Room: NRN 2029

Intern: Riley Thoresen

Mentor Teacher: Carrie Wells

Internship Placement: Wiles Elementary

Title: Strategies and Opportunities to Reduce Test Anxiety

Riley Thoresen noticed that her students experience high stress and often shut down on Fridays, due to weekly benchmark tests. She wondered how strategies and opportunities to relieve stress could affect their test scores in a positive way. She collected data over several weeks and provided many opportunities for students to make test revisions, ask questions, have test reviews and connect with their cultural funds of knowledge to motivate them before the tests. Data analysis revealed two claims focused on how students’ anxiety and stress levels often were connected to their test performance.

Intern: Kaitlyn Alvarez

Mentor Teacher: Milenis Jimenez

Internship Placement: W.W Irby

Title: Integrating Brain Breaks in a Second-Grade Classroom

Ms. Alvarez was noticing different emotions coming from her students on assessment day. These emotions ranged from stressed to overwhelmed. Due to these strong feelings, she saw students not focusing to the best of their ability and start to give up. Knowing students benefit from brain breaks, Ms. Alvarez wanted to see how brain breaks help students' cognitive benefit and engagement. Data analysis revealed that students benefit from having a brain break in between assessments and the classroom culture is more positive.

Intern: Hannah Waters

Mentor Teacher: Kylee Sexton

Internship Placement: Joseph Williams Elementary

Title: Online Learning Among Gifted Students in a Second-Grade Magnet Classroom

Hannah Waters was noticing disengagement during traditional classroom instruction amongst her gifted students. She wondered if she could supplement traditional instruction and content with online learning programs to increase engagement and spark interest in her students. She collected data for a month’s time span using student surveys, documents and artifacts, quantitative data, and student interviews. Data analysis revealed three claims focused on how she and her students experienced online learning and the pros and cons that emerged.