Journal Review 1

An action Research Exploration Integrating Student Choice and Arts Activities in a Sixth Grade Social Studies Classroom

Courtney Kosky, West Virginia University
Reagan Curtis, West Virginia University

The main concern of this action research is whether the integration of art in teaching and learning of social studies in a sixth grade may increase participation, motivation and grades of the student. Social studies is important since it act as links the outside world of the students community. Previous research mentioned that integrating arts in learning makes students better thinkers, develop higher order skills, and deepen their inclination to learn (Rabkin & Redmond, as cited in Cornett, 2003, p.41). The writer expressed that students need to have the chance to be actively involved in what and how they learn.

The goal for this action research was to get active participation of the students throughout the lesson. There were four classes our sixth grade involved. After four periods of social studies lecture, arts integrated lesson activities and action research were conducted. In the art integrated activities, the students were intensively encouraged to think for themselves, ask questions and participate fully in class activities. Examples of choices includes; (a) draw an illustration, (b) draw a comic strips, (c) write a fable and illustrate it in a book and (d)create a PowerPoint about a fable. Students quickly got the concept that they need to know the basic knowledge of certain topic in order for them to participate fully and enjoy the activities. Their acceptation of the concept make students enjoy and stop complaining about homework assignments.

Data source and analysis.
There are various data source used in his action research. First is teacher’s reflective teaching journal which is updated daily. The updates is about the students’ feeling about the lesson and changes that happen in classrooms. Then an informal online multiple intelligence evaluation was given at the earlier stage to evaluate the current understanding. At the end of daily lesson, students would complete a ‘Rate this lesson’ card. The results derived from this evaluation were used as a guide to create diverse and engaging lesson plans. Lessons that received highest ratings were grouped to find common threads. Other than that, data from term grades based on projects were also collected. The projects conducted gave freedom for students to plan their own implementations with teacher’s guidance.

Results and Discussion
From the data collected using teacher’s reflective journal, it shows that students’ participation was high during the lesson where art was integrated. Data collected and interpreted from the ‘Rate the lesson’ evaluation card shows that student rate the art integrated lesson which they seldom exposed is higher than the typical pedagogy teaching. The project grades show that they produce good grades when they were given the authority to work the project their own way. Overall, this research result suggest that the art integrated and student centered learning is boosting the grades and ranking of teaching and learning levels from the students’ side.

Conclusion
It can be concluded that giving students the right to chose and mobile in classroom was a great way to get students involved in the learning process. They also were more likely to be cognitively engaged when involve in activities that were different from what they saw as ‘regular classroom activities’. So, integrating arts activities is a great way of effective learning in social studies of sixth grade students.

Limitations and recommendations
The limitations of this action research is that this study were conducted in middle school and implemented in social subject only, so the researchers were quite unsure about the impact on these students’ performance in other content areas.
It is recommended that art integrated activities were applied in various content regardless of the grade level. When implementing this method of teaching, practitioners have to bear in mind about the need to meet the state and national standards and learning objectives.