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Research Design Process

I designed this project for my first grade students and their specific needs. I noticed that my students were unmotivated to produce quality work. I noticed that there was WAY too much teacher talk inside my classroom. I noticed that students were uninterested in improving their work. I needed to solve these problems for my students sake as well as for my own sake. The school year would be long and tedious if I didn't. I realized from my research projects that students are capable of so much growth if they are explicitly taught a set of skills. Active listening skills improved tremendously when they were taught. I knew that students could use peer feedback if they were taught how and I knew that it would help to engage them to do better work. Below you will see a mind map that I created when I was in the brainstorming phase of how to implement the ideas I was having into the classroom.

 The SITE model in relation to my project

Sociocultural Subcontext:  Students enjoy engaging in conversation with their peers. Social interactions are a huge part of a student's day but we spend more of our time shushing them or finding creative ways to get them to be quiet and pay attention. If we harnessed the power that peer interaction has to improve student work we might see a huge increase in student engagement and motivation.
​Informational Subcontext: Students are given the chance to improve their literacy and mediacy. Literacy is one of the things that these 1st grade students are trying to achieve through reading, writing, listening and speaking. Peer feedback offers a new way for students to interact with literacy as the main focus for much of their interactions. By putting students in contact with each other to give and receive feedback they are learning to interact clearly and navigate the use of technology (Seesaw) to drive the interactions between students 
Technical Subcontext: The use of Seesaw as a platform for giving and receiving feedback is an avenue for communicating that is available to all teachers for free. All they need to do is create a class and begin using it. Students can leave verbal or written feedback for each other but need to be giving explicit instruction on how to do so. Competence and opportunity are are achieved by creating a networking community of learners who are taught to interact in strategic ways to improve student work.
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Logo design

The creation of my logo was a journey all by itself. The first logo I created was  made quickly on a logo making website. I fell in love with it a little too quickly though. As I was looking through past capstone webpages I noticed that someone else had the exact same shape as mine. This inspired me to scrap my first draft and start something that was totally unique and different than any one else's. I initially really liked the idea of having students holding hands working as a group because peer feedback requires that everyone is invested in it or it doesn't do its job. I also wanted to convey the use of technology because without the technology component this would have been impossible which is why I placed the power button at the center of the group of kids holding hands. I liked how the power button also looked like a table that they are all sitting around. It conveys the use of collaboration and communication. I changed the name from feedback friends to Peerpower for a few reasons. First, the title of peer power explains that there is power from working with peers and it also connects to the power button in the middle. The title more accurately expresses the overall workings of my capstone project.

Research

Support and Next Steps

Draft 1 logo

Final Draft logo