O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
~Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg - Her Dream
Well folks, Glee lost out today...actually, as it turns out, the Glee party was canceled so I didn't even have to make the decision...But to be honest, I think I would have chosen sleep anyway...It has been really tough to stay awake at work today and I know I am not on the top of my game.
My plan is to take a nap and then get up and post some more helpful hints on writing a literature review. Several people have emailed me about not being able to find research, having too much research, and selecting themes. I believe I have answered all of those questions, but I'm looking for some more, so I'd like to know:
- what is getting in the way of forward progress for you?
- anyone stuck on where and how to start writing?
- any APA questions yet or are you just going to write first and format everything later?
Any questions...any at all. Just post a comment and I'll address them when I return to the living. For now, though, my bed, o bed, delicious bed is calling me.
One thought...How do I start my paper? I was wondering that since it's so different from the papers that I have written in the past I am not sure what is acceptable to begin the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteKate
The biggest challenge for me right now is reading through the research that I found and creating a balancing act between them. I have only found eight references, though I am looking at their bibliographies for more. But all the research on interdisciplinary approaches are either extremely specific surrounding individual strategies for individual subjects or extremely general surrounding the theory of team teaching.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like I am trying to balance them and find a happy medium between the two extremes, but there is no research solely on interdisciplinary approaches. Is this normal? Or should I be finding and reading research that is strictly on my subject. (If so, I have no idea where it is, because I haven't found it!)
I have found a great article through searching google, but I have no idea how to tell whether or not it has been peer reviewed. Do you have any tips? Also, my topic is Improving Instruction of ELLs in elementary school and I am finding a variety of information. Everything from literacy to science to behavior to professional development for teachers. Do I need to choose something to focus on or can I choose a few and start developing them as my themes?
ReplyDeleteI have a question about the themes. What are some examples of themes? My topic is incorportaing music and movement into the early childhood curriculum. Here are some ideas/themes I wrote down; the benefits (academic achievement), connections between academics and music and movment. Are these themes or on the right track to becoming themes?
ReplyDeleteThank you,
Kaleena
Fabulous questions, ladies!! I love that you give a little background and your thinking as context to the question - that helps immensely and tells me that you are really being reflective about it. Here are my thoughts:
ReplyDeleteJillian, a good way to tell whether something is peer reviewed is to look at where it was published. Is it from a journal? a book? Why don't you show me tomorrow in class and we can look at the specific example. And the answer to your other question is yes and yes! You can either focus on literacy, for example, and develop that into three themes (for instance, how the learning of literacy skills is different for ELLs, effective strategies for literacy development, etc.) or you could use broader topics and address very different themes (for instance, learning needs of ELLs, effective strategies for the ELL classroom, and professional development for teachers of ELL students.) As you try to make this decision, think about what YOU want to learn. What is most interesting to you? What areas do you feel you really need to improve in your teaching? It's all about you, girl!
Kaleena, you are right on track with your themes! Expand on the benefits (social skills, etc.) and differentiate it enough from the connection and it will be a little easier to move between the topics. Have you considered a theme of effective strategies to incorporate m&m into the classroom?
More to follow in a minute, Anna and Kate! I'm looking for a couple of things for you two...
I am currently having an issue of narrowing my topic down to three main points. I can go in a number of directions and am trying figure out which three main themes have the most information and flow the best. I am getting a little frustrated because I will be set with a few and then the next article I read, I read about the ones that I have "thrown out" in my mind!
ReplyDeleteAnna - did you happen to find the article by Murata? It's titled "What Does Team Teaching Mean? A Case Study of Interdisciplinary Teaming" and talks about history and English teachers teaming together and even though it is a high school study, I think it has promise for you. I switched to the search terms of interdisciplinary teaming in google and several google scholar articles came up. I picked a couple and then went back to the library's site to look up. I think there are several ways you could use the research that you are finding, but the one that might be most useful to you would be to use whatever research you have (broad or specific) to find general practices that make for effective teaming. That could be your first theme and would discuss things that you would want to consider when teaming no matter the subject areas. Another theme might be the benefits for student learning or what kind of support team teachers need - again this could come from any research because it isn't specific to a certain topic. Then finally, you could address teaming in the content areas that you are most interested in. If you can find one or two articles on that, then you could cite them in this section.
ReplyDeleteI did a google search on "team teaching english and history" and the sixth item was "Team Teaching - Advantages, Disadvantages" which is not a peer-reviewed article, but might give you some idea. (The bib at the bottom might be worth looking at.) Also, have you tried searching with humanities as a term. Humanities is basically everything but the sciences, so history and English are included. That's where I found the Murata article.
I hope this helps...
Kristin - it's time to stop reading! Not really, but maybe it's time to read in a different way. It sounds like you have limited the themes you would like to address. Commit to them and then use them as the lens through which you read anything else. For example, if you have decided that one of your themes is effective instructional practices in whatever area you are studying, you could read through the research with an eye to any reference to that. Don't let yourself be swayed to new topics or you could be trying to figure out how to put the paper together next Wednesday night. Don't think about other themes out there that might be better - there will always be more ideas and you can't possibly cover them all in this one paper. Be kind to yourself - commit and don't look back.
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