article summaries done!

I have finally finished summarizing all articles! Last week, I felt a little stuck trying to find new articles.  While I was looking for the articles, I decided to take my research into a new direction. While I was creating my Pecha Kucha I concluded that awareness and education about healthy initiatives is just as important as finding schools who have seen positive results.  I found some articles that examined the effects of parental involvement on eating habits of children. This gave me new insight into what parents can do to support healthy initiatives. Schools can only help so much to educate students on healthy eating...the rest is up to families at home! These articles brought my research together nicely. Now I just have to figure out how to piece it all together....

Currently, I am finishing up my article summaries. I have had quite a few extensive articles to summarize, some of them being 15 pages for just one article. I am planning to start putting the articles together this weekend. So far, there has been plenty of research on my topic. I am using the ERIC research database. 

I will revisit this when I have more to share :) 

Update on my reasearch

My reserach question: 

In what ways can teachers/schools influence positive effects from healthy initiatives. 

I am taking ethnographic observations on students during snack time. I want to understand the relationship between the type of snack they eat and what their tranision is like moving on to the next task. Are they able to keep up with the class during the transition? Are they able to stay on task immediately after eating snack? 

My reaserch articles are mainly about attitudes toward healthy eating initiatives and obseity rates worldly. I also have an article about teacher attitudes toward healthy eating in school. 

Research Questions

The first article I read/reviewed is called "Fast-Food Consumption and Educational Test Scores In The USA" (I found it using the ERIC database)

Although the article raises many more questions while also providing more information about the topic, it helped me think of some possible research questions.

Topic: Effects of Nutrition on Learning Acheivement

Research Questions: 

Is there a direct correlation between having a diet with little nutritional value and academic achievement?

What types of food negatively affect academic achievement?-What characteristics of the food define poor nutrition?

Do students with the tendancy to eat foods with little nutritional value have low levels of achievement?

Research Topic

Possible Research Thesis Topic: Nutrition vs. Learning Achievement

Questions:
Is there any correlation between healthier diets and learning achievement?
What foods may enhance student learning achiement?
What foods may hinder learning achievement?
Does obesity effect intelligence levels among elementary school students?
How does exercise effect learning achievement?

Research topic idea

Talk to the school you are student teaching at. Ask if there is anything that they are particularly interested in researching at this time. This may make your ethnographic research a little easier to collect, while also making yourself more marketable for a job!