Capstone Audience

This week, we took some time to review some completed capstone websites with the focus on audience.  I previewed Jen Ellison’s “Game On,” and Nai Saelee’s “Personalized Learning” capstone websites. This was an incredibly valuable and timely assignment!  Even though we’ve had access to these sites for sometime now, going through and specifically looking at audience was extremely useful as we begin the first steps towards creating our own capstones.

The driving question for my capstone is “How Can We Use Partnerships to Improve the Early Literacy Skills of Primary Students?”  My three action research cycles have utilized out-of-classroom relationships with people in Kindergarteners’ lives in order to provide tutoring in alphabet knowledge.  Each round has enlisted a different relationship: parent-led intervention, after school program staff and middle school cross-age tutors, and finally, sibling tutors.

While my objective has been to improve the early literacy assessment scores of struggling Kindergarteners, my capstone could appeal to a wider audience than just Kindergarten teachers.  My action research has hinged on a few concepts that could be applied to different grade levels:

• Extra practice outside of the classroom can improve DOK 1 level skills (alphabet letters or sounds in my project, but could apply to many other skills).
• Most families want to help their children succeed academically
  • If instructed in specific activities, most parents will work with their children
• After school programs are interested in providing sound enrichment activities to students
  • These programs might be willing to facilitate cross-age relationships for mentoring
• Many young students have older siblings who have opportunities to play and learn with them
  • Often times, these older siblings are enlisted by parents to help them with homework anyway
• There are many quality online learning sites and games, but young students need supervision to access the useful games, stay focused, and problem solve
  • Older siblings are usually skilled enough to assist their siblings in simple games online

As we build our capstones this summer, I am grateful to have this awareness so that I can be mindful about keeping it open to a broader audience.  I also want to remember to emulate Ellison’s theme of “Anyone can do this!” I truly appreciated the enthusiasm I felt for the topic as I clicked through her capstone, due to the clear and straightforward composition of her pages.  I hope I can accomplish this with my capstone. At least I have a clearer picture of where I want to go.

One thing is also clear:  we have our work cut out for us!