Conclusion
Overall, I thought that this inquiry project was very valuable for me as a new teacher. Not only did I discover that study guides are very beneficial for students to use, but also how to analyze student work and to use the results to improve my own teaching methods. In general, I think that both "Oscar" and "Evan" benefited from the study guides and were happy to have them. I felt that over the 4-week period, "Oscar" did put a little more effort into preparing for the assessments compared to "Evan". For the third assessment, "Evan" did not take full advantage of the study guide, and therefore, did not do as well on the quiz. Therefore, I can conclude that the study guides were useful when students took advantage of them. Overall, I am pleased with the progress that both my students made as well as with the rest of the class. I saw an overall improvement in students’ grades on quizzes and tests. I think that putting more responsibility on students for their studying (by giving them incomplete study guides) was really beneficial. This required students to put effort into finding out the information, rather than just having it readily available to them. I have seen from being in the classroom for the past few months that the more effort students put into studying and preparing for an assessment, the more they understand and the better they perform.
In addition, I have learned many important things throughout this project. One important area that I have found to be really critical is the understanding of vocabulary terms. I believe that students need to know and understand correct vocabulary in order to explain and reason their answers for mathematical problems. Also, I have seen the importance of showing work, not only on assessments, but every day in class and on homework. I think that showing work is critical because as a teacher, you can see if students really understand how to solve problems.
Most importantly, I truly believe that these study guides were beneficial to all of my students. I think that they have given the students a chance to see what is important for them to study when preparing for an assessment. In my three study guides, I have included vocabulary, example problems and questions asking to explain a concept or procedure, and compare and contrast questions. I think that a great follow up activity to further this study is to have students create their own study guide for an upcoming test or quiz (and for them to actually use it to prepare). I think it would be interesting to see what they would include on the study guide and what they think is important from sections or a chapter of their textbook. I would love to continue this project further and see what else I can learn from my students!