Week 5 Update

I decided to conduct a survey with high school English teachers about their current writing instruction. I used surveymonkey and created survey with five open ended questions. I emailed my department chairs and had them forward the survey link to their department teachers. My plan is to leave the response window open until Friday of this week. Hopefully, the teachers will take it seriously and provide some insightful feedback on writing instructional practice that I can use to in the ongoing development of my action research plan.

Week Three Action Research Plan

Action Research Plan: Writing Workshop in Secondary English Language Arts Classrooms

Goal: To determine the impact of the Writing Workshop model will have on student achievement in the area of written composition and classroom writing instruction

1. Discuss Action Steps with site supervisor using district data and internship plan (ongoing)

2. Create 3 year view of 10th grade assessment data for district and targeted campus (March 2011)

3. Research articles, books, and Internet for information on Writing Workshop model at secondary level (February - March 2011)

4. Observe the Writing Workshop model in an elementary classroom (March 2011)

5. Form a curriculum team with teachers from district high schools to review data and determine focus of curriculum shift to writing workshop. (March 2011)

6. Set dates for curriculum team to meet weekly to evaluate and revise current district curriculum to correlate with writing workshop model (March - May 2011)

7. Set up wiki so that curriculum team can correspond with each other as curriculum is rewritten to incorporate components of writing workshop (March 2011)

8. Present writing workshop model to campus department teachers along with curriculum revisions (May 2011)

9. Conduct grade level meetings every six weeks to review effectiveness of writing workshop and preview the components of the upcoming six weeks (Fall 2011 - Spring 2012)

10. Compare 2011 TAKS data of target group with 2012 TAKS data to judge success of writing workshop implementation (Spring 2012)

Week Two Lessons Learned

During this week, I learned the importance of narrowing the scope of the action research project. It is imperative to stay focus on the ultimate goal or purpose of the inquiry. This will prevent the project from getting derailed by aspects that will hinder the outcome.