Reflection

Impact on Current Teaching

I was also challenged by some students' behaviors during the math games. Although the majority of students got along with their partners and played together effectively, there were a few students who struggled to get along socially, which took their focus away from the games. When these problems occurred, I would join the students and help them problem-solve in order to keep playing and focus on the math. While these interventions were helpful in getting those specific students to refocus, it also meant that I was not able to take as many anecdotal notes as I had planned.

Impact on Professional Growth

Before implementation, I was nervous to start because I was afraid of running out of time to play the games each day, and I was also nervous that students would begin to hate playing math games if we played them too often. During the implementation, I found that it was easy to adjust our math lesson pacing to ensure time to play the games each day. I also found that students continued to love math games throughout the study, as shown on their attitude surveys. I think that this continued excitement was due to the abundance of different games; I think that if we had played the same two or three games over and over again, students would not have enjoyed the games nearly as much. This love of math games, especially when compared to students feelings about other areas of math on the attitude surveys, showed me that I should continue to use math games to engage students in math. This has also reinforced my belief in the importance of play for children, especially those in primary grades.

Challenges

Timing and pacing needed to be adjusted.
Several student behaviors took up some of my time during math games.
I did not get to take as many anecdotal notes as I wanted.
One student left during math every day to go to the resource teacher, so she did not get to consistently play the games.

During the implementation of my action plan, I was challenged in various ways. For the first week of the study, I found that I often ran out of time or had very little time at the end of Math to play the math games. I had to adjust our other math activities, as well as the pacing of each math lesson, to ensure that we would have at least 10 minutes to play each game. Although math games are already a part of my district's math curriculum, not every lesson has a math game; those that do have a math game usually use the game as part of the main lesson, so I had to adjust the timing of the lessons to ensure that we had time for a game every day. In addition, before this study there were times when I did not prioritize the games that were part of the main lesson, focusing more on the direct instruction and workbook practice than on the games. I had to really prioritize each day's game, and I had to decide the game we would play on days when there was not a game included in the main lesson.

Despite these challenges, I also saw many successes in my classroom. Every day when I announced it was time for to play a math game, the majority of students were consistently excited to play. The majority of students also got along well with their partners, and I saw many students challenging each other to use different resources to find the answers while playing. The consistent implementation of math games also allowed students to become proficient at playing several different games, which allowed me to include more of these games in our weekly math stations. This kept our stations a little more exciting and engaging, as students got to be surprised by the games they would be playing in stations each Thursday.

Successes

Students showed excitement for math games.
Students were engaged during games.
Most students exhibited strong social-emotional skills while playing with partners.

Changes I Would Make

If I were to replicate this study in the future, I would make a few changes to my action plan. One thing I would do differently is to plan for 15 minutes of games each day, knowing that on many days it would be cut to about 10 minutes. Planning for 15 minutes would allow for sufficient time for students to have enough time to engage in gameplay and focus on the math within each game to get the most out of their playing time. I would also change my interactions with students during games to make sure that I am able to take more anecdotal notes, rather than focus so much on behaviors of students. One way I could do this is to have some type of reward system connected only to math games, where students could earn points each time they got along with their partners. When students earn a certain number of points, they could choose a reward such as choosing their own partner for a math game or using a fun color marker on their white board for a day. Focusing on and encouraging positive behaviors and social interactions during games would allow me to have more time focusing on students and taking anecdotal notes.

Lingering Questions

How can I continue to emphasize math games, and also find a way to increase students' number sense abilities?
How can I encourage families to play math games at home, especially during this time of COVID-19 school closings?
What would be the impact of allowing students to choose their own game partners, rather than choosing the partners for them?
Since my data showed that math games did not have a significant impact on students' number sense abilities, what can I do instead to improve that area of learning?

Implications for Future Teaching

Because the majority of my students exhibited positive feelings about math games throughout the entire study, I plan to continue implementing math games consistently during math in the future. Although I may not continue to have students play games every single day, I will make it a priority to play the game when it is included as part of a lesson. I will also continue to include a game as one of the stations during weekly math stations.

The results of my pre- and post-tests implied that, while math games are fun and engaging, they are not the most effective way to increase number sense abilities for all students. I will have to continue to find different teaching strategies and activities that will be more beneficial to students in this area of learning.

Going forward from this experience, I now know how to choose a specific area of student need, research various studies related to that area of need, create and implement an action plan, collect various forms of data, and analyze the data to determine if my plan was effective or not. Overall, the action research that I implemented allowed me to improve my teaching practice and gave me the opportunity to grow professionally in my second year of teaching.