Across the district, students are required to take quarterly assessments in different writing genres that are scored on a district rubric. I used the district assessments as my pre and post assessments to see writing achievement growth. The chart to the left shows the percentage of students that increased, stayed the same, and decreased from the pre to post. After analyzing the data, I noticed two reasons for these results. First, the change in genre impacted the student scores. My highest writers excel due to being able to showcase their creativity. In argumentative, students did not research information to support their topic. Informative was research based; therefore, their writing was more prescriptive. Of the 39% of students that decreased, seven of them are my top writers who consistently receive advanced scores. They did still receive advanced scores, but they were not as high as the pre assessment score.
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At the end of each conference, myself students and I set a goal in which they are supposed to concentrate on in their next writing pieces. In order to give them an opportunity to practice the skill or technique I gave them, I asked each student to rewrite a section to show their understanding of their writing goal. After each rewrite, I scored it by giving them a one through four. One (beginning) being it was not rewritten, two (progressing) being they attempted the skill but were not effective, three (proficient) being they were able to implement the skill or technique with fidelity, and four (advanced) if the student went above and beyond in implementation. The graph to the right shows students who receive a proficient or higher after rewriting their piece compared to the pre and post test scores. From the pre test, there was definite growth. For conference one, 100% of the students were proficient, but that number slightly dropped to conference two and to conference three. After reflecting, students were challenged more from conference one to three and the difficulty of their technique or strategy increased. Overall, after students were provided feedback, their scores increased thus improving students' scores from the pre to post assessment.
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One of my data collection methods was to video myself two separate times doing writing conferences with students. In order to keep myself accountable for following the research-based steps, I created a Teacher Writing Conference Reflection form, shown to the left, in which I analyzed my videos. After reflecting on both sets of videos, I followed the structure and flow that I originally planned to implement. On the reflection form, I was able to circle strongly agree for all questions. I was able to circle all strongly agree because I followed the structure I researched. Before completing research, I simply told students what they needed to improve in their writing instead of following the pieces outlined on the reflection form. By analyzing the reflection forms, I learned I made growth from before my action research until now. The research I did prior to action research made me a better educator.
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