1) If the first graders in Ms. Horwitz's class (from San Jose Elementary School) are exposed to a few words from the lists in the Read It! Read It! daily in a reading activity, then the first graders from her class will improve their average on how many lists they pass when they are tested every week.
2) The independent variable is the reading activity, the dependent variable is the student's average result in the Read it! Read it!, and the control variable is the Read it! Read it!.
3) My Senior Project has to do with certain teaching methods first grade teaches can use and how they affect their student's learning. It's about finding the best teaching method a first grade teacher can use. In my experiment I will be giving the first graders in one of the classes I work with a reading activity that contains about two words from a few of the lists from the Read it! Read it! (which tests the first graders' reading/pronounciation of words). Reading activities can go under as a teaching method or as part of a teaching method. This can be a good way to test out how activities, in general, works with the first graders and their learning.
4) I will have one control group, which will be one of the first grade classes I work with, and an experimental group, which will be the class that uses the reading activities. I will have one week or two where both classes run normally, without any working with the reading activites that I will input later on. Then, the next time I see one of the first grade classes, for example Ms. Horwitz on Friday, then me and her can come up with a reading activities for the rest of the week, until the students are tested again on Friday. That means Nacarra's students will not receive the reading activities the other class does. Then on Friday when I test them Mrs. Horwitz students, I will write down how many reading lists each student passes. However, since Ms. Horwitz only allows them to pass (or go up) up to five reading lists, then I will have Mrs. Nacarra (asking her first of course) do the same, making it equal. After a week or two of performing this experiment with Ms. Horwitz class, I will come up with the class average of number of lists passed for each week. Then, I will compare it to the control group or control class's average of number lists passed for each week.
For the equipment, I plan on using whatever may be necessary for the reading activities, such as: paper (if I want to print out a reading activity worksheet), computer or laptop (to organize the data and create some of the activities), children's books, and/or flashcards. Materials for the Read It! Read It! would already be provided.
5) I believe my science project will be listed under Behavioral Science.
