Action Research

For the past two weeks I have been working on my action research with one of my students. The focus of my action research this semester is how differentiated instruction will influence a 2nd grader with Autism to self identify his colors. Through my research, I am beginning to find that although the student has a hard time self-identifying the colors, he is able to match objects according to their color. For example, today I had planned to have the student identify the color of the week (blue) through illustrations in the story If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. Due to the fact that he was very distracted and not focused on the story, I changed my plans and instead had him pick out all of the blue dinosaurs and place them into a blue box. While doing so, I had this student repeat me as I said "Blue dinosaur" or "Blue box." Immediately after him repeating, I would ask, "What color is the dinosaur or the box?" Although he had just correctly picked out the blue dinosaurs from the pile, he was still unable to state that the dinosaurs were blue. Next, I assisted him on an interactive color website where he was to sort the objects according to their color. Since the color of the week is only blue, I just wanted him to find the blue objects. This student needs assistance when working on the computer, so at first I just had him point to the blue objects on the screen. Since there were so many objects on the screen to choose from, he was easily distracted by all of the objects so I instead began to ask him to find the (for example, Blue Mailbox). When he would identify the correct object, I assisted him in using the mouse to drag that object into the blue box. Once he identified the object correctly, I had him repeat "Blue ____". Immediately after, I would then ask him what color the object was. Although he wasn't able to identify the color blue for some of the objects, you could tell that he was thinking really hard about the answer when asked. I found this to be a really great sign because in the past, I was receiving only blank stares and no indication that he was focused. This student did the best when identifying the mailbox as blue. I am very eager to see what else I will learn through the rest of my action research.