Make Space, Take Space:
Working Towards Participation Equity
During Small Group Reading
During the Spring semester, we continued our development towards becoming effective teachers by taking steps into exploring our teaching practices. This was done in part by a Teacher Research Project (TRP), in which we as student-teachers used the theories we learned about in our courses to apply them to our teaching and further answer some of our many unanswered questions leading to growht. In carrying out our project, we investigated our teaching experience as a way to improve our classroom practice.
As it was described for us, "Your Teacher Research Project is meant to develop a habit of mind as you question your own teaching. It is intended to help you research what you do, how you do it, and why you do it during your student teaching experience. In other words, the TRP will investigate a particular teaching practice or idea on a small scale to help you develop skills as a critically reflective teacher." Participation has been something that has always intrigued me, both as an individual and as an educator. For this reason I planned to work with my small reading group and take note of their participation habits, and whether various participation strategies in any way changed their habits. A snapshot into this research project, and my students' work, is shown below.