Description of Intervention
A focus on Challenges and Solutions
One of the most important things for me as I contemplated an Action Research project was I started to realize that I was hoping to to engage in implementations that might move students forward in their ability to learn both content and skill as a whole group. After spending time getting to know my students individually and as a group, I gave a needs assessment that showed me that I was working with a group who had varied ability levels in skills. These were students who had different strengths and weakness in writing, creativity, organization, and processing skills. It was very clear that while frustrated, most of my students did want to do the best they could on the assignments given. Each struggled at different levels. While some tried to understand how a thesis statement would work toward giving an essay a structure, others considered how to incorporate their own ideas and arguments into an apparently rigid content structure. For the A.R., I wanted to attempt to increase each ability groups' level of ability in reading and writingI. I began to formulate AR implementations that would help students move forward together. My class had a number of students who needed scaffolding to help learn basic skills as well as students who were ready to move on and create.
I had one of those 'aha' break through moments one day after looking through information for lit review and ideas, when I saw several students discussing a "This day in History Question" I had put up. I often put these questions on the Promethean board along to period music, as a way to hook students into the topic of the day as they are walking into class. In this case, several groups of students began debating the answer and offering proof of why they were right. What struck me was that almost all of the students were engaging in informal dialouge to challenge each other for the answer based on information had been working on and that they were familiar with. I was elated when I realized that one of those students was one of my most quite and struggling students. I could hardly get him to put anything down on paper but here he was successfully debating his point using earlier material we had covered.
Why not team my students up in order to allow them to teach, learn, and wrestle through the difficulties of increasing their skills in a group? The more I began to look into this, the more evidence, often in the form of Collaborative Wiki-assignments, group projects, project based learning, etc. that collaboration was successfully used for learning. I began to envision an implementation where students were able to take ownership of a task, teach, learn, discuss and debate ideas, while working towards a common, goal using each of their strengths. I began to get excited at the included prospect of a class that might be able to work with collaboration as a tool to increase and/or solidify skills as a whole and together.
Individual Novice, Collective Experts!
The idea turned into a plan that I was excited about. I could align my students's needs, the ideals of the school with respect to Common Core with my desire to differentiate instruction in a positive way. I opted to use a DBQ, or document based question essay assignment for the student collaborative writing project. Upon the advice of my master teacher, and general conferencing with peers and supervisors, I endeavored to begin them with a DBQ question that would involve familiar content information that I had intended to go back and review.
The question I chose :
•“To what extent was the expansionism during the period known as Manifest Destiny similar and different from expansionism during Imperialism?”
The DBQ process for this question would involve the students completing review research on Manifest Destiny and American Imperialism, reading and examining five primary sources that were given to use as supports for their ideas, choosing main paragraph topics and the primary sources they would use to support it, structuring their essay in a format given before writing the essay in class during one period.
Coming back from Thanksgiving break students will be given a group project that asks them to write a full DBQ essay together. Students will have both individual responsibilities in content, structure and writing as well as shared responsibility in achieving the best possible product using all of their input and talents. As a class we will work for a week towards accomplishing the goals of:
1. Review the DBQ process and overall essay project expectations and timeline.
2. Review the concepts of Manifest Destiny and American Imperialism (causes, effects, and the significance of each on various aspects for the United States).
3. Allow them to read and prepare their primary sources as well as reviewing the three-part source integration of those primary sources I was asking them to use. Here, they were would work with a graphic organizer before coming back to the group to present their findings.
4. Allow them opportunities to work both individually, generating information ideas for the group as well as scheduling collaboration sessions each day, in order for the students to discuss what each had done and how they all would choose to go forward with their new information and ideas.
5. Allow for a gradual release of responsibility from my structure and daily expectations ,with specific tasks, to complete in the beginning to student generated tasks during the final days where they are given wider daily parameters and final goals so as to use their time in full collaboration as they saw fit.
6. Give them a final collaboration day in which to complete their in-class essay based off of all work done.
I laid out three main forms of data collection that I hoped would triangulate to give me evidence of what was working, what wasn't, what I might consider doing as a following step to either increase their success or work towards addressing things that may have been challenging (or, and probably, both). Each tool looks at least two types of information to give me a wide view of what is actually taking place in the process of collaboration. They also follow the lines of data that I initially was looking at so as to tell me if my implementation was having a positive/negative affect on my question and goals and how it was doing so.
Data Collection
A focus on Challenges and Solutions
One of the most important things for me as I contemplated an Action Research project was I started to realize that I was hoping to to engage in implementations that might move students forward in their ability to learn both content and skill as a whole group. After spending time getting to know my students individually and as a group, I gave a needs assessment that showed me that I was working with a group who had varied ability levels in skills. These were students who had different strengths and weakness in writing, creativity, organization, and processing skills. It was very clear that while frustrated, most of my students did want to do the best they could on the assignments given. Each struggled at different levels. While some tried to understand how a thesis statement would work toward giving an essay a structure, others considered how to incorporate their own ideas and arguments into an apparently rigid content structure. For the A.R., I wanted to attempt to increase each ability groups' level of ability in reading and writingI. I began to formulate AR implementations that would help students move forward together. My class had a number of students who needed scaffolding to help learn basic skills as well as students who were ready to move on and create.
I had one of those 'aha' break through moments one day after looking through information for lit review and ideas, when I saw several students discussing a "This day in History Question" I had put up. I often put these questions on the Promethean board along to period music, as a way to hook students into the topic of the day as they are walking into class. In this case, several groups of students began debating the answer and offering proof of why they were right. What struck me was that almost all of the students were engaging in informal dialouge to challenge each other for the answer based on information had been working on and that they were familiar with. I was elated when I realized that one of those students was one of my most quite and struggling students. I could hardly get him to put anything down on paper but here he was successfully debating his point using earlier material we had covered.
Why not team my students up in order to allow them to teach, learn, and wrestle through the difficulties of increasing their skills in a group? The more I began to look into this, the more evidence, often in the form of Collaborative Wiki-assignments, group projects, project based learning, etc. that collaboration was successfully used for learning. I began to envision an implementation where students were able to take ownership of a task, teach, learn, discuss and debate ideas, while working towards a common, goal using each of their strengths. I began to get excited at the included prospect of a class that might be able to work with collaboration as a tool to increase and/or solidify skills as a whole and together.
Individual Novice, Collective Experts!
The idea turned into a plan that I was excited about. I could align my students's needs, the ideals of the school with respect to Common Core with my desire to differentiate instruction in a positive way. I opted to use a DBQ, or document based question essay assignment for the student collaborative writing project. Upon the advice of my master teacher, and general conferencing with peers and supervisors, I endeavored to begin them with a DBQ question that would involve familiar content information that I had intended to go back and review.
The question I chose :
•“To what extent was the expansionism during the period known as Manifest Destiny similar and different from expansionism during Imperialism?”
The DBQ process for this question would involve the students completing review research on Manifest Destiny and American Imperialism, reading and examining five primary sources that were given to use as supports for their ideas, choosing main paragraph topics and the primary sources they would use to support it, structuring their essay in a format given before writing the essay in class during one period.
Coming back from Thanksgiving break students will be given a group project that asks them to write a full DBQ essay together. Students will have both individual responsibilities in content, structure and writing as well as shared responsibility in achieving the best possible product using all of their input and talents. As a class we will work for a week towards accomplishing the goals of:
1. Review the DBQ process and overall essay project expectations and timeline.
2. Review the concepts of Manifest Destiny and American Imperialism (causes, effects, and the significance of each on various aspects for the United States).
3. Allow them to read and prepare their primary sources as well as reviewing the three-part source integration of those primary sources I was asking them to use. Here, they were would work with a graphic organizer before coming back to the group to present their findings.
4. Allow them opportunities to work both individually, generating information ideas for the group as well as scheduling collaboration sessions each day, in order for the students to discuss what each had done and how they all would choose to go forward with their new information and ideas.
5. Allow for a gradual release of responsibility from my structure and daily expectations ,with specific tasks, to complete in the beginning to student generated tasks during the final days where they are given wider daily parameters and final goals so as to use their time in full collaboration as they saw fit.
6. Give them a final collaboration day in which to complete their in-class essay based off of all work done.
I laid out three main forms of data collection that I hoped would triangulate to give me evidence of what was working, what wasn't, what I might consider doing as a following step to either increase their success or work towards addressing things that may have been challenging (or, and probably, both). Each tool looks at least two types of information to give me a wide view of what is actually taking place in the process of collaboration. They also follow the lines of data that I initially was looking at so as to tell me if my implementation was having a positive/negative affect on my question and goals and how it was doing so.
Data Collection
1. Student Work:
Student work will be an important measure in determining final results for what is and is not happening in terms of product with regard to their understanding of content and the quality of the work they are producing as a result of collaborative work. The initial needs assessment took a baseline level for each of my students and as a whole using a rubric which included a series of sections to be measured. In the implementation of phase one, I will bring this rubric back and base their new, collaborative work against this rubric thereby gaining a pre- and post performance view in which to monitor changes.
Further, in order to gauge content comprehension students will receive three exit slip questions throughout the week of our collaborative peer group writing. Examples of these questions include: "Describe the concept of Manifest Destiny and give an example of it in action", "Thinking about the time of American Imperialism, please describe the role that yellow journalism played and give one example of its influence". By using both these assessments I hope to determine the impact that the peer collaborative writing process has had on student learning.
Student work will be an important measure in determining final results for what is and is not happening in terms of product with regard to their understanding of content and the quality of the work they are producing as a result of collaborative work. The initial needs assessment took a baseline level for each of my students and as a whole using a rubric which included a series of sections to be measured. In the implementation of phase one, I will bring this rubric back and base their new, collaborative work against this rubric thereby gaining a pre- and post performance view in which to monitor changes.
Further, in order to gauge content comprehension students will receive three exit slip questions throughout the week of our collaborative peer group writing. Examples of these questions include: "Describe the concept of Manifest Destiny and give an example of it in action", "Thinking about the time of American Imperialism, please describe the role that yellow journalism played and give one example of its influence". By using both these assessments I hope to determine the impact that the peer collaborative writing process has had on student learning.
2. Peer Group Collaboration Observations:
Initially, I had intended to incorporate a more formalized tally sheet in which I could document the observations I took while students were working in their groups but as I began to try and construct different versions that included what I needed I realized that the breadth of what I was looking to see would be to complex to have in just one observation form. Not wanting to overly complicate a tally sheet but desiring to allow what information was coming in to be documented I am opting to do written informal observations of three groups over the course of our week and a half week collaborative writing project. My goal here is to monitor the types of discussions that students are having while they are engaged in the collaborative process of the project. Both individual and group work are slated to come into play at various times and while I will be floating around to help should students need me, the group work will generally be student led. This gives me the perfect opportunity to listen and take notes of how students are interacting. The main goal of my data collection here is to attempt to observe how the amount of discussion that is going on about the subject, the quality of discussion and ideas that students are bringing, the levels of participation students are brining, and whether the collaborative process really is working as I am expecting it will with an exchange of ideas, knowledge, and ability levels balancing out the differences in student ability.
Initially, I had intended to incorporate a more formalized tally sheet in which I could document the observations I took while students were working in their groups but as I began to try and construct different versions that included what I needed I realized that the breadth of what I was looking to see would be to complex to have in just one observation form. Not wanting to overly complicate a tally sheet but desiring to allow what information was coming in to be documented I am opting to do written informal observations of three groups over the course of our week and a half week collaborative writing project. My goal here is to monitor the types of discussions that students are having while they are engaged in the collaborative process of the project. Both individual and group work are slated to come into play at various times and while I will be floating around to help should students need me, the group work will generally be student led. This gives me the perfect opportunity to listen and take notes of how students are interacting. The main goal of my data collection here is to attempt to observe how the amount of discussion that is going on about the subject, the quality of discussion and ideas that students are bringing, the levels of participation students are brining, and whether the collaborative process really is working as I am expecting it will with an exchange of ideas, knowledge, and ability levels balancing out the differences in student ability.
3. Student Feedback:
During my needs assessment phase I gave the students a feed back form survey that was aimed at learning what they thought about the writing that they had to do for classes. I was looking to determine whether they felt comfortable with the writing process and what they felt the easiest and most difficult aspects of writing were. Here again, I will give them another survey looking at post-collaboration project results to examine what changes have taken place, for the better or worse, in terms of comfort with writing, and challenges/strengths. Included in this new survey are questions designed to allow them to reflect and share what they thought they had gained or lost by using working as a team in a writing assignment. Further are two questions that directly ask them (Likert Scale and open response), asking them if they thought process had increased their ability as writers, and if anything had changed through using this method. I am hoping here to track the perceptions of the students of both their perception of their ability as writers post implementation as well their perception as to the effectiveness of the implementation.
Timeline for Phase 1
December 2nd -10th: Phase One Peer collaboration group project (observations)
December 11th: Group Write up of finished Essay (Student work data collected)
December 12: 2nd Student Feedback Survey
During my needs assessment phase I gave the students a feed back form survey that was aimed at learning what they thought about the writing that they had to do for classes. I was looking to determine whether they felt comfortable with the writing process and what they felt the easiest and most difficult aspects of writing were. Here again, I will give them another survey looking at post-collaboration project results to examine what changes have taken place, for the better or worse, in terms of comfort with writing, and challenges/strengths. Included in this new survey are questions designed to allow them to reflect and share what they thought they had gained or lost by using working as a team in a writing assignment. Further are two questions that directly ask them (Likert Scale and open response), asking them if they thought process had increased their ability as writers, and if anything had changed through using this method. I am hoping here to track the perceptions of the students of both their perception of their ability as writers post implementation as well their perception as to the effectiveness of the implementation.
Timeline for Phase 1
December 2nd -10th: Phase One Peer collaboration group project (observations)
December 11th: Group Write up of finished Essay (Student work data collected)
December 12: 2nd Student Feedback Survey