How will weekly Spiral Reviews impact the retention of learned skills in my 6th grade math classroom?

Angela Beste


Seminar Title


How will weekly Spiral Reviews impact the retention of learned skills in my 6th grade math classroom?


Concept/Strategy

Focus of the Research


Spiral Reviews


Grade Level

Research Was Applied


6th Grade


Relevant Grade Level

Connections


Middle School


Discipline

Where Research Was Applied


Mathematics


Additional Discipline Areas

I see Application to


All Disciplines


Invitation/Commercial


Why do my students not retain their learned math skills? I can’t count how many times I have asked myself this over the last 5 years I have been teaching math. I always feel like we get to the end of the year, and by then, students have completely forgotten what they learned the first half of the year. This is why I am so excited about my research in which I implemented spiral reviews to help solve this problem. Over the course of the first half of the year, my students have shown continued growth in retention of the skills we have learned in math. Although my focus was in 6th grade, which is more of a middle school based setting, I feel the use of spiral reviews can be beneficial to various grade levels and disciplines in teaching. So if you are interested in a discussion based on how you could help improve your students retention of information in your own classroom, then this is the session for you!


Abstract


Why are my students not retaining the information I have taught them? This is something I have struggled with for years, so I decided to do a little more research to answer my one big question; how can I improve retention of information in my 6th grade math classroom? As I started my research I came across a few areas that may contribute to student’s retention of information. The first area was the classroom environment. This is an area that I have explored immensely during my first few years of teaching. I feel that I have done a good job with my exploration and didn’t feel this was the main reason my students were struggling, so I decided to move on. The next idea I found was in regards to how I teach. This would be a great area to investigate more, but because I am still a newer teacher, I am constantly changing my teaching styles based on new things I am learning. I thought this would be a very hard area for me to get accurate data in regards to what I change because I am constantly trying new things, which may have skewed my data. Then I came across the idea of Spiral Reviews. Spiral Reviews offer students the opportunity to revisit previously learned skills throughout the entire year to achieve, or maintain, mastery of that skill. I decided to go this route because this was something that I could effective implement while still giving me the ability to try new things throughout the year in regards to my teaching. I decided to implement Spiral Reviews on Friday each week. These Spiral Reviews would take place of the math lesson each Friday. Since implementing, students continue to be engaged and continually improving their skills. I also used Spiral Reviews as a way to reteach a lesson that may not have gone so well. Throughout the implementation I gathered various forms of data. The first one I focused on was student surveys in which I asked them how they felt about the reviews. I gave these surveys towards the end of the first two quarters. The second data piece I focused on was my focus groups scores. I also did a lot of observations during spiral review time. I found that students were excited to come to math every Friday, which was great to see. I was happy to see the impact that Spiral Reviews had on student engagement. The last data piece I focused on was their STAR assessment scores. This is an assessments students have on their iPad in which the program determines where a student is at in regards to their grade level, down to the month. I wanted to see if their scores were improving, and if they were, by how much. When I reflect on previous years, I am thrilled with the impact Spiral Reviews have had thus far. Because of this, I look forward to continuing to use Spiral Reviews throughout the rest of this school year and seeing the overall impact they have on student achievement. I’m hoping to continue the use of Spiral Reviews in my math classroom, but will determine this when I see students growth on their final MCA scores.