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.”