clairemone_high_school_newspaper_project_final_january_14.pptx | |
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(Full powerpoint can be found in the above file)
Description of Implementation
Phase two of my implementation involved taking what I had learned earlier in my phase one and trying to modify my implementation and answer the challenges of my AR questions that had come up in the first phase. As a reminder, my main AR question was: how does student peer collaboration in writing impact students' attitudes and learning in an 11th grade history class? From the work results and my observations, I realized that I wanted to shift away slightly from strict focus on writing and examine how collaboration affected student attitudes in motivation. I also wanted to look more closely at the quantity of quality in respect to the effort that they were putting into their work.
This project was centered around the idea of students creating a newspaper that covered one of the major era's during the times we studied. This was their final for the semester and the last major grade we would all have with me as their student teacher. In this case, while I still intended to use both observation and student questionnaires, I would no longer be completing the triangulation using the written aspects of the previous writing rubric. Instead, as can be seen in the power point file, students would receive work on their ability to not only produce a paper that included all the asked for sections, in the standard of a final essay paper, but would be formally observed and graded based on their participation within the group. They would all be assigned tasks and I would be both observing and speaking to their editors, which I will explain below, to generate the final grade.
Description of the Project:
I put the students, in this iteration of collaborative work, into groups of four based on observations of their work together that I had noted throughout the year and in the last phase. I as I mentioned in the previous section, I had allowed the students to chose their own groups. This had cause some students to group together with friends and/or those who they knew would get their work done (or, in the opposite vein, those who they knew would not expect others to work that hard). I chose groups based of my knowledge of them through the semester and in each group, I included a strong leader and at least one student that had difficulties with academic skills. Friends who were easily distracted when working together were kept apart as were those who sometimes had challenges in motivation.
These groups were tasked with identifying an era of interest in time we had studied to create a period newspaper. They were able to choose from either the American Revolution, American Imperialism, the Industrial Revolution, or World War I. Each newspaper was further broken down into main articles. These included a front page article with an image, a Who's Who profile with an image and an interview that they created with an individual who they thought had a substantial impact on the lives of people during the timeframe they chose, an editorial or a yellow journalism piece of an important event, a map that tied the pieces together and were relevant to the other articles, and a crossword puzzle that needed to have twenty people, places, and events. I gave the students creative license on how to produce this newspaper, with a poster and actual newspaper as models and all they needed to do was to ensure they incorporated all required material within their own project. Because of the feedback and observations I made from the first phase, I gave the students two grades; the majority grade would come from the final product and a secondary grade from the individual work that I observed them doing on a daily basis as well as their personal 'end' contribution. I was very clear that while the overall grade and product were very important, their individual daily work and contributions would garner an independent grade.
Students were given eight days to work on this project. I gave each student-group a packet with all power point slides and individual responsibilities. Included in those are a 'project at a glance' (shown in the slide show) which delineates each day's intended focus and expectations as well as a specified 'step by step' (also shown in the slide show) that overtly gave them expected progress on all topics from brain storming, data collection/research, draft writing and writing, to peer checking and revising Each of these held points towards a final grade.
Student Choice and Student Roles
Two of the key factors in this project were the implementation of student choice and the roles that students were given. Both amounted to a focus towards increasing both intrinsic motivation as well as a controlled release of responsibility. Each group had a list of staff positions that included an editor, a front page lead writer, a who's who lead writer, and a editorial/yellow journalism team lead. The editor was to be specifically responsible for the map and crossword puzzle as well as organizing the entire group and being the lead. With respect to the editor, I chose students for those roles, and picked students who, over the semester and from the last phase, demonstrated leadership, hard work and advanced skills in reading and writing. I instructed them in 'editors meetings' that they were there as leaders. They were to complete their two works, which carried less on-time work, in order to help others, and to lead from the back. Students were also given the task of giving secondary roles for their own projects. As a group, student leaders each discussed and choose teams that would aide in their research and writing. In essence, each student had two roles during the project. The first was to take charge of their own projects and the second was to specifically aid, as staff, in another's project. The roles they needed to fill were a researcher, fact checker, and spell/ grammer checker.
Every day I met with each group's editor to give an expectation and focus to the day as well as disseminate information on progress and any ongoing issues. I spoke first about the goals of the day before going group by group to discern progress and problems before opening it up to a short general discussion. Editors then had brief meetings to discuss the days' goals with their own group and get the process started.
Student choice came from their ability to choose an era as well as to play to their own strengths with regard to what type of article they were writing. Students also had the choice how they best served as staff.
Time line and Progress of the Project
The Project was structured in a way to allow for non-structured work. I gave all groups a grand focus for their work however, they were told to complete this work in the way they saw fit. Day one was an organizational day (again this can be seen on the slides) where they, after I name an editor, filled out a graphic organizer and determine their staff, a city their paper would be located in, and a date and time for the paper. Day two involved planning, brainstorming and logistics. Day three and five were in the library working with both computers as well as materials I had pulled with the librarian. They received two days of practical research/writing work time, using iPads, and one day of pre-writing. Finally there were instructed to take one final day of peer writing before our final schedule started. At that point they took the two hours allotted for the final to complete their projects.
Results:
Description of Implementation
Phase two of my implementation involved taking what I had learned earlier in my phase one and trying to modify my implementation and answer the challenges of my AR questions that had come up in the first phase. As a reminder, my main AR question was: how does student peer collaboration in writing impact students' attitudes and learning in an 11th grade history class? From the work results and my observations, I realized that I wanted to shift away slightly from strict focus on writing and examine how collaboration affected student attitudes in motivation. I also wanted to look more closely at the quantity of quality in respect to the effort that they were putting into their work.
This project was centered around the idea of students creating a newspaper that covered one of the major era's during the times we studied. This was their final for the semester and the last major grade we would all have with me as their student teacher. In this case, while I still intended to use both observation and student questionnaires, I would no longer be completing the triangulation using the written aspects of the previous writing rubric. Instead, as can be seen in the power point file, students would receive work on their ability to not only produce a paper that included all the asked for sections, in the standard of a final essay paper, but would be formally observed and graded based on their participation within the group. They would all be assigned tasks and I would be both observing and speaking to their editors, which I will explain below, to generate the final grade.
Description of the Project:
I put the students, in this iteration of collaborative work, into groups of four based on observations of their work together that I had noted throughout the year and in the last phase. I as I mentioned in the previous section, I had allowed the students to chose their own groups. This had cause some students to group together with friends and/or those who they knew would get their work done (or, in the opposite vein, those who they knew would not expect others to work that hard). I chose groups based of my knowledge of them through the semester and in each group, I included a strong leader and at least one student that had difficulties with academic skills. Friends who were easily distracted when working together were kept apart as were those who sometimes had challenges in motivation.
These groups were tasked with identifying an era of interest in time we had studied to create a period newspaper. They were able to choose from either the American Revolution, American Imperialism, the Industrial Revolution, or World War I. Each newspaper was further broken down into main articles. These included a front page article with an image, a Who's Who profile with an image and an interview that they created with an individual who they thought had a substantial impact on the lives of people during the timeframe they chose, an editorial or a yellow journalism piece of an important event, a map that tied the pieces together and were relevant to the other articles, and a crossword puzzle that needed to have twenty people, places, and events. I gave the students creative license on how to produce this newspaper, with a poster and actual newspaper as models and all they needed to do was to ensure they incorporated all required material within their own project. Because of the feedback and observations I made from the first phase, I gave the students two grades; the majority grade would come from the final product and a secondary grade from the individual work that I observed them doing on a daily basis as well as their personal 'end' contribution. I was very clear that while the overall grade and product were very important, their individual daily work and contributions would garner an independent grade.
Students were given eight days to work on this project. I gave each student-group a packet with all power point slides and individual responsibilities. Included in those are a 'project at a glance' (shown in the slide show) which delineates each day's intended focus and expectations as well as a specified 'step by step' (also shown in the slide show) that overtly gave them expected progress on all topics from brain storming, data collection/research, draft writing and writing, to peer checking and revising Each of these held points towards a final grade.
Student Choice and Student Roles
Two of the key factors in this project were the implementation of student choice and the roles that students were given. Both amounted to a focus towards increasing both intrinsic motivation as well as a controlled release of responsibility. Each group had a list of staff positions that included an editor, a front page lead writer, a who's who lead writer, and a editorial/yellow journalism team lead. The editor was to be specifically responsible for the map and crossword puzzle as well as organizing the entire group and being the lead. With respect to the editor, I chose students for those roles, and picked students who, over the semester and from the last phase, demonstrated leadership, hard work and advanced skills in reading and writing. I instructed them in 'editors meetings' that they were there as leaders. They were to complete their two works, which carried less on-time work, in order to help others, and to lead from the back. Students were also given the task of giving secondary roles for their own projects. As a group, student leaders each discussed and choose teams that would aide in their research and writing. In essence, each student had two roles during the project. The first was to take charge of their own projects and the second was to specifically aid, as staff, in another's project. The roles they needed to fill were a researcher, fact checker, and spell/ grammer checker.
Every day I met with each group's editor to give an expectation and focus to the day as well as disseminate information on progress and any ongoing issues. I spoke first about the goals of the day before going group by group to discern progress and problems before opening it up to a short general discussion. Editors then had brief meetings to discuss the days' goals with their own group and get the process started.
Student choice came from their ability to choose an era as well as to play to their own strengths with regard to what type of article they were writing. Students also had the choice how they best served as staff.
Time line and Progress of the Project
The Project was structured in a way to allow for non-structured work. I gave all groups a grand focus for their work however, they were told to complete this work in the way they saw fit. Day one was an organizational day (again this can be seen on the slides) where they, after I name an editor, filled out a graphic organizer and determine their staff, a city their paper would be located in, and a date and time for the paper. Day two involved planning, brainstorming and logistics. Day three and five were in the library working with both computers as well as materials I had pulled with the librarian. They received two days of practical research/writing work time, using iPads, and one day of pre-writing. Finally there were instructed to take one final day of peer writing before our final schedule started. At that point they took the two hours allotted for the final to complete their projects.
Results:
Please see Slide show of example of student questionnaire at bottom of page
Student Questionnaires:
I deviated from my first phase to offer, what I thought, would be a more effective questionnaire. In that first phase I asked about generalities with regard to their own writing and how they felt about collaborative writing in a way that didn't ask for specific information. While I was able to get information that was useful, I wanted to tailor a survey that incorporated both what they thought was valuable and not, as well to ask students to reflect on their part and experiences during the process itself. This multifunctional set of questions set about asking what their jobs were, what they did, how they could have done better, what worked in the collaborative process, what did not, and a summation of how they worked as a team. At the end of my final day with them, 35 minute blocks on the day after the final, I told each student that they could receive an extra ten points for their total grade, for filling out this questionnaire and that, as they came up to see the final grade I had given them, I would award or not award points based on if they fully answered the survey. I told them that this was completely anonymous and that I would show none of the other students.
The questions, which I had written on the board where:
1. What were your responsibilities during the collaborative final project?
2. What did you actually end up doing? Did you do more or less? Why?
3. How do you think you did on the project and group work? Is there anything you would change?
4. What were some of the strengths about working in a group project like this one?
5. What were some of the weaknesses?
6. How do you think your group members did?
The results showed five main things that the students thought.
1. There was a substantial increase of ownership of individual and group responsibilities, with the Editor and staff seriously taking on their roles to the benefit of the group as a whole. Almost every comment from an editor included that they had taken the job very seriously. One boy a reluctant editor, for question four, said: "Working as a group allowed us to collaborate. This really helped our ideas get stronger. Sometimes I had to ask people to redo things but we communicated well with each other after we would have our staff meetings".
2. Students, by and large, discounted their own work stating it could have been better. They were now discussing more detailed aspects of things like wishing they had helped edit more or would have liked to include more information than they had space for.
3. The help they got from their peers, especially with regard to sentence structure, spelling, and research, helped them do a better job on their own articles. It was obvious that many of them were both proud of their effort and of their work. In one specific case, a student who had been struggling with getting the courage to write anything at all, went even further, and sat with her editor to do her best to fully write the answers to the questionnaire. Her answer, for the third question was: "I think we did our best and we didn't want to put our work on a poster like everyone else therefore we decided to put our final project on a binder with sleeves". Indeed, many of the projects were really very different from each other and as can be seen in her words, there was an increased sense of pride that truly led to a higher quality of work all around.
4. Students were still concerned with team members who were missing and non-communicative on some days and that trust in team members was still sometimes an issue. While virtually all of the questions for number six were positive about their members, and recall that I did say it was never going to be shared, they still were suspicious. Specifically, one girl hit it right on the head and said that "We all worked together to have a finished product. The writing was easier because we each helped fix mistakes...There were hardly any problems except trusting other members to do their part and complete it."
5. By almost everyones' estimation, they felt they had accomplished more by working in groups. For almost every single answer for question five the answer of the weakness of collaboration was an answer that turned it into a positive. For example there were many answers like this one. "We didn't really had a problem working in groups. I think we work better in a group than individuals becuase we get more ideas.".
Finally, I have to say that I was elated with the fact that almost every single student handed in a response. Even more exciting was while my first questionnaire, seen earlier in the AR, generated some writing this second saw almost everyone obviously thinking about and writing full answers to the question. I wondered how much that had to do with my bringing them all up individually to receive a class grade, I was possibly putting them on the spot, but the fact that they weren't just absent answers made me start to really see that the motivation that took place in the project was possibly, hopefully, continuing on through to the examination of it.
Observations:
The observations were an integral part of the process for this Action Research. Both because I was a teacher looking for results, as well as, a researcher that likes this type of research laid out in advance. In what I would consider best behavior possible so I can go from a benchmark towards analyzation, I told my students I would be observing them for their individual grade given the day's focus. Each day, following the schedule I had laid out for them, I observed and took notes. Initially, I had intended on only observing three groups, however, as time went on I modified that and included other groups because they either did something very well or dropped the ball. My observations organically shifted from three groups to the whole as I noted that significant positives and negatives that were happening outside of my groups.
Here are a few examples of the free form notes I took on my computer while observing student groups.
1. Students back in classroom. Group work day. Editor meeting, staff meeting, meeting with profile and Front Page groups.
Observations: majority of groups are highly engaged and working on their projects while discussing the various aspects. Three of the groups have taken to hear the various jobs they have. And active discussion and sharing is taking place!! Editors are acting like the expert
Erika, and Chris had to be redirected. Erika seems to have issues focusing in every situation.
I had to speak to two groups and remind them that work needed to be done in order to gain points/avoid being dropped from the groups they are in.
2. Group day in library. Just had editor meeting and I am now watching my leaders take point! SO exciting to see this. Yesenia and her group are now going person by person with each being prompted to talk about what they have left to do and how they need help. Unbelievable to see one of my shyest students take control like this. I wonder if Erik (a student who the administration think needs an IEP very badly, but whose parents appear to have been switching him around to avoid it) will be able to take part in this without me? I love not seeing that dejected, "I can't do anything" face he wears. His work is much more simple but he seems to be progressing and motivated.
3. Group day in research (iPads). Observing group 5 debate historical points about Woodrow Wilson for the Who's Who section. They are actually having a mini debate about what is accurate and needed about his education. We now have two ipads being searched and a library book open.
The overall results showed five main points.
1. The structure of staff, or designated jobs was very effective in positive in-group collaboration. Discussion, debate, and further work was done because of the joint nature of the work.
2. Students engagement went way up. Students were much more motivated, possibly, because of the social aspects of the hierarchy in the group. Each student was responsible for their own work and another student's work and the desire to take these roles on in earnest led to situations where the person NOT doing anything productively was the odd person out.
3. Editors imparted their superior skill in writing, spelling, and research very well. Many of the editors, having finished their own work in the first couple of days, were observed being jack of all trades to help research, proof read, and find images for the other students. Student team leaders were observed actually taking the time out from the own work to helped each other frequently. On the day of proofreading, where each staff member was specifically told to take up the editing job, and it was initially meant to be individual, began collaborating. They each started asking each other questions about wording and punctuation. Awesome.
4. Sadly, some of the students who were disruptive before were still disruptive now. On two occasions I had to remind students that not being on task would have either the group members or myself wondering if they should be doing a solo project. Both of those students, as it is, are capable writers and students. Motivation is hard to come by for both of them and while they distract the other students they always finish their assignments well.
5. Students became less tolerable of others who were unwilling, or unable, to do work leading to one groups attempting to eject a member. My meetings with the editors always also having them go through and identify progress and problems. In one case the group wanted to eject a member who had been absent and hadn't done some of her work at home. While it was worked out in the end, with the girl actually going well above and beyond in order to redeem herself, I suspect, the dynamic was one where, as I mentioned, those not taking the task seriously were the odd ones out.
Student work far exceeded my expectations in terms of quality and creativeness for all but one group. The difference between the last phase and this shows a more complete picture of what students are, I believe, able to accomplish when in groups of varied skill.
Student Questionnaires:
I deviated from my first phase to offer, what I thought, would be a more effective questionnaire. In that first phase I asked about generalities with regard to their own writing and how they felt about collaborative writing in a way that didn't ask for specific information. While I was able to get information that was useful, I wanted to tailor a survey that incorporated both what they thought was valuable and not, as well to ask students to reflect on their part and experiences during the process itself. This multifunctional set of questions set about asking what their jobs were, what they did, how they could have done better, what worked in the collaborative process, what did not, and a summation of how they worked as a team. At the end of my final day with them, 35 minute blocks on the day after the final, I told each student that they could receive an extra ten points for their total grade, for filling out this questionnaire and that, as they came up to see the final grade I had given them, I would award or not award points based on if they fully answered the survey. I told them that this was completely anonymous and that I would show none of the other students.
The questions, which I had written on the board where:
1. What were your responsibilities during the collaborative final project?
2. What did you actually end up doing? Did you do more or less? Why?
3. How do you think you did on the project and group work? Is there anything you would change?
4. What were some of the strengths about working in a group project like this one?
5. What were some of the weaknesses?
6. How do you think your group members did?
The results showed five main things that the students thought.
1. There was a substantial increase of ownership of individual and group responsibilities, with the Editor and staff seriously taking on their roles to the benefit of the group as a whole. Almost every comment from an editor included that they had taken the job very seriously. One boy a reluctant editor, for question four, said: "Working as a group allowed us to collaborate. This really helped our ideas get stronger. Sometimes I had to ask people to redo things but we communicated well with each other after we would have our staff meetings".
2. Students, by and large, discounted their own work stating it could have been better. They were now discussing more detailed aspects of things like wishing they had helped edit more or would have liked to include more information than they had space for.
3. The help they got from their peers, especially with regard to sentence structure, spelling, and research, helped them do a better job on their own articles. It was obvious that many of them were both proud of their effort and of their work. In one specific case, a student who had been struggling with getting the courage to write anything at all, went even further, and sat with her editor to do her best to fully write the answers to the questionnaire. Her answer, for the third question was: "I think we did our best and we didn't want to put our work on a poster like everyone else therefore we decided to put our final project on a binder with sleeves". Indeed, many of the projects were really very different from each other and as can be seen in her words, there was an increased sense of pride that truly led to a higher quality of work all around.
4. Students were still concerned with team members who were missing and non-communicative on some days and that trust in team members was still sometimes an issue. While virtually all of the questions for number six were positive about their members, and recall that I did say it was never going to be shared, they still were suspicious. Specifically, one girl hit it right on the head and said that "We all worked together to have a finished product. The writing was easier because we each helped fix mistakes...There were hardly any problems except trusting other members to do their part and complete it."
5. By almost everyones' estimation, they felt they had accomplished more by working in groups. For almost every single answer for question five the answer of the weakness of collaboration was an answer that turned it into a positive. For example there were many answers like this one. "We didn't really had a problem working in groups. I think we work better in a group than individuals becuase we get more ideas.".
Finally, I have to say that I was elated with the fact that almost every single student handed in a response. Even more exciting was while my first questionnaire, seen earlier in the AR, generated some writing this second saw almost everyone obviously thinking about and writing full answers to the question. I wondered how much that had to do with my bringing them all up individually to receive a class grade, I was possibly putting them on the spot, but the fact that they weren't just absent answers made me start to really see that the motivation that took place in the project was possibly, hopefully, continuing on through to the examination of it.
Observations:
The observations were an integral part of the process for this Action Research. Both because I was a teacher looking for results, as well as, a researcher that likes this type of research laid out in advance. In what I would consider best behavior possible so I can go from a benchmark towards analyzation, I told my students I would be observing them for their individual grade given the day's focus. Each day, following the schedule I had laid out for them, I observed and took notes. Initially, I had intended on only observing three groups, however, as time went on I modified that and included other groups because they either did something very well or dropped the ball. My observations organically shifted from three groups to the whole as I noted that significant positives and negatives that were happening outside of my groups.
Here are a few examples of the free form notes I took on my computer while observing student groups.
1. Students back in classroom. Group work day. Editor meeting, staff meeting, meeting with profile and Front Page groups.
Observations: majority of groups are highly engaged and working on their projects while discussing the various aspects. Three of the groups have taken to hear the various jobs they have. And active discussion and sharing is taking place!! Editors are acting like the expert
Erika, and Chris had to be redirected. Erika seems to have issues focusing in every situation.
I had to speak to two groups and remind them that work needed to be done in order to gain points/avoid being dropped from the groups they are in.
2. Group day in library. Just had editor meeting and I am now watching my leaders take point! SO exciting to see this. Yesenia and her group are now going person by person with each being prompted to talk about what they have left to do and how they need help. Unbelievable to see one of my shyest students take control like this. I wonder if Erik (a student who the administration think needs an IEP very badly, but whose parents appear to have been switching him around to avoid it) will be able to take part in this without me? I love not seeing that dejected, "I can't do anything" face he wears. His work is much more simple but he seems to be progressing and motivated.
3. Group day in research (iPads). Observing group 5 debate historical points about Woodrow Wilson for the Who's Who section. They are actually having a mini debate about what is accurate and needed about his education. We now have two ipads being searched and a library book open.
The overall results showed five main points.
1. The structure of staff, or designated jobs was very effective in positive in-group collaboration. Discussion, debate, and further work was done because of the joint nature of the work.
2. Students engagement went way up. Students were much more motivated, possibly, because of the social aspects of the hierarchy in the group. Each student was responsible for their own work and another student's work and the desire to take these roles on in earnest led to situations where the person NOT doing anything productively was the odd person out.
3. Editors imparted their superior skill in writing, spelling, and research very well. Many of the editors, having finished their own work in the first couple of days, were observed being jack of all trades to help research, proof read, and find images for the other students. Student team leaders were observed actually taking the time out from the own work to helped each other frequently. On the day of proofreading, where each staff member was specifically told to take up the editing job, and it was initially meant to be individual, began collaborating. They each started asking each other questions about wording and punctuation. Awesome.
4. Sadly, some of the students who were disruptive before were still disruptive now. On two occasions I had to remind students that not being on task would have either the group members or myself wondering if they should be doing a solo project. Both of those students, as it is, are capable writers and students. Motivation is hard to come by for both of them and while they distract the other students they always finish their assignments well.
5. Students became less tolerable of others who were unwilling, or unable, to do work leading to one groups attempting to eject a member. My meetings with the editors always also having them go through and identify progress and problems. In one case the group wanted to eject a member who had been absent and hadn't done some of her work at home. While it was worked out in the end, with the girl actually going well above and beyond in order to redeem herself, I suspect, the dynamic was one where, as I mentioned, those not taking the task seriously were the odd ones out.
Student work far exceeded my expectations in terms of quality and creativeness for all but one group. The difference between the last phase and this shows a more complete picture of what students are, I believe, able to accomplish when in groups of varied skill.