Assessing writing pieces

I have begun to look over my participants' articles and original writing pieces.  Below are my assessments:

Participant K's article on Bullying

Participant J's article on Specials Classes

Participant C's article on Academic Team

The assessments that I made were all based upon how each article related to the criteria from the ReadWriteThink Writing Rubric.

What's to come...

Yes playing the waiting game for articles to be turned in has been quite frustrating.  Right now, I am in the process of reading through the submitted articles just to get a feel of my participants' writing.  The level of voice, word choice, and audience awareness varied from participant to participant.  Reviewing my previous post, reading through Participant K's submitted article about "Bullying," her article presented a strong voice and awareness of her audience.  She opened with questions to the reader and made connections to today's methods of communication (ie: Facebook and Instagram).  I was quite impressed :)  Participant J's article took a more impersonal and informative route, I felt;  nothing wrong with it, it was just different and not as strong of a connection to the audience, but to each his own.

What is to come...I plan to review the submitted articles and grade them based on the ReadWriteThink Rubric that I am using for my research.  I also plan to compare each article to the student generated list, of requirements of what makes a good article, to give a more authentic assessment for each participant.  I will also have each participant assess their own article, then I hope to compare their assessment with my own.

2/18/14 Blog entry

Today I met with my participants and they were still unprepared, with the exception of one participant, Participant M (a new participant)!  Today’s Newspaper meeting schedule was as follows:

1.       Get out article

2.       Go over rubric

3.       Get out other piece

4.       Read aloud article

5.       Critique

6.       Grade your own article using the rubric

I have recruited participant M, a fifth grade female, because she arrives to school earlier than Participant L, who is usually a late arrival to school and is consequently further behind the other participants.  I explained to my participants that they needed two pieces: an original writing piece and their article.  Due to other school and classroom obligations, Participant J did not do an article or retrieve his original writing piece.

Myself: If you have your article get it out.  (Went over rubric with participants; we compared ReadWriteThink rubric to their list of what makes a good article or newspaper).  Think about your article that you wrote, did you include those things form the list?

M: I put some quotes in there.

Others: “I put some details”

I asked if they did the things that they thought of their generated list of what makes a good article.  Overall, the participants did part of the list, but did not adhere to all that they listed.

About 67% of participants (counting all 6 participants from now on) had an article today.  100% of the participants had an original piece for comparison. Original pieces ranged from:

·         Surrounding community (D Park- a pseudonym) by Participant K

·         A Book by Participant L

·         Journal entries by Participant C

·         Homework assignment in writing by Participant M

·         A Book by Participant J

·         A Book and describe a character in the book by Participant A

We are extremely far behind!  Unfortunately there are many obstacles that have arisen, some of those obstacles being part of the general culture within Made-Up Elementary School (pseudonym):

·         Tardiness

·         Low-performance

·         Low accountability and drive

Myself: Went over categories for rubric, “Where are we aiming for?”

Participants: “Exceeds!”

We all agreed to aim at least for the Meets category.  Participant L decided to write an article on “Black History Month.”

Final call for articles is this Thursday 2/20/14.

Here is a picture of the ReadWriteThink Writing Rubric that I am using:

Below are some of the original pieces by the participants:

Participant A:

 

Participant L:

Participant M:

Participant K (newspaper article thus far):

These pieces will later be evaluated based on the ReadWriteThink Writing Rubric by the participants (evaluating their own piece), by myself, and perhaps by their homeroom teacher.  More information to come!

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive Statistics

1.       5 Participants (N=5)

·         All are in the fifth grade (consists of 2 female and 3 male students)

·         40% female

·         60% male

Five students (N=5) participated in the exploratory study. Three of the students are male and two of the students are female, all were in the fifth grade. I collected initial qualitative and quantitative information through a Garfield Writing Attitude Survey from each participant (100% participation); a participant interview questionnaire (100% participation); and a working collection of past writing pieces that will be graded based on a ReadWriteThink Writing Rubric and used as a baseline for future writing pieces.

2.        2. Garfield Writing Attitude Survey Results

Full Scale Score (N=5): 84 96 78 83 82

·         Mean: 84.6 Range (78-96)

·         Median: 78

·         Mode: none

Participants full scale scores ranged from 78 to 96. Most of the participants, specifically three, had a raw full scale score in the eighties (between 82 and 92).  All five participants completed the survey in the classroom. Each question was read through twice for the participants and they were given time to answer based on their true feelings/ attitudes. The table below displays the number of participants and their range of scores.

3.       Overall results from interviewing participants, there was hesitancy from 100% of participants in their willingness to provide detailed answers.  Participants appeared nervous or unsure of themselves when being interviewed.  Most participants provided very basic information throughout the interview process.  Below are a list of questions used in the interview:

a.       What do you feel your strengths are in writing?

b.      What do you think you need to work on in writing?

c.       Do you like to write?

d.      What do you like to write about?

e.      How do you feel when you are given a writing assignment? Why?

Below are some samples of responses from participants:

a.       (In response to question a.) Participant L: “Umm they’re good but I just need umm to..to…go back and check to see fi the words make sense and everything.  Just need a little more practice.”

b.      (In response to question b) Participant C: “Uh maybe punctuation and maybe have more specific words, bigger words and uh maybe have longer sentences, more paragraphs.”

c.       (In response to question c) Participant A: “Yea, I like to write all the time at home.”

d.      (In response to question d) Participant C: “I like to write about what happens at school, what happens outside the school, maybe what happens on TV, maybe what happens at stores, inside stores.  Maybe what I did at the house.”

e.      (In response to question e) Participant L: “Umm sometimes I feel frustrated, sometimes I feel happy.  I feel frustrated because I don’t’ know how to start a sentence.  Sometimes I just don’t know how to start or how to say I so they can understand and my hand gets tired.  I feel happy sometimes because I get to write about what happens.”

And...they're off!!!

Yesterday (Tuesday) I met with my participants at Made-up Elementary (pseudonym).  Many times I have to wait for my participants to arrive at school, put away book bags, check in with their teacher, and then make their way to my classroom, and this time was no different. Slowly they began to trickle into the classroom one by one, until the majority were in attendance.  Although their first article was due this week there were some hang ups.  Participant A forgot to write an article; Participant K forgot her article at home; Participant C did bring his article to the meeting.  While waiting for all participants to come to my classroom, I asked Participant K to go back to her classroom and retrieve one of her writing samples to bring to me so that I could make a copy of it (all of this was previously discussed with Participant K's teacher in regards to what it will mean for the research study).  Participant K brought a writing sample which was an essay about a project that the entire fifth grade class worked on.  The writing sample was about the surrounding community; this writing sample by Participant K will be used as a base line to compare future writing pieces (in this case the articles specifically by Participation K).  Finally, most participants arrived and we began our meeting.  Below is a dialogue of how the meeting went:

C: How long does the article need to be?

(From there, we examined a newspaper).

C: Are we going to have to read the newspaper?
A: We could talk about Sochi!
Myself: While you are looking at this newspaper, what are some key elements or key parts that make up a good newspaper or article?
M: Title
C: Subtitle
K: Pictures
A: Quotes
C: Punctuation
M: Caption
C: Sections
Myself: look for things that pertain to your article, something that can help you.
M: Date and time
Myself: What things can you pull to help your article that you'll write.
K: Informing details
M: Story
A: Gossip
C: The main idea (K: is in bold)
M:You need who it's by...their name. It has to be true
C: Specific words
M:  Make sense
C: Specific sentence
K: Certain details and stay on topic. Get others' opinion.

I was very proud of my participants for generating such a detailed and extensive list of ideas for their articles; this could even be used as a rubric, now that I think of it!  After finishing the meeting I created a list of all of the participants' responses of "Elements of a good newspaper or article," and gave that student generated list to the participants.  The deadline for their first article was rescheduled for Friday 2/12/14.  More information to come!

Revving up for the first article...

Although the amount of snow days that we have experienced is getting a little out of hand, my group was able to meet this morning.  Today we focused on brainstorming for potential article ideas for our school newspaper.  After a slow beginning on getting ideas going, my participants were able to generate some great ideas for their articles for the newspaper research project.  Ideas such as:

1. 5th grade field trip
2. Teacher's baby
3. Black History Play (Follow the Drinking Gourd)
4. Snow days/ Weather
5. After school programs
6. Academic team
7. Playground equipment that we're supposed to get
8. Music class
9. Bullying
10. What's going on in specials classes?
11. New stuff teachers are teaching
12. Anti-violence
13. How to make school better

Below are each participant's subject choices for an article...

Student A: What's going on in specials

Student C: Academic team

Student J: After school programs

Student K: Bullying

Student L: (information to come)

During our meeting today, participants were attempting to help one another come up with ideas and discussion points for their selected article topics. Some of the conversation lines were as follows (ie: J represents Student J):

J: How do they get ready for academic challenges?

A: I need some ideas. 

K: You can do Spanish class.

A: I'm going to interview specials teachers.

(observation- Participants J is writing diligently)

A: In gym we're getting skates

(observation- off on a tangent. Participant J "she is mean.")

C: Am I supposed to ask questions?

K: (observation: giving ideas to Participant A) Are you doing all specials?

A: Yes

J: How can you stop bullying in after school programs?

K: I think we should do bully buster... a new program for bully busters.

(observation- on a tangent about researcher not looking at paper when writing)

K: Different after school programs

A: And when they meet...

Leaving assignment for participants: Rough draft of first article due next Tuesday (2/8/14).  Due to the amount of snow days and limited time during the school day to meet, I have sent the teacher interviews to the respective fifth grade teachers to provide further information about each participant.  I have also inquired about receiving writing samples of each participant's past work/ writing.

Garfield Survey Results

According to the Interpretation section of the Garfield Writing Attitude Survey, specifically the Writing Attitude Survey Directions for Use, the results can be interpreted in two different ways.

"An informal approach would be to look at where the raw scores falls related to the total possible points of 112.  If the raw score is approximately 70, the score would fall midway between the somewhat happy and somewhat upset Garfields, indicating the student has an indifferent attitude toward writing.  The formal approach involves converting the raw score to a percentile rank by using Table 1.  The raw score should be found on the left-hand side of the table and matched to the percentile rank in the appropriate grade-level column," (Kear, Coffman, McKenna, & Ambrosio, 2000).

Using the informal approach

(further clarification the participant labels for identification are pseudonyms, ie., Participant A, Participant C, etc.)

1. Participant A (male): raw score 84- interpretation: Student is more so indifferent towards writing, but not completely indifferent towards writing. Because his score was higher than 70, this indicates that he is more positive towards writing than he is indifferent.
2. Participant C (male): raw score 83- interpretation: Student is more so indifferent towards writing, but not completely indifferent towards writing. Because his score was higher than 70, this indicates that he is more positive towards writing than he is indifferent.
3. Participant K (female): raw score 96- interpretation: Student does have a generally positive attitude towards writing.
4. Participant L (female): raw score (information to come)
5. Participant J (male): raw score 78- interpretation: Student is more so indifferent towards writing. Because his score was so close to 70, this indicates that he is indifferent towards writing.

Using the formal approach

"A class average at or above the national norm (ie., the 50th percentile rank) might indicate that this group of students has relatively positive attitudes toward writing compared with their peers.  A class average below the national norm might suggest that the teacher investigate more closely the reasons for this score," (Kear, Coffman, McKenna, & Ambrosio, 2000).

1. Participant A (male): percentile score 77
2. Participant C (male): percentile score 75
3. Participant K (female): percentile score 96
4. Participant L (female): percentile score (information to come)
5. Participant J (male):percentile score 60

Because all of these participants' formal percentile scores are above the national norm, this data indicates or suggests that this group of students has a relatively positive attitude towards writing.