectations, they would be successful in
the post office project. One of the aspects on the chart was to turn in homework when it is

due. Every Monday when homework is due, I make a chart to record the names of
students who has brought in homework and what the percentage of the class turned it in
completed. I record this data during the specials block on Monday. I calculate a
percentage and keep the chart in my records to compare weeks. The purpose of taking
this action is to see if the PBL is motivating them to complete their homework.
The next action I took to conduct my inquiry was recording the behavior
management system at the end of each day to track any differences in behavior. I wanted
to see if earning money for the post office project affected the behavior of students in any
way, especially after we discussed the accountability expectations in the previous action.
My classrooms behavior management system consists of a chart with 7 colors that the
students can move to according to their behavior in the classroom. If a student makes a
smart choice, they can move up to the next color on the clip chart. If a student makes a
poor choice, they will be asked to move down to the next color on the clip chart. The
students have the ability to redeem themselves and move back up the colored chart after
they have clipped down. I have recorded the number of students that ended on the
different 7 colors at the end of each day. I started recording the clip chart at the beginning
of the semester before implementing the post office project and I have recorded the
behavior during and after the project was implemented. Although the teachers in the
classroom are in charge of allowing the students to clip up or down, my Collaborating
Teacher (CT) and I guaranteed that we were to praise and clip down students who deserve
it to avoid error in the data. The purpose of recording the behavior plan is to analyze if
earning money for the PBL has affected the behavior in the classroom over time.

The last action I took to conduct my inquiry was giving my students a postattitude assessment after 5 weeks of the Post Office project went by (Appendix D). At
this point, the students have had time to determine how the Post Office affected them
academically, motivationally, and behaviorally. The purpose of this assessment was to see
if the students attitude about the project changed in any way. Some questions asked if the
Post Office would help them remember how to count money over the Summer or into
next year. It also asked if it encourages them to make good choices in the classroom, as
well as if it motivated them to do their homework. There were 10 questions on the
assessment. I administered this assessment during the RtI reading block. It took the
students 5 minutes to complete the assessment by circling in the smiley or frown face that
connected to how they felt about each question.
Finally, I made sense of my data by analyzing the results of the assessments and
recording the homework completion and behavior plan over time. First, the attitude
assessment data analysis process was very simple. I made notes of how many students
answered each question with a smile or frown face. I made sense of this data by
comparing the questions and understanding where the students do and do not feel
motivated. This was the first action given in the data collection process. This action was
extremely important because it gave me an idea of how my students felt about projectbased learning. It gave me an insight of what kinds of actions I needed to take next and a
prediction of how the data might look. For example, 21 of 22 students answered with a
smile face when asked if they are more willing to complete their homework and
classwork because of the post office. From that question, I knew to start recording

homework completion and that the percentages of completed homework could be

expected to rise.
Second, after taking the action of giving an attitude assessment, I created two
formative assessments to see if the students are retaining information they learned for the
post office project. I analyzed the scores of these formatives by grading them and
analyzing the percentage of students that passed with a 70 percent or above and which
questions the students answered incorrectly the most. I then wondered if the scores were
high and low because of motivation, mastery of content, or how I taught the content. The
assessments were extremely useful to prove if PjBL helps students retain information
more than traditional instructional strategies. Later after these formatives were given, my
CT and I were actually teaching money in the math curriculum. We compared the
formative scores to a pre-assessment given to the students by my CT and my CT said that
they scored higher and had a higher content knowledge on money this year than any of
her past years. This bit of information helped me conclude how PBL affects student
academic success.
Third, I made sense of the recordings of homework completed by my students
over time. Although, I did not sequentially take this action after the attitude assessments
and formatives, I conducted this at the same time over many weeks to track any changes.
After recording the completion of homework over several weeks, I compared the
percentages from before starting the project, to during the project, and soon, after the
project. This process allows me to see if the post office project motivated my students to
complete their homework like the attitude assessment revealed it would. I want to make
sense of this information in a graph display to show the rising or falling over time.

Next, I made sense of the behavior management data in the classroom by

recording the number of students that ended on each color of the chart ever day. Positive
behavior is labeled by green, yellow, orange, red, then off the chart, in that order. Those
are the colors of the top half of the chart. All students start on green (in the middle of the
chart). I implemented this action at the same time as the other actions over the course of
several weeks. I recorded and compared how the students have been behaving before,
during, and soon after, the project. I will create a graph to display the rising or falling in
good behavior. This data will show if project-based learning affects the motivation to
behave more in school.
Last, I made sense of the post-attitude assessment management data. I made notes
of how many students answered each question with a smile or frown face. This step in the
action process was very important because it gave me the overall answers to how my
students felt about the project from beginning to end. It really let me know if it motivated
them in any way, such as academically, behaviorally, and motivationally.
To engage in summative data analysis, I looked across my data chronologically as
a whole. I developed three categories to organize my data. They were academic data,
behavior data, and motivation and engagement data. I read the data within each category
to develop three learning statements in the next section.