Next Steps. . .

"People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.
"

 – Brian Tracy, Author

I'm on my 3rd week of implementing my action plan for my Teacher Inquiry Project, "How does providing an authentic audience for students effect their attitudes and academic achievement in writing?" My master teacher has been extremely supportive and helpful during this process - She gives me the freedom to implement my ideas and plenty of time to work with the students. I'm enjoying watching my 2nd graders progress as writers and find it interesting as I observe my students' love/hate relationships with writing evolve. I'm collecting all sorts of great writing samples, I'm journaling after every lesson and students have been filling out weekly exit slips . . . . I'm quickly accumulating a lot of stuff and I I know I need to make more of a concerted effort to analyze the data in a formative way.  

Here's my plan: In terms of students’ academic achievement, I plan to analyze students’ writing pieces by measuring students’ length of writing pieces, complexity of sentences, number of complete sentences, use of descriptive words, word choice, ability to implement structure into their writing (parts of a letter, parts of a story, etc.) and ability to complete assignments within a given time frame.  The 6+1 writing rubric is the guide that I will be using to help me do this. Chapter 7 of "The Power of Questions" offered an improvement to this particular data analysis idea by encouraging researchers to ask certain questions when analyzing students’ work. Figure 7-1, Questions for Looking at Student Work, contains meaningful questions that I will ask as I am reviewing my students’ writing samples.

1.  What was the context in which the work was created?

2.  What questions does this work raise about the student?

3.  What does this work demonstrate about what the student understands, what the student can do, and how the students meets standards/expectations for the work?

4.  What does this work demonstrate about the students’ growth over time?

5.  What does this work tell about the instruction and learning environment that prompted the work?  How effective were the assignment and teaching strategies?

6.  What does this work suggest about the kind of teaching and opportunities for leanrning that should come next for this student?

A new idea that I acquired from this chapter is to ask my students to take part in “member checks.”  Sharing with students my thoughts and findings about their work and the data I collect can ensure that my students’ points of view are being depicted as authentically as possible.  It will also ensure that I am interpreting behaviors accurately.  Sharing my findings and thoughts could be easily done during discussions or when students are sharing their weekly summaries.  If I notice a pattern during a particular week or lesson, I could voice this to my students, tell them my perception of why this pattern took place, then ask my students if they agree or disagree.

This chapter informs my next steps in data analysis and classroom implementation because it reminds me to take things slow and steady.  Instead of gathering data and looking at it after I’ve accumulated a pile of notes, I should begin organizing and analyzing as I am collecting different types of data.  Not only will this prevent me from making a molehill into a mountain, but it will also help me determine if I am gathering enough appropriate data for each of my subquestions.  

Of course..... all this is easier said than done!