WORKSHOP
WRITING
DATA ANALYSIS
DATA RESULTS
Climate Survey
Overall the results of the climate survey that my class did are as to be expected. Of course, there are always some outliers that impact what the results look like, but generally, I could tell my students were honest about how they felt. Here are some examples of questions that were asked, student responses and my interpretation/actions.
I took this into consideration because I believe it is important for my students to have fun learning in my classroom. With the question not being so specific, I think my students answered honestly. Even though some of my students might have more fun learning in certain subjects than others, I am pleased to see that no one said they do not have fun learning at all. With this being said, I knew I had to continue my instruction in meaningful and engaging ways to be sure they were able to continue having fun while learning how to be a better writer.
"I like school." What teacher does not want to hear this from their students? This question stuck out to me because of the results I gathered from my students. I had over half of my students said they like school, but then there are some who said they only sometimes like school and one that said they do not like school. This concerned me so I was able to go back and see who answered what. Once I saw the results, I was able to go to those students and have conversations with them. I did not go to them and ask how come they do not like school because that would have made it even worse. Instead, I took a different approach and I got to talk to them more and get to know them. I wanted to make sure they knew how much I cared about them and enjoyed having them in class. I allowed them to be more helpful around the room by selecting them to do things for me and for others. I made them feel important in my classroom. This went a long way. I could see attitude changes and I could see that this little step I took helped better their experiences and outlook on school. This played into their growth in writing as well. I began showing them that I wanted to hear what they were writing about. I wanted to hear their ideas when it came to writing topics or things that we could write about. As stated before, how can you succeed at school if you do not enjoy being there or doing the work? I knew I needed to change their attitudes before I changed their confidence in their abilities to write.
Student behavior was something that was at large in my classroom this year. I was constantly trying to manage student behavior while also trying to be an effective teacher. There is no way that it did not, in some way, affect my students' learning and performance. I needed to be sure to take this into consideration when evaluating student work. Based on the data below, you can tell that several of my students, six to be exact, did not think other students behaved in the classroom. Once I dug deeper, I was able to see that the students who put this as their answer are the ones who never acted out or caused trouble. This told me that it was a factor in how my students acted and performed in class. If they were too busy noticing that other students were causing trouble, how could they be more focused on their work, or rather, how could they learn from me when that is what I was focusing most of my attention on at some points throughout the day.
Writing Rubric
Out of the 23 students who participated in the writing workshop, 23 students were able to complete the final writing assignment and were then evaluated on a 9 section rubric where each section was worth 3 points. Here are the results - out of 27 possible points based on the rubric above. Below is a graph of overall scores and on each side shows each section of the rubric broken down to show how students scored.
From the results I gathered from the overall class based on the writing rubric, I have determined a few key points. One thing is that there was a pretty high success rate on the final piece of writing based on the indicators that were on the rubric. I had a total of 13 students that scored 90% or above. That is over half of my class. I also noticed that there were three students who scored pretty low on the rubric. With that being said, I believe it to be a success because of the growth I was able to witness from them throughout the study. The three students who scored the lowest were ones who, at the beginning of the study, had no confidence in writing and needed to be walked through the entire process of writing, even if it was just one word. Going from that to seeing them be able to sound out words on their own is something that I considered a success. Even if the rubric results did not show it, I knew that they improved immensely throughout the study in their ability to write as well as the confidence they held. That was one of the main purposes of this study.
Looking at the data from the graphs, I noticed a trend in a few sections of the rubric. The first thing I noticed is where most of my students struggled was capital letter use. From research and experience, I knew that this was a developmental skill that comes as they learn more about letters. I would like to point out that although some students had capital letters in the middle of sentences and words, all students started their sentences with capital letters, which was the overall goal of the lesson when we talked about capital letters.
I also noticed that students should be more aware of how they are coloring and drawing pictures. One of the early lessons was about three-star drawings and then I made sure to carry that throughout all the rest of the lessons as well as other subjects. The three stars included *Fill in all white spaces, * Stay in the lines, and *It has to make sense. I believe since it is something that was not expected before this study that it was still a habit my students were trying to form. I reminded my students about it daily and this was something that I got to observe and note improvement from the beginning of the study to the end. Along with this, students had to continue to make sure they were drawing about what their sentences said so that they were staying on one topic. The data showed improvement and I will point out that one of the students did not have time to draw her picture which is why there is one that is beginning. There was no picture to match the words.
Another key point that I noticed from the data was how much my students had improved in the area of sounding out words. At the beginning of the study, I observed students constantly wanting help sounding out words and even getting very frustrated when I asked them to try on their own or when they were unable to figure it out. As time went on, I noticed students using their resources, looking around the room for tools to help them and using the knowledge they had to sound out words on their own. The data showed that I had several students sounding out words on their own, a few that were developing this skill but had grown since the beginning of the study and then one who still needed some assistance. I believe that the one student who still needed assistance improved since she came to me about halfway through the school year. She made great strides toward being able to do it on her own.
These are some student examples of the final writing piece that was scored using the writing rubric discussed above. As you can see, these pieces of writing come from three different levels of students but all have made progress since the beginning of this study.
Rating Scale
After looking over both the beginning and ending rating scales that students filled out and talking with a few about their reasonings, I was able to come to the conclusion that, overall, my students gained a better understanding of writing. I gathered that they also liked writing more than they did before this study. My students were looking forward to writing more and more! It was interesting to see on the beginning rating scales that some of them put that they liked every part of writing - all 5 questions were smiley faces. Although that was the goal, I do not think my students fully grasped the intentions of filling out the scale until we actually went through the writing workshop and then they were able to determine their true feelings about writing. The data showed that at the end of the study, my students were more honest with how they felt about writing. At the beginning of the year and before this study, we did not focus a lot of time on writing so my students did not know what to expect. I wanted them to be honest during the pre and post test and I believe they were. From their knowledge, they filled out the scales with how they truly felt about writing.
Some students were very hard on themselves with a few of those questions and after having some meaningful conversations with students, I was able to gain a better understanding of why they may have felt the way they did about writing and their ability to write. One particular student {shown at the right} addressed that he truly enjoyed writing but he had some struggles at times which is why from pre to post he decided to change one of his answers for "Writing is easy for me."
To the left, is another example of a student rating scale who answered all smiley faces during the pre-test but then was honest on the post-test with how he felt after going through the writing workshop study. The data from this specific student showed me that he enjoyed writing but he was a bit hard on himself with "Writing is easy for me." Knowing who this student was, I got to have a conversation with him to see why writing was difficult for him. He said that he had trouble coming up with topics to write about when they were not already provided. He was one of my students who scored 27 points on the writing rubric and I knew he was a great writer! We concluded that he could refer back to his heart map that we had done at the beginning of the study that had ideas of things the students liked on it. This would help him choose what to write about and boost his confidence in the future.
Looking at a few students who jumped up two points from beginning to end, the data showed great growth for them. My conclusions for why they jumped so high was because they were submerged in a writing workshop that was rigorous and informational. Why was it all of my students did not increase their scores so dramatically? My belief is that they did not have as much room to grow. Some of my students had been more exposed to writing before they came to kindergarten. Whether that be through older brothers and sisters, parents who worked with them, or even previous preschools they came from, they had a base knowledge before they began kindergarten. Those students who started out lower had more room to grow and when they were exposed to writing in this format, the data showed that they were able to increase their abilities in writing over the duration of the study.
Unit Benchmark
The data results of the unit benchmark showed improvement for almost all of my students and did not show any decrease in scores from pre to post-test. I did have a few students (7) who stayed the same on their pre and post-tests. After looking back at the scores and the writing, I think there was a strong correlation with observed effort. As the study went on, I was able to observe and note students who were easily distracted by others or who were not always on task during writing time or while I was teaching a lesson. I believe this partially explains the reasons that those specific students stayed the same.
For one particular student, I was glad about whatever work he decided to do that day without getting upset. One of his least favorite things to do was sit still at his table and write. When I asked him to add details, I was lucky when he did not act out in protest. With that being said, he stayed the same from his pre to post-test which was something that I was glad about. I could tell that he was putting forth effort rather than not caring.
TRIANGULATION
The climate survey was a tool that let me see how my students felt about school overall, their safety, other students, and me as a teacher. I believe this connected to the rating scale because if their attitude about school was not good, then chances are their attitude about writing was not good either. Both methods of data collection together confirmed that the students' attitudes increased as the study progressed. I wanted to be able to see how much effort they were truly putting into our writing workshop based on how they felt about school and writing in general. Taking both of these into consideration, I was able to use the rubric to assess them on their writing. I also used this information to help make decisions on grading the unit benchmark. Both of the attitude/confidence tests enriched my ability to appropriately score their actual writing. I was able to make connections on why some students didn’t do as well as I had hoped and part of it was explained by their attitude toward school or toward writing in general.
IMPACT
I saw a huge improvement in my student’s writing through the course of the study. During one assessment I almost cried because of how happy I was. Nothing truly showed their abilities until I asked them to write in a different environment or for a different reason. The end piece of writing showed tremendous improvement. The data showed that this study had a positive impact on my students in many ways. It boosted their writing abilities across several subjects and it improved their attitude about writing. Although some of them still stated that they did not like writing, the overall data showed that students liked it more and were more honest after they had gone through the writing workshop. The data also showed that my students were able to honestly reflect on how they felt about writing. I would rather them be honest - like the data for the rating scales and climate surveys showed - than tell me what they thought I wanted to hear. My students were positively impacted by this writing workshop research study.
INTERACTIONS
As I mentioned before, I wish I would have kept and evaluated the student writing from the beginning that made me choose to do this study in the first place. Although I had scores from the pre and post benchmark tests, I did not keep it to evaluate the actual writing. I simply kept it to see differences in scores from beginning to end. The transformation in the actual writing would have been incredible and the T-Test results would have been more valuable than just a score 1-5.
Something else I could have done was taught the process of writing workshop a little better and more intentionally with my students. I think I just wanted to dive right in so I did not give much time to allow them to get better at building stamina and having quiet writing time, etc. I have since done more research and read more about how to better teach the process and have gotten some great ideas that I can not wait to try out!
Although I was able to meet with students for conferences occasionally, I would have liked to have done that a little more. I think part of not being able to, stemmed from not teaching the process as well as I should have in the beginning. It should have been more independent than it was which would have freed me up a little more for even more student meetings.
QUESTIONS
A question that popped up about the rating scale was why did student writing improve but their attitude toward it decreased? After having some conversations with some students, I was able to answer the question. Some of them just put all smiles in the beginning and so they were more honest at the end which led them to change their attitude answers. Some students talked about how they had to be quiet during writing time or that they had to sound out their own words because they “do not know how.” All of this feedback was great so that I could have the students explain some of their choices and it was not just an empty Likert Scale that had no meaning.