Presentation

I met with a few members of my informal PLC (we meet regularly to "swap" lesson ideas.) We came together this week to download about this year and talk about next year, specifically determining benchmarks and proficiency levels by grade level as well as discussing how to meet the global competency requirements of the World Language Program Review. I also took this opportunity to present the findings from my action research.

We all agreed that we liked using stories in our Spanish classes and we had a good discussion on what kinds of stories work best and how best to present them to our students. None of us have had TPRS training but we all used some of the techniques in our class. As part of my professional growth plan I'd like to learn more in-depth about this method as well as continue my research on its effectiveness in the FLES classroom.

Data analysis - behavioral engagement scores

Analysis of my data proved overwhelming at first but after a few false starts I have waded through. So what did I come up with? 

For the behavioral engagement scores I viewed the videos and scored each student's behavior for every 30 second interval per my rubric. In addition to finding the mean - which showed students on average were engaged in the lessons - I also looked at the min and max for each lesson to see what specifically was going on during those times. I found that the highest levels of engagement came when I was being dramatic in telling the story (using silly voices and sound effects) and when students were asked to be dramatic (pretending to be ill while sing Head, Shoulders, Knees, & Toes.)

Table 1
Behavioral Engagement Scores
	Mean	Min	Max	SD
Storytelling lesson	2.96	2.60	3.40	0.18
TPR & Song lesson	3.08	2.86	3.46	0.18

I ran a paired samples t-Test to see if there was a difference between the two lessons and found that there was no significant difference in the scores for the storytelling lesson (M=2.96, SD=.018) and the TPR & song lesson (M=3.08, SD=0.18) conditions; t(14)=-1.52, p>.05.