Action and Assessment Plan
My literature review gave me a lot of possible interventions for my Phase 1, but I still wanted to collect more data.
Needs Assessment 2
I posed a second needs assessment which aimed to further explore students’ perceptions of writing. I wanted more expansive data than my first needs assessment, so I posed questions requiring written responses. The second needs assessment was posed a week after the first; once again in the form of a GoogleForm:
That I am not good at it
I’m not good at writing a lot
and a desire to write clear and concisely:
To be clear and concise
My concision and often my focus
I was intrigued by the literature which promoted teachers sharing their writing with students and recalled how students were split on whether they thought it would be a useful approach. I sought clarification by asking ‘Has a teacher ever written alongside you?’, with 25% confirming they had, and that it had been a helpful process:
Yes, it is very helpful to have someone guiding you by your side. It is easy to ask questions to the person and is very helpful.
Of those that hadn’t experienced it, only one said they didn’t think it would be helpful, but the vast majority could see the advantages:
No. I think it would be interesting to compare ideas with a teacher instead of them telling me what is bad and good.
Most of the responses centered not on how it would help them improve academically, but rather how it would affect the relationship between teacher and student,
No, but I think it would be helpful because it would help the teacher understand the amount of time and work that goes into completing each assignment.
I think that it may be useful thought because the teacher knows more what the students are going through, and they can really see how much time homework takes up.
Their responses strongly indicated students’ desire to have a teacher write with them, but also provided insight into their perception of teacher’s role. This willingness to work alongside their teachers was apparent during a recent workshop, conducted by a local actor. Students were separated into small groups and a few groups strongly requested that I join them. I gained insight into their writing habits, as once again students showed apathy towards developing and rewriting their work, and the teacher-student relationship was further improved in a personal setting.
I was able to learn more about students’ perception of teacher with the third question of my second needs assessment, ‘Do you regard your teachers as experts in their profession?’ The results indicated that teachers are held in high regard, and it will be interesting to see how my potential intervention impacts this perception.
The responses to ‘What are your writing strengths?’ and ‘What are your writing areas for improvement?’ were incredibly varied, but show how reflective these students are. It is encouraging that students recognize areas of weakness, and my Action Research will aim to provide the tools to turn weaknesses into strengths.
The questions and responses can be found here, and although this was an informal assessment, the array of spelling and grammar errors highlighted the need to expose students to the revision process, and significantly, only one student touched upon the writing process:
I need to work on planning out my entire essay before writing rather than doing it as I go.
It is encouraging that this student recognizes the need to plan, but concerning that they believe an ‘entire essay’ can be planned. Their responses highlight a recurring theme; that of disconnect between student thought and action. In the first needs assessment, 46% stated they enjoyed editing and rewriting assignments, and 54% recognized the need to rewrite assignments. As previously stated, this does not match up with my observations, and it is significant that not one student stated the revision process as a strength, and only one implied it was a weakness.
Armed with all this data, my thoughts still returned to how to achieve my desired goal. A combination of my previously stated experience as a student, and an incident as a student-teacher provided me with an answer. I experienced an effective method for better understanding students’ struggles in my previous placement as a student-teacher in a seventh grade English Language Arts class, during the Fall semester. During one period, I sat with my students and completed the class activities. The task was to write a short poem, and the students reacted well to me volunteering to read aloud my piece. I was also able to display my own struggles with the activity, rewriting my poem, not being content with a first draft. Witnessing this was particularly helpful for those students who see writing, and school work in general, as a race; rushing to finish without reviewing or thinking critically about their work. Students were also more proactive in asking for and responding to my feedback. Thinking back to my own experience as a student, the best teachers were those who showed empathy; connecting with students and showing their humanness. This made the content more relevant and engaging, inevitably increasing my performance.
Intervention and Rationale
Based on student voice, relevant literature, and my own experiences I believe the best way to encourage student revision is to position myself as a writer in the classroom, as Atwell (1998) emphasizes, “Students can’t be the only learners in a classroom. Teachers have to learn, too.” This will allow me to fully understand the struggles faced by students when writing and also share some of my methods for editing and revising, providing techniques for overcoming difficulties. Positioning myself as a writer will involve completing the same assignments as my students, and ultimately writing my own play, sharing my work every step of the way, requiring and offering feedback.
As stated in my introduction, students are on the verge of writing a short (20 minute) play, in pairs or threes, as part of their class-project. Due to time restraints, they only have four days to write their play. As my needs assessment indicated that students struggle with organizing and editing their writing, lacking the awareness of and the tools needed for the revision process, it is my intention to write a play alongside my students. The students are writing history-based plays, but as I have not conducted in-depth research into a particular Latin-American country, unlike my students, my play will be less restricted. This may pose an additional challenge as I search for a suitable topic. However, the focus of my Action Research is on revision, not content. The biggest obstacle to writing alongside my students is the lack of time. Ideally, I will develop character biographies, plot proposal, and theme, before writing my play, but it requires delicately balancing my responsibilities as student, student-teacher, and now, writer.
Action Plan
Phase One of my Action Research will take place during a three-week period in April. In order to study how my students’ motivation and ability to revise is affected when I position myself as a writer alongside them, I will create a series of tasks that allow me to act as both teacher and student.
Week 1
Initially, I need to clearly establish myself as a learner in the classroom. In order to achieve this, I will share my writing, opening it up for critique and feedback. I will also participate in the critiquing of students’ plays, as part of class activities, positioning myself as a student, rather than teacher, sharing ideas in a manner similar to what I expect from students. Feedback in my classroom must be kind, helpful, and specific, and I will provide prompts directing the critiquing process:
Part of the critiquing process will involve acting out selected scenes from our plays, which will require playwrights to select peers as additional actors to fulfill character roles. I will make myself available as an actor for this activity, hoping to enhance my position as learner/writer. As students begin to view me more as peer than teacher, the teacher-student relationship will be impacted, and I can also measure how peer collaboration is affected.
Needs Assessment 2
I posed a second needs assessment which aimed to further explore students’ perceptions of writing. I wanted more expansive data than my first needs assessment, so I posed questions requiring written responses. The second needs assessment was posed a week after the first; once again in the form of a GoogleForm:
- What are your concerns about writing?
- Has a teacher ever written alongside you? If yes, when? Was it helpful? If not, why not? Do you think it would be helpful?
- Do you regard your teachers as experts in their profession?
- What are your writing strengths?
- What are your writing areas for improvement?
That I am not good at it
I’m not good at writing a lot
and a desire to write clear and concisely:
To be clear and concise
My concision and often my focus
I was intrigued by the literature which promoted teachers sharing their writing with students and recalled how students were split on whether they thought it would be a useful approach. I sought clarification by asking ‘Has a teacher ever written alongside you?’, with 25% confirming they had, and that it had been a helpful process:
Yes, it is very helpful to have someone guiding you by your side. It is easy to ask questions to the person and is very helpful.
Of those that hadn’t experienced it, only one said they didn’t think it would be helpful, but the vast majority could see the advantages:
No. I think it would be interesting to compare ideas with a teacher instead of them telling me what is bad and good.
Most of the responses centered not on how it would help them improve academically, but rather how it would affect the relationship between teacher and student,
No, but I think it would be helpful because it would help the teacher understand the amount of time and work that goes into completing each assignment.
I think that it may be useful thought because the teacher knows more what the students are going through, and they can really see how much time homework takes up.
Their responses strongly indicated students’ desire to have a teacher write with them, but also provided insight into their perception of teacher’s role. This willingness to work alongside their teachers was apparent during a recent workshop, conducted by a local actor. Students were separated into small groups and a few groups strongly requested that I join them. I gained insight into their writing habits, as once again students showed apathy towards developing and rewriting their work, and the teacher-student relationship was further improved in a personal setting.
I was able to learn more about students’ perception of teacher with the third question of my second needs assessment, ‘Do you regard your teachers as experts in their profession?’ The results indicated that teachers are held in high regard, and it will be interesting to see how my potential intervention impacts this perception.
The responses to ‘What are your writing strengths?’ and ‘What are your writing areas for improvement?’ were incredibly varied, but show how reflective these students are. It is encouraging that students recognize areas of weakness, and my Action Research will aim to provide the tools to turn weaknesses into strengths.
The questions and responses can be found here, and although this was an informal assessment, the array of spelling and grammar errors highlighted the need to expose students to the revision process, and significantly, only one student touched upon the writing process:
I need to work on planning out my entire essay before writing rather than doing it as I go.
It is encouraging that this student recognizes the need to plan, but concerning that they believe an ‘entire essay’ can be planned. Their responses highlight a recurring theme; that of disconnect between student thought and action. In the first needs assessment, 46% stated they enjoyed editing and rewriting assignments, and 54% recognized the need to rewrite assignments. As previously stated, this does not match up with my observations, and it is significant that not one student stated the revision process as a strength, and only one implied it was a weakness.
Armed with all this data, my thoughts still returned to how to achieve my desired goal. A combination of my previously stated experience as a student, and an incident as a student-teacher provided me with an answer. I experienced an effective method for better understanding students’ struggles in my previous placement as a student-teacher in a seventh grade English Language Arts class, during the Fall semester. During one period, I sat with my students and completed the class activities. The task was to write a short poem, and the students reacted well to me volunteering to read aloud my piece. I was also able to display my own struggles with the activity, rewriting my poem, not being content with a first draft. Witnessing this was particularly helpful for those students who see writing, and school work in general, as a race; rushing to finish without reviewing or thinking critically about their work. Students were also more proactive in asking for and responding to my feedback. Thinking back to my own experience as a student, the best teachers were those who showed empathy; connecting with students and showing their humanness. This made the content more relevant and engaging, inevitably increasing my performance.
Intervention and Rationale
Based on student voice, relevant literature, and my own experiences I believe the best way to encourage student revision is to position myself as a writer in the classroom, as Atwell (1998) emphasizes, “Students can’t be the only learners in a classroom. Teachers have to learn, too.” This will allow me to fully understand the struggles faced by students when writing and also share some of my methods for editing and revising, providing techniques for overcoming difficulties. Positioning myself as a writer will involve completing the same assignments as my students, and ultimately writing my own play, sharing my work every step of the way, requiring and offering feedback.
As stated in my introduction, students are on the verge of writing a short (20 minute) play, in pairs or threes, as part of their class-project. Due to time restraints, they only have four days to write their play. As my needs assessment indicated that students struggle with organizing and editing their writing, lacking the awareness of and the tools needed for the revision process, it is my intention to write a play alongside my students. The students are writing history-based plays, but as I have not conducted in-depth research into a particular Latin-American country, unlike my students, my play will be less restricted. This may pose an additional challenge as I search for a suitable topic. However, the focus of my Action Research is on revision, not content. The biggest obstacle to writing alongside my students is the lack of time. Ideally, I will develop character biographies, plot proposal, and theme, before writing my play, but it requires delicately balancing my responsibilities as student, student-teacher, and now, writer.
Action Plan
Phase One of my Action Research will take place during a three-week period in April. In order to study how my students’ motivation and ability to revise is affected when I position myself as a writer alongside them, I will create a series of tasks that allow me to act as both teacher and student.
Week 1
Initially, I need to clearly establish myself as a learner in the classroom. In order to achieve this, I will share my writing, opening it up for critique and feedback. I will also participate in the critiquing of students’ plays, as part of class activities, positioning myself as a student, rather than teacher, sharing ideas in a manner similar to what I expect from students. Feedback in my classroom must be kind, helpful, and specific, and I will provide prompts directing the critiquing process:
- Is the dialogue realistic?
- Are the characters complex?
- Does the play contain a strong cultural element?
- Does the play contain a relevant historical context?
- Is the setting clear?
- Are the stage directions appropriate?
- Are action sequences appropriate?
- Is the play producible?
- Does the play begin at the best part? (i.e. in the middle of action)
- Is character and plot development inextricably intertwined with conflict?
Part of the critiquing process will involve acting out selected scenes from our plays, which will require playwrights to select peers as additional actors to fulfill character roles. I will make myself available as an actor for this activity, hoping to enhance my position as learner/writer. As students begin to view me more as peer than teacher, the teacher-student relationship will be impacted, and I can also measure how peer collaboration is affected.
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Week 1 will also involve reading selected plays, and responding to prompts. As students recently read Death and the Maiden, by Ariel Dorfman, I will give them a short extract and subsequent questions to answer independently:
I will complete these prompts at the same time as my students, sharing my responses during class discussions. |
Week 2
Once the plays have been written, all groups will conduct a read-through in front of their peers. Similar to the critiquing process in week 1, I will make myself available as a participant, and will also enlist the aid of students to read through my play. Each play, including mine, will receive feedback from teachers and students, but it is my goal to be positioned as the student/learner rather than teacher. This process is intended as more of a celebration, rather than critique, and will highlight what students liked about their peers’ plays, allowing writers to observe other plays from which to draw ideas. This is an important step as it may provide students with the ability to revise. Being exposed to multiple writing styles, not just mine, will make students more aware of difference perspectives and approaches.
At the end of the week, four plays will be selected for production, and groups will be arranged. Play groups will consist of directors, actors, and managers for props, costumes, and playbill. Members will be drawn from non-selected plays, who can choose which play they would like to be part of, and directors can make special requests as long as all parties are in agreement. Ultimately, teachers will have prerogative to ensure groups remain balanced and able to collaborate effectively. I would like to make my play available for selection, but as it is not historical-based it is not appropriate for the project, and would detract from the project goals. This may weaken my position as writer, in the eyes of my students, as my play will not have an audience and therefore not subject to the same scrutiny. I don’t believe it will affect my ability to write well, as my audience will be my students.
Week 3
This week will be split between more traditional lessons and play revision. I will continue to edit my play, sharing the process as described for week 1. I will be involved in script seminars which will involve play groups discussing the following:
I will also participate, as a student, in lessons led by my master-teacher. My goal is to complete the same assignments and contribute to class discussions as a learner. Students will read Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s article on Aristotle from his Justice talks. Homework will be to complete a reading log, incorporating 3 of the following:
Once the plays have been written, all groups will conduct a read-through in front of their peers. Similar to the critiquing process in week 1, I will make myself available as a participant, and will also enlist the aid of students to read through my play. Each play, including mine, will receive feedback from teachers and students, but it is my goal to be positioned as the student/learner rather than teacher. This process is intended as more of a celebration, rather than critique, and will highlight what students liked about their peers’ plays, allowing writers to observe other plays from which to draw ideas. This is an important step as it may provide students with the ability to revise. Being exposed to multiple writing styles, not just mine, will make students more aware of difference perspectives and approaches.
At the end of the week, four plays will be selected for production, and groups will be arranged. Play groups will consist of directors, actors, and managers for props, costumes, and playbill. Members will be drawn from non-selected plays, who can choose which play they would like to be part of, and directors can make special requests as long as all parties are in agreement. Ultimately, teachers will have prerogative to ensure groups remain balanced and able to collaborate effectively. I would like to make my play available for selection, but as it is not historical-based it is not appropriate for the project, and would detract from the project goals. This may weaken my position as writer, in the eyes of my students, as my play will not have an audience and therefore not subject to the same scrutiny. I don’t believe it will affect my ability to write well, as my audience will be my students.
Week 3
This week will be split between more traditional lessons and play revision. I will continue to edit my play, sharing the process as described for week 1. I will be involved in script seminars which will involve play groups discussing the following:
- What do you love about this play?
- What is the biggest weakness of the play?
- What would you add?
- What would you take away?
- How would you make the cultural component interesting and engaging?
I will also participate, as a student, in lessons led by my master-teacher. My goal is to complete the same assignments and contribute to class discussions as a learner. Students will read Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s article on Aristotle from his Justice talks. Homework will be to complete a reading log, incorporating 3 of the following:
- Bullet points of what you are thinking while reading. Focus on challenges and solutions.
- Claim or summary (1 paragraph).
- Questions (3-5 small/clarifying, 3-5 big/open-ended)
- Quote analysis (2 quotes and 2 paragraphs about each. Why are they important? What struck you? Where do they fit into the overall text?)
Data Collection and Assessment Methods
Through a series of assessment tools I hope to address my Action Research question and sub-questions. Observation Guides I will use this template to measure peer collaboration, monitoring how often students interact with each other, and their desire and ability to ask and answer each others’ questions. Monitoring off-task behavior will also provide insight into students’ willingness to collaborate throughout Phase 1. I will begin each day with a blank template which will allow me to collect quantitative data on the participation levels of students. The coding allows me to quickly note student participation. |
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Student Feedback Forms
I will ask students to complete a weekly reflection, via a GoogleForm, every Friday, during class.
These questions will provide qualitative data on peer collaboration as I track any changes in students’ perception of collaboration as well as the collaborative skills they value. As I position myself as a writer the feedback form may also measure students’ motivation to revise, if responses begin to focus on how they overcame the challenges of revising.
Student Work
Students are writing their plays in GoogleDocs allowing me to easily monitor their progress and ability to revise. The changes they make will reflect their ability to revise and the number of changes will reflect their motivation to do so. I will also collect their responses to the Death and the Maiden assignment, monitoring whether they subsequently incorporate proposed elements into their own plays.
Teacher Journal
Throughout Phase 1 I will record observations during and after class. The journal will provide me with a timeline of events, as well as a medium for recording observations of students’ interactions with one another, the material, and me. I will focus on observing students’ attitude during class, and make a point of listening for student comments that indicate their perception of their peers, myself, and their level of collaboration. I will also use my journal to collect qualitative data on my perception of myself as teacher, learner, and my students.
Tying it all together
I will use this triangulation of data collection methods throughout my Action Plan to help answer my Action Research question and sub-questions. Below is a matrix showing the correlation between my data and the questions addressed through data analysis.
I will ask students to complete a weekly reflection, via a GoogleForm, every Friday, during class.
- Do you feel you contributed to the success of your group this week? How? Why?
- Name at least 3 strengths you feel you brought to the group?
- What challenges did you encounter this week? How did you overcome them?
- Do you feel your group has communicated effectively during the process? How? Why?
These questions will provide qualitative data on peer collaboration as I track any changes in students’ perception of collaboration as well as the collaborative skills they value. As I position myself as a writer the feedback form may also measure students’ motivation to revise, if responses begin to focus on how they overcame the challenges of revising.
Student Work
Students are writing their plays in GoogleDocs allowing me to easily monitor their progress and ability to revise. The changes they make will reflect their ability to revise and the number of changes will reflect their motivation to do so. I will also collect their responses to the Death and the Maiden assignment, monitoring whether they subsequently incorporate proposed elements into their own plays.
Teacher Journal
Throughout Phase 1 I will record observations during and after class. The journal will provide me with a timeline of events, as well as a medium for recording observations of students’ interactions with one another, the material, and me. I will focus on observing students’ attitude during class, and make a point of listening for student comments that indicate their perception of their peers, myself, and their level of collaboration. I will also use my journal to collect qualitative data on my perception of myself as teacher, learner, and my students.
Tying it all together
I will use this triangulation of data collection methods throughout my Action Plan to help answer my Action Research question and sub-questions. Below is a matrix showing the correlation between my data and the questions addressed through data analysis.
Timeline
Week 1 (4/7 – 4/11)
Week 2 (4/14-4/18)
Week 3 (4/21-4/25)
Week 1 (4/7 – 4/11)
- Script-writing. Share my thought process and critique plays.
- Death and the Maiden extract and prompts.
- Student feedback form.
Week 2 (4/14-4/18)
- Perform read-throughs. Critique plays.
- Student feedback form.
Week 3 (4/21-4/25)
- Select plays.
- Script editing.
- Michael Sandel article – Socratic seminar.
- Student feedback form.