I have finally come to a conclusion on what I am going to be doing for my action research! My wondering is, Do structured math games help students develop mastery of the specific skill (e.g., factoring, prime numbers, etc.)?
At Open House I noticed my host teacher talking to the parents of the students in her math class about the classroom math activities. Our new text book series uses many games to practice math skills instead of constantly doing practice in the work book. I heard her notifying the parents that they should not be worried when they hear their child saying that they are playing games in their math class. This was the point that I realized how important it is for there to be data, even just within our classroom, about the progress the students when it comes to this type of teaching. I definitely am behind the text book series using fun interactive games to help students learn their math skills. I just think parents might need a little bit more evidence sometimes to understand that their child is really learning not just having fun.
So, the data I will be collecting with be a form of quantitative data that I will be retrieving through entrance and exit slips. These slips will be given weekly to the students. The entrance slips will be given before the students play the game or complete the work book page (the day they learn the skill in class). Then once the student has participated in either game or work book practice the student will be given the exit slip. The entrance slip and the exit slip will be two similar types of problems to check the improvement of the skill. Students will be required to show their work and will be asked to stop at places they do not know how to do. So, students should be actually doing the work on the slips to the best of their ability, nothing less. Students will also know that these slips are not for a grade.
I think the data that will be collected with show the master of skills through playing the game. The whole idea of this research is not to show if games or work book pages are better, but to show if students are learning the skill through playing the game. I think this information can be used to back up the text book series and the practices of the teachers.