j _._..V . — a FIN 5: 25¢ per «in per its: RETUMING LIBRARY MATERIALS: Place in book return to renown chm. from circulation record: "‘- ml” 1 .11 333 l:- v; _ ,2 ~-':.;'.mm.«-.cf ' 11.1“ ,"lsi A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF A PRIMARY TEACHER INSERVICE SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR WRITING INSTRUCTION BY Diane Terry Orchard A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Elementary and Special Education 1980 ¢;//11gh another later study, Diederich became even more c . l I o onvlnced that corrections of students' writings were more (idEIrr E1Sling than helpful. He found that noticing and praising ‘Nrfj a‘tever a student did improved writing more than any kind 46 or amount of correction of what he did poorly. This was an especially important finding because less able writers need all the encouragement they can get to even write another time. (Diederich, 1974, p. 20) The results of a study by Winnifred Taylor and Kenneth Hoedt support Diederich's assumption that in the c]. assroom praise without correction is superior to correction. 30th groups in this study improved equally in the number of themes they produced, but the group that received praise Without correction produced significantly more words, e1"=3l»").i.l::ited more favorable attitudes, were more highly moti- vated and appeared to be more independent than the group Subjected to correction alone. (Taylor, 1966, pp. 80-83) The National Council of Teachers of English (1975) backs the position that instruction in writing should be po8:3.‘l:.i'.ve. Students should be encouraged to use language c:'~ea.::*ly, vividly, and honestly; they should not be discour- aged by negative correction and proscription. They should be freed from ‘fear and restriction so that their abilities <2 . . . an develop. In short, evaluation of writing should be 12> . aged largely on content and clarity, not on the conventions D f SFelling, mechanics and usage alone. Mauree Applegate claims that ten minutes per week p er cliild, spent in a personal conference about his/her w): ‘ . ltlng instead of being spent correcting papers will me be effectively improve writing habits than reams of red ¥ 47 penciled correction. A conference is a two-way affair, and administering small doses of "hope and faith by hand" in a conference can improve children's writing more than a gross of red pencils. (Applegate, 1963, p. 164) Sara Lundsteen states that in the opinion of many students of children's composition, individual writing conferences have come to be a valuable teaching technique. The teacher-student relationships inherent in such confer- ences seem to build morale, strengthen motivation, and build favorable self-concepts. While she concedes they could possibly have deleterious effects if an authoritarian, negatively critical stance were taken by the teacher, there have been no accounts of such relationships in current surveys of research reports. (Lundsteen, 1976, p. 39) However, even ten minues per week with each child adds up to three hundred minutes a week in a classroom of thirty children. Is it realistic to expect classroom teachers to spend an hour a day in writing conferences with children? Much has been written recently about the use of writing workshops, in which students provide the audience and feedback for each other as a means of evaluating the ideas and skills represented in their writing. Harold Howe (1979), Vice President for Education and Research for the Ford Foundation, said that teachers must be involved in retraining activities that assist them in making writing an active part of a child's education and in using techniques 48 of assessment that help children improve their writing. One of those techniques is enlisting children in the evaluation of their own writing and that of others. Barry Kroll, in an article in Language Arts, says that writing only for the teacher tells children there is only one audience that really counts, but when children write for each other, they create an audience of "significant others," making audience sensi- tivity a meaningful concept. (Kroll, 1978, p. 831) Marion Crowhurst, in a 1979 Language Arts Journal article describing writing workshops, states that students liked writing for peers and seemed motivated to do good work for them. James Moffett says his experiments have shown that even elementary school children can instinctively spot writing problems on their own. (Moffett, 1976, p. 156) He goes on to say that writing for each other in small groups is less inhibiting than large groups, and that the stories written for small groups are much more interesting. The teacher's role in writing workshops is to make the group process effective so that pupils can teach each other, thus making the most effective use of teacher expertise in improving student writing. Butwhat of program or instructional evaluation over the course of a yearfiswriting experiences? Charles Cooper, of the State University of New York at Buffalo, states that when grades or rankings are needed to measure growth or evaluate a program, valid, reliable scores can be obtained directly from students' writings by using holistic scoring 49 guides where common traits of writing are assigned a score and impressionistically rated. (Cooper, 1977, p. 19) The National Assessment of Educational Progress (1975), a project of the Education Commission of the States, uses holistic scoring to judge the writing of the students in its project over five year periods. In addition to the holistic judgment of trained readers, Kellogg W. Hunt (1965) developed a useful concept for judging changes in the use of syntactic devices as children's writing matures over time, which he calls the T-unit hypothesis, where a T-unit is a grammatically com- plete clause. His hypothesis is that as children get older, their mean T-unit lengths (total words used divided by number of T-units) get longer. And while other indices of writing maturity have since been developed, Roy O'Donnell (1976) states that the T-unit length is still the most use- ful and usable index of syntactic development over a period of time for a large age-range of writers. Thomas Hogan and Carole Mishler in a 1979 article in The Elementary School Journal describe the successful use of holistic ratings for individual classroom measurements of progress. In the fall they have students write a short piece (about twenty minutes long) describing a large picture they provide. The students write their names and the date on the back of their essay. In the spring they repeat the activity, using the same picture, time period, and naming technique. The essays are then shuffled and evaluated, by 50 holistic judgment and by other key syntactic features. The essays are then resorted by name and date and analyzed for signs of improvement. Future Directions of Writing Instruction Murray (1968) reminds teachers that no one ever learned to write by studying grammar or literature. A doctoral dissertation study completed by Roland J. Harris at the University of London in 1962, concluded that: the failure to profit from instruction in traditional formal grammar is thus not confined to any one educational environment or category of children....It seems safe to infer that the study of English grammatical terminology had a negligible or even a relatively harmful effect upon the correctness of children's writing. (Braddock, 1963, p. 83) Students need time to organize their thoughts around a central idea, time to test those thoughts for logic, and time to practice expressing those thoughts in clear, concise written language, culminating in a unified piece of prose. Diederich (1974) says that teachers can do something to develop organized, logical, clear writing. They can pay attention to students' writing, respond to it, raise questions about it, and challenge students by focusing attention on it in class by discussing selected writing samples. Applegate (1963) states that children's writing does not just "happen." It comes out of piled-up experience: real experience that is lived firsthand, or vicarious 51 experience provided by a thoughtful teacher, although she warns that vicarious experience should never take the place of real experience if the real is available. Books are a good supplement to experience but a poor substitute for it. Burrows (1964) agrees that the teacher's role is to provide those experiences with new materials and to establish those situations which not only allow for writing and foster it, but also at times require it. Summary Chapter II has reviewed current literature in the area of inservice education and in the curricular area of the teaching of writing. Inservice education, while of many types and kinds, is becoming increasingly important in view of an ever- tightening job market and escalating demands on schools and teachers. Writing instruction, while of national concern, is often neglected in the elementary school classroom. Methods need to be developed whereby teachers will be encouraged to provide classroom writing opportunities more often and in greater variety than they have in the past. CHAPTER III STUDY DESIGN ”Purpose of the Study On-the-job development of skills is a major method of upgrading the effectiveness of classroom teachers in particular curricular areas but traditional inservice programs have not met with success in meeting the expressed needs of teachers (Cogan, 1975; Jenkins, 1977; Hermanowicz, 1978). This study offered inservice of another type, an on-going support system, in which teachers could learn different instructional methods in the support meetings, try them in their own classrooms and then come back together and discuss common concerns with other teachers. This design was proposed as a more effective method of inservicing teachers than traditional forms; one that would provide teachers with an effective framework for sharing concerns about, and successful teaching procedures in, writing instruction throughout a full school year. While the design of this study was limited to writing instruction, it was suggested that many curricular areas might be well served by this same format. 52 53 Description of the Sample This study involved ten second- and third-grade teachers from eight of the thirteen elementary schools in a school district in mid—Michigan, comprising both rural and small-town populations. The district encompasses 658 square miles. 6,270 people live in the main city, while the larger proportion of the people come from rural or small town (less than 500) population settings. Accord- ing to the corrected 1970 Census Report, the county's total population was 52, 361, and the total K-12 public school enrollment was 14,629. Eleven percent of the population was foreign-born or of foreign or mixed paren- tage. The three major first generation nationality groups represented in that eleven percent were: Spanish-~2,494 Canadian--2,368 German--928 The Census Report indicated that of the total of 19,994 persons in the county aged from twenty years to forty-nine years, ten percent had no high school education, seventy-five percent had completed from one to four years <1f high school, and fourteen percent had completed at least one year of college. 54 The numbers of adult males in the mOSt common occup- tional classifications in the county were as follows: 1. Operatives, except transport-~3,557 2. Craftsmen, formen, and kindred workers--3,096 3. Service workers, except private household-- 2,273 4. Professional, technical, and kindred workers-- 1,690 The distribution among the four most common occupations of women was as follows: 1. Service workers, except private household-- 1,575 2. Clerical and kindred workers-~l,321 3. Operatives, except transport—~872 4. Professional, technical and kindred workers?- 786 The mean income of families in the county for 1969, the latest census information available, was $10,388. ~§§lection of Participants Selection of Teachers Entry into the research setting was made in early September 1979 when the district school superintendent gave permission to the researcher to contact early elementary school classroom teachers in the district about the study. The primary level was selected to be used in the study be— cause the researcher was most familiar with the methods and :materials used to teach writing at that level. The researcher was also most familiar with children‘s written expression 55 at the primary level, having taught young children twelve of the fifteen years she has spent teaching. On Wednesday, September, 12, 1979, all twenty-seven second—grade teachers in the district were sent a letter briefly explaining the inservice project. A copy of this letter is included in Appendix A. The letter asked teachers who thought they might be willing to participate in the study to indicate their interest by returning the bottom portion of the letter to the researcher. Only two second-grade teachers volunteered, so on Friday, September 21, 1979, a second letter was sent out to the twenty-four third-grade teachers in the district. (See Appendix A.) Eight third- grade teachers responded and a letter was sent to all ten teachers who had indicated an interest in the project, inviting them to a meeting to be held after school on Octo— ber 11, 1979. A copy of this letter is also included in Appendix A. - The purpose of the first meeting was to explain the research project to the teachers and to ask those who, after hearing the details of the study, still wished to participate in it to commit themselves to the study for the remainder of the school year. No college credit or pay for the teachers was involved; the benefit to them would be the inservice in- struction and the classroom materials the researcher would provide for writing instruction. The.purpose of this in— service was explained as an effort to determine the 56 effectiveness of an on-going support system where teachers can share their concerns about, and successful teaching procedures in, a particular curricular area, and use "local talent" to disseminate information in that particular area. All ten teachers who originally indicated an interest in the project agreed to participate in this year-long study. The following demographic information was compiled from the essays and surveys the teachers completed. The ten volunteer teachers who cooperated in the study represented wide variations in age, teaching experience and educational background. All of the volunteer teachers were women who ranged in age from twenty-four years old to fifty-one years old, six of them in their mid- to late twenties. The teaching experience represented was from three years to seventeen years. One of the teachers received a B.A. degree in 1976 and has not taken further graduate work; she has been approved to take an educational leave next year to work on a Master's Degree. Six of the teachers either have, or are working to complete, eighteen hours of graduate work, and three have completed their Master's Degrees. The schools in this study range in size from around one hundred students to nearly five hundred students, and class size ranges from twenty-two students to thirty-four students. Two of the teachers described their classrooms as relatively open, with many choices being made by students, while three of the teachers felt their classroom were more traditional and allowed very few choices by students; five teachers 57 indicated their classrooms had a fairly even balance between teacher-directed activities and student selected activities. This information is represented in Table 3.1. None of the classrooms, however, fits Grave's description of informal classrooms, where at least sixty percent of the school day is appropriated for children to work in centers or on individual projects. All ten of these classrooms would be variations of his description of formal classrooms, where at least sixty percent of the school day is characterized by teacher-led activities and instructional subjects are taught at specific times in the day. The teachers said the time spent in language-related instruction varied from thirty minutes to ninety minutes each day. This comparison is shown graphically in Figure 3.1. All of the classes did stress informality during writing times, where the children were free to move about the room to discuss their writing with the teacher or friends, or to use books or charts or other room resources in their writing. Selection of Students Two students from the classroom of each volunteer teacher were selected to have their writing analyzed by key syntactic structures and the holistic judgment of trained readers. Each teacher was designated by a letter of the alphabet in the order in which their letters indicating an interest in the study were received. The students were then designated by arabic numerals. The students were selected 58 TABLE 3.1 BACKGROUND INFORMATION FROM TEACHERS Vv‘v—v ‘ Teacher Agev Years Degree Date Grade Number Classroom of Teach- and Received of Described iDG#__ Hours Students As A 29 7 3:2: 13;; 3 24 Open/struc. B 25 5 lg firs. 1333 3 26 Open/struc. I? C 31 5 12 hrs. 133% 2 22 Structured IV D 29‘ 5 l§°§£3. i333 3 24 Open/struc. IFIE 24 3 B'A‘ 1976 3 29 Open/struc. F 28 s 1:21.133: 3 29 If G 24 3 12 firs. 1338 3 31 Structured '. .3 . 3:2: 13;: 2 27 III 51 17 3:2: 1:23 3 28 Structured II J 35 a lg-gés. 13;; 3 27 Open/struc. S9 95 90 '————~ 85 80 --— 75 uh—s—n 7o 65 60 _..___. F—T' .__T 55 50 45 4o 35 ""'"" Time in Minutes 30 25 Teachers A B C D E F G H I J Time Spent Daily on Language-Related Activities FIGURE 3.1 from class lists provided for the researcher, by taking students numbered one and fifteen from teacher volunteer A's class list; students numbered two and sixteen from teacher volunteer B's class list; students numbered three and seventeen from teacher volunteer C's class list; and so on until two students from each class were selected. Table 3.2 indicates pertinent information on these two students from each classroom provided by their teachers. The reading level corresponds to their basal reading text level, which was determined by a combination of standardized tests, basal unit tests and teacher judgment. 60 TABLE 3.2 Background Information on Students Teacher Student Sex Age at Start Grade Reading Level of Study at Start of Study A 1 M 8yrs. 2mo.23da. 3 22 B 2 M 8yrs. 7mo. 4da. 3 22 c 3 F 8yrs. 5mo.l7da. 2 22 D 4 F 8yrs. 2mo.l3da. 3 31 E 5 M 8yrs. Smo. 6da. 3 22 F 6 M 8yrs. Zmo. Zda. 3 31 G 7 F 8yrs. lmo. 3da. 3 31 H 8 F 7yrs. Smo.24da. 2 21 I 9 M 8yrs.10mo.20da. 3 31 J 10 M 8yrs. 6mo.26da. 3 31 A 15 F 8yrs. 0mo.21da. 3 22 B 16 M 8yrs. 1mg. 3da. 3 31 C 17 M 8yrs. 0mo.20da. 2 l2 D 18 F 8yrs. 3mo.13da. 3 31 E 19 F 8yrs. 3mo.16da. 3 32 F 20 F 8yrs. 2mo.l7da. 3 31 G 21 M 8yrs. 6mo. 2da. 3 31 H 22 F 8yrs. 6mo. Oda. 2 12 I 23 F 8yrs. 4mo. 9da. 3 22 J 24 M 7yrs.llmo.llda. 3 22 61 The participating teachers were asked to send Informed Consent Forms (See Appendix B) and a cover letter (See Appendix C) home with students numbered six, twelve, eighteen, and twenty-one, as well as with the two students with the numbers selected for the study (unless they were already one of these four numbered students). This assured the anonymity of the students selected for the study. The teachers were not aware of the selection procedure. The cover letter briefly explained the project, asked permission to interview the students and analyze their writing, and informed the parents that the students would not be identi- fied in any way in the study, and that their children were free to drop out of the study at any time. No child was dropped from the study. All forms and procedures used in this study were approved by the Michigan State University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects. Role of Researcher The researcher has been a classroom teacher for fifteen years, as well as an administrator in charge of a small elementary building for the past six years in the district where the research took place. During the year of the reported study the researcher was on a semester's educational leave from the school district. 62 Research Instruments Used Teacher Essays At that first introductory meeting the teachers were asked to write an essay, including information about their attitudes toward teaching in general, their family and educational background, and infOrmation about their preparation to teach writing skills. .Guidelines provided for this essay are included in Appendix D. These essays were then to be sent to the researcher through school mail upon completion. Initial Student Surveys The teachers were asked to give all students in their classrooms an initial background survey form to com- plete and return to the reseacher. This sentence completion survey asked the students for information about their favorite activities, their favorite television program, what they like to do when they can do what they want to do, ‘what kind of stories they like, and how studying makes them feel. It was designed to gain information about their attitudes toward school in general, and writing in particu- lar. A copy of this survey is included in Appendix D. Mid-Study Teacher Surveys Mid-way in the study the volunteer teachers were asked to complete a survey describing how often they have tineir students write, what their usual classroom writing 63 activities include, how their classroom writing activities would compare with reading activities, what their concerns are about these activities, and how this inservice might best help them. A copy of this mid—study teacher survey is included in Appendix D. Final Teacher Surveys At the completion of the research project the teachers were asked to complete a final evaluation survey in which they were asked to compare this inservice design with previous inservice programs in the district. They were also asked about changes in their attitudes, know- ledge about writing, and classroom writing instruction, if any, as a result of this inservice format, and what future uses they could forsee for it. (See Appendix D.) The Writing Folders File folders were provided for each student, and the teachers were then asked to keep all student writings in folders throughout the study and to collect a11_the student writing every two weeks to give to the researcher, (along with their own personal comments on the relative Inerits of each writing assignment as they observed them. £3tudent writings were identified throughout the study only Iby number. To preserve student anonymity and avoid possible 'teacher bias, the teachers were not informed of the student selection procedure, nor of the students selected. They 64 were only told that two students in their classroom would be selected to have their writing analyzed more carefully than the writings of the other students. Student Interviews The two designated students from each volunteer classroom, plus the other students who returned the Informed Consent Form, were interviewed by the researcher to solicit their feelings, particularly about writing activities. The individual interview guide used with each child is included in Appendix D. Support’Sessions The teachers participating in this study agreed to attend a one-hour inservice meeting each month for the duration of the study. The tepic for each meeting would be determined by the needs expressed by the teacher participants in the previous month's meeting. Certain principles of good *wrdting instruction would also be presented by the researcher during the course of the program. These principles included: 1. Children should write often, every day if at all possible. (Mearns, 1929; Blake, 1971) 2. Formal evaluation, when employed in the classroom, should be positive. (Diederich, 1974; Biberstine, 1977) 3. Emphasis in a primary writing program should concentrate on thought content rather than on mechanical structures. (Braddock, 1963; Murray, 1968) 4. Increasing opportunities should be provided for self-selection of topics for written expression. (Combs, 1962; Meckel, 1966) 65 5. Writing for a variety of real purposes and audiences should be encouraged. (Moffett, 1976; Kroll, 1978) Classroom Observations Each participating teacher agreed to let the researcher come into her classroom to describe the class- room setting and procedures, witness students writing, and observe the teacher presenting a lesson on some aspect of writing. These observations were made during the months of February, March, and April of 1980. Writing Sample Rating Guide Hunt's (1977) definition of a T-unit was used throughout the study. Hunt's T-unit concept was used because it is useful in describing changes in the syntax of school- children as they mature. The hypothesis states that as schoolchildren get older, the T-units they write tend to get longer, measuring length as the mean number of words per T-unit. While this study was too short in duration to expect large changes in mean T-unit length, one of the research questions did address the topic of increasing the rnnmber of words written. (In considering the writing to be included in this study, if a sentence was supplied for :3 child, as on a worksheet, and he/she was to place a word i3} a blank, that writing was not included.) The same question that addressed the topic of iJusreasing number of words addressed the topic of quality (If the writing sample as well. There is a great deal of 66 controversy about what, in fact, constitutes good quality writing. Paul Diederich (1974), an eminent specialist in testing and measurement, and his colleagues at Educational Testing Service, report a study conducted in 1961 in which sixty distinguished readers from six occupational fields graded three hundred writing samples. They found five distinct schools of thought among these readers, emphasizing ideas, mechanics, organization, wording and flavor. Diederich then listed these five qualities in a weighted holistic rating scale divided into general merit qualities and mechanical factors, with the mechanics factor broken up into its logically distinguishable components. (Diederich, 1974, p. 54) (A copy of this scale has been placed in Appendix D.) The Ideas category and the Organization category have a doubled score weight of ten points for the highest rating, ‘while Wording, Flavor, Usage, Punctuation, Spelling, and Handwriting each have five points for the highest ratings. There are fifty possible points on this scale if a student gets the highest rating on everything. If a student gets the lowest possible rating on everything his total will be ten. All other combinations of scores will fall between 10-50, coinciding with standard scores. These ratings «easily translate into letter grades if so desired, or the weighted scores can be adapted to fit any other scoring system. Holistic rating scales have been found to be a :neliable judge of the quality of student writing. Follman arui Anderson (1967) report reliabilities for five raters 67 ranging from .81 to .95 on five different types of holistic evaluations. Moslemi (1975) reports three raters scoring "creative writing” with a reliability of .95. Charles Cooper and Lee Odell, from the State University of New York at Buffalo, report a school district curriculum eval- uation study completed at Buffalo in which two experienced raters achieved eighty percent, one hundred percent, and one hundred percent in choosing the better essay in each of thirty pairs of pre/posttest essays, in each of three kinds of writing with an average of one hour's training time in each kind of writing. When raters are from similar backgrounds and when they are trained with a holistic scoring guide--either one they borrow or devise for them- selves on the spot--they can achieve nearly perfect agreement in choosing the better of a pair of essays, and they can achieve scoring reliabilities in the high eighties and low nineties on their summed scores from multiple pieces of a student's writing. (Cooper, 1977, p. 19) Diederich's holistic analytic scale was used to evaluate the writing of the children in this study. This scale is reproduced in Appendix D, as well as an explanation of the categories, directions for its use, and sample student writings of the kind used to train the raters for this study. . For this study the researcher held a Saturday workshop to train the two experienced elementary school teacher raters, to develop an initial understanding of what the eight categories listed in the rating scale meant. The raters, who were paid to attend the training session, were 68 given practice in rating sample sets of papers and discrep- ancies in ratings were discussed until a reasonable consensus was reached. During the actual rating of student writings, every twentieth composition was compared to maintain agree- ment between raters. Researcher Notes and Tapes Detailed field notes were kept by the researcher throughout the duration of the study and all of the inservice support sessions were tape-recorded. These were later analyzed and examined by repeated listening and careful summarization for teacher attitudes towards writing, felt strengths, common concerns, feelings of inadequacy in teaching writing skills, concerns about inservice programs, and effective teaching methods for teaching writing currently being utilized by participating teachers. Data Collection Procedures Initial Procedures Teacher Essays The researcher explained the initial teacher essay guidelines to the teachers at the first intro- ductory support session and asked that the completed essays be sent to the researcher through the school mail. Student Surveys The ten participating teachers were asked to have each of their students complete an initial background survey and then return the classroom set to the 69 researcher, again, through the in-district school mail delivery system. Mid-Study Procedures Teacher Surveys At the February 18, 1980, support session the teachers were given, and asked to complete, a mid-study survey. Upon completion the surveys were sent to the researcher through the school mail, anonymously. 'Student Interviews To mask the identity of the twenty selected students, all thirty-eight of the students who returned the Informed Consent Form in March, 1980, were interviewed by the researcher, either in the classroom or in a nearby hall. The information was recorded on a separate interview guide for each child. The researcher, who had been in the classrooms twice previously, approached the students to be interviewed and made a brief introductory statement. The purpose of the study was explained, and the student's cooperation was requested in answering some ques- tions related to a study in which the researcher was involved; questions which would provide information on how second- and third-grade students felt about school in general and writing activities in particular. The study was specifically inter- ested in gaining information which might help teachers under- stand how to teach writing to young boys and girls. Table 3.3 indicates the collection procedures used in relation to each of the children (identified by number) from each classroom (designated by letter). 70 TABLE 3. 3 Distribution of Children From Whom Data Were Gathered Teacher/ Completed Transcrip- Analysis Observation Interviewed Student Initial tion of all of each of writing by researcher Survey writings writing episodes A 1 6 12 15 21 B r 6 12 16 18 21 C 3 6 f2 17 X X XXX XX KWXXXX 18 21 D 4 6 12 I8 21 E 5 6 H 18 19 21 F 6 12 18 20 21 X XX bun: XXXX X XXX XXXRX xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx X X 9430‘ X X 0" u xkxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Total 53 20 20 38 Classroom Observations 71 Each classroom was observed for a minimum of one hour twice during the months of Febru- ary, March, and April of 1980. The purpose of the first observation was to note the classroom setting and how indi- vidual students operated within that setting. The second visit was specifically to observe the teacher and students involved in writing instruction (of the teacher's choice), and to particularly observe the students selected from each of the classrooms to participate in the study. Notes were collected during these visitations to be analyzed later in the light of the teachers' reflections on the surveys, and the children's ideas and suggestions from their surveys and interviews. dures used to obtain information from each teacher, indicates the collection times. TABLE 3.4 and Table 3.4 presents the data collection proce- Chronology and Collection Procedures of Teacher Data Initial Inservice Recorded Completed Observa- Class- Final Informa- Meetings Reactions Mid-Study tion of room Survey tion Es- Attended in Logs Survey Writing De- say scribed Oct . Oct . -> Oct . ‘9 Feb . Mar . ---9 Feb . Apr . Apr. Apr. Apr. 72 able 3. 5 presents the data collection procedures used ith students to obtain information and indicates when it as collected. TABLE 3 . 5 Chronology and Collection Procedures of Student Data," Transcriptions Initial Surveys Observations Interviews and logging of of writing writing episodes Apr. Mar. Apr. Although primary emphasis was placed on the data gathering involving the teachers' feelings about the particular inser- vice support system being implemented, it was felt that the information gathered from classroom observations, student surveys, student writings, and the individual student inter- views would add needed depth and contribute to the eventual conclusions about inservice in writing instruction. On-Going Procedures Student Writing Collection The writings of the two selected students in each class were collected by the researcher to be analyzed by the holistic judgment of trained readers, as well as by the number of words, the number of T-units, and the mean T-unit length as measured by the researcher. 73 Support Session Tapes The support sessions were directed by the researcher. The teachers agreed that notes could be taken at each inservice meeting, and that these meetings could also be tape recorded for later analysis by the researcher. Researcher Notes In addition to the observation notes already referred to, the researcher kept an informal log of pertinent information gathered while visiting with teachers in these eight different elementary buildings throughout the study. Data collection began in mid-October, 1979, and continued until the last week of April 1980. The student writings were collected every two-to-three weeks for transcription by the researcher. Final Procedures Teacher Evaluation At the April 21, 1980, support session, the participating teachers were asked to complete a final evaluation of the inservice support project. They were asked to send the surveys through the school mail without signing them to insure an anonymous, substantial evaluation of the project. Writing Analysis At the conclusion of the study the writing samples collected throughout the study were holistically rated by trained raters using Diederich's Analytic Scale. Word counts and T-unit counts were also tallied and various comparisons were made with mean T-unit lengths. 74 $123251 Chapter III has detailed the design of this study: the study population, the background and selection of participants, the role of the researcher, the research instruments used, the data collection procedures utilized, and the methods used to analyze student writings. The information obtained using these methods is described in Chapter IV, and the conclusion of the findings is presented in Chapter V. CHAPTER IV FINDINGS Introduction The purpose of this study was to formulate instruc- tional and research hypotheses by examining the concerns of teachers about the teaching of writing, and by describ- ing an inservice format for teachers, thereby giving direction to future planning for on-the-job training in writing. It is the purpose of Chapter IV to present the findings collected by: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Teacher essays and logs. Teacher and student surveys. Student interviews. Student writings. Classroom observations. Researcher tape recordings and log. Inservice Education Description of Formats Traditional Inservice The inservice programs described in the literature have not dealt effectively with the concerns of teachers in curricular areas over a 75 76 period of time. (Cogan, 1975; Hite, 1977; Jenkins, 1977) Too many of them have been short-term introductions to district-wide curricular innovations with little or no follow-up. (Heilman, 1965; Sutherby, 1979) Few have involved the choice of the teachers even though several studies have concluded teacher selection is crucial to the success of an inservice program. (Bunker, 1977; Goddu, 1977; Ngaiyaye, 1978; Howe, 1979) Format Used in This Study The inservice format selected for this study was designated as a series of support sessions because it provided teachers with support for a particular portion of the language arts curriculum, writing instruction, throughout a school year. The support came in the sharing with other classroom teachers of similar age children, sharing professional materials and teaching aids, and in drawing from the expertise of the inservice leader, the researcher. The participants each selected the topic of this inservice as one about which they had particular concerns . Topic of This Study Children's writing was chosen as the topic for this study because there is such general agreement that the skills of children in producing lucid writing have declined over the past several years (Mellon, 2976; Gentry, 1978) so that the skills of composing have become a national concern. (Lundsteen, 1976) 77 While there is concern over the inability of children to communicate ideas adequately in the written form of English, and agreement that it is a necessary skill (Applegate, 1954; National Council of Teachers of English, 1975; Cramer, 1978), writing instruction is sadly neglected in many elementary school classrooms (Applegate, 1963; Murray, 1968; Graves, 1978) partly because teachers are unprepared to teach it. (National Council of Teachers of English, 1964; Squire, 1966; Shugrue, 1967) There are very few research studies that report composition practices in the elementary school. (Sheldon, 1974; 1976; 1978) Participants in This Study Teacher Volunteers The ten second- and third- grade teachers participating in this project were asked at the outset of the study to write an essay, using the guidelines provided for them. (A copy of the guidelines is provided in Appendix D.) The guidelines suggested that information be included in the essay about the teacher's family background, personal writing history, and the teacher's methods and experiences, particularly as they related to writing. It was found that five of the participating teachers could not remember ever writing during their elementary school years. Three of them could remember writing letters to relatives, one could remember writing book reports and cmeremembered writing a single essay that won some sort of 78 contest; though she could not recall its nature. None of the participants remembered doing much writing in junior high or high school. The recurring recollection was that there was more concern about the bibliographic form than about the ideas contained in their writing. Most testing they recalled required little writing since the tests were almost all true/false or multiple-1 choice tests. One teacher recalled that she was required to write two papers in one of her high school English classes: one was entitled "My Philosophy of Life and Three Books That Influenced It." "I can still remember how difficult that was for me to do....I still do not enjoy writing. It's a chore for me to even write a letter." Initially in this study, six teachers reported feeling comfortable with teaching writing skills while four teachers felt uncomfortable or even a little uneasy with teaching writing skills, but all ten teachers indicated they felt comfortable or even very comfortable with teaching reading skills. The major reasons given for differing levels of confidence in teaching reading and writing were: (1) because I know more about teaching reading that I do about teaching writing. (2) because I have more experience teaching reading than I have had teaching writing. (3) because I had good classes in college in the teaching of reading, but I didn't have any in the teaching of writing. Two of the participants kept a diary during their junior high and high school days and both of them keep a journal today. 79 One of the teachers reported: "The way I most enjoy writing is fOr myself. I have found that writing for me is a real self— help. Whenever I am down or have a problem, I write down my thoughts and it helps to straighten out some of the things in my mind." The other eight participants reported that they do little personal writing now--letters to friends, reminder notes, required job—related writing. "Now I do not write except for necessary notes. I still enjoy the luxury of taking the time to write 'newsy' letters, but I do not seem to have the time for such luxury often." Participating teachers indicated that children in their classrooms read twice as much as they write and that they would like to have them write more often: they said they would have children write several times a day, for different purposes, with the total time spent writing each day equalling thirty to forty minutes. At the same time, these ten teachers also expressed their concerns about the limited time aVailable to them in an already crowded schedule, as well as limited resources for ideas and satisfying ways of involving children in written composition activities. The greatest concerns about the teaching of writing expressed by these teachers centered around: (1) time to interact with children about their writing. (2) methods for developing each child's potential. (3) ways to help children enjoy writing. (4) methods for appropriate evaluation--fair and meaningful, balanced between content and form. 80 In their logs teachers graphically portrayed these concerns. "I'm embarrassed to say this was the first time I actually took the time to sit down with each student to talk about their ideas with them." "We ran short of time so the stories seemed hurried and short." "I felt they were too rushed with the other day's activities." "They didn't have a lot of time so some of their writings weren't too interesting." The teachers also noted that the primary class- room teaching materials are textbooks with some supplemen- tary items, such as pencils, paper, chalk, and some art and science supplies. No professional journals are readily available, except Instructor and Teacher, and the few professional books provided by the school district are available only through one central library office. Any additional ideas or materials a teacher wishes to provide for children must be procured independently of the pre- scribed program. The participating teachers indicated that while the spelling and language books used by the district do have some open-ended stories to complete and some other writing-related activites, most of their creative writing ideas have come from other sources. Because of the fairly structured atmosphere encouraged in these elementary buildings and the teacher's initial lack of confidence in teaching writing, they felt the need of specific materials and ideas to generate children's writing and they had no readily available source of these in the district prior to this inservice program. 81 Students Selected Ten of the twenty students selected for this study, two from each participating teacher's classroom, in the initial student survey found school usually good, "great," "fun;" while nine found it usually bad, "boring," "terrible;" and one found it "good and bad." Thirteen said studying made them feel good, "smart," "happy;" and seven said studying made them feel bad, "awful," "yukky." While only about half of the twenty students in this study described school in positive terms, nearly all of them described writing positively in the initial survey completed in October. Eighteen of the twenty said writing stories is a fun thing to do, "very,very good for me," "soper" (super). A complete tally of the responses from the twenty students to the initial student information survey is in- cluded in Appendix E. Twenty students, four from grade two classrooms and sixteen from grade three classrooms were selected for this study. Their ages varied from seven years five months and twenty-four days to eight years ten months and twenty days; and their basal reading text levels ranged from first-grade second book to third-grade second book. This information was presented in Table 3.2 on page 60. Support Session Content All the inservice support sessions were held in either the library or an available classroom at the most centrally-located elementary school in the district, from four o'clock until five o'clock once each month during the 82 academic year 1979-1980. The sessions began and concluded on time, and the date and topic for the next meeting were selected before departure. Commencing with the first meeting, which was introd- ductory in nature, the participating teachers determined what aspect of writing instruction in particular they would like to deal with at the next session. They were then encouraged to think about their own concerns and questions in relation to that topic to share at the next session. The researcher then gathered suitable materials to make a presentation and lead a discussion on that topic, as well as on related principles of good writing instruction. The topics selected are indicated in Figure 4.1. It is interest- ing to note that the first session they chose was on evalu- ation, which would not logically be chosen first, but indi- cates their great concern with that topic. A more complete description of each sessions' content is in Appendix F, as well as a list of the materials provided for participating teachers by the researcher. Teachers were always encouraged to share writing activities from their own classroom and to express their concerns and comments about them. From six to ten participating teachers attended each meeting. Whenever a teacher was not able to attend a meeting, the materials from the meeting were given to her and an explanation of the meeting's topic and materials was made by the researcher. The attendance pattern of the meetings for the duration of the study in indicated in Appendix G. October 11, 1979 November 15, 1979 December 10, 1979 January 15, 1980 February 18, 1980 March 17, 1980 April 21, 1980 83 Introduction and Writing Centers Evaluation of Written Expression Positive Approaches to Writing Journal Keeping Use of Patterned Books to Stimu- late Writing Elements of a Good Writing Program Successful Classroom Writing Activities Specified Topics for Support Sessions FIGURE 4.1 Writing Instruction Methods Used to Teach Writing Prior to the inservice program the participating teachers indicated that their methods for teaching writing were limited. "I haven't had much of a writing program." "My writing program has consisted of copying spelling sentences from the board, writing their own spelling sentences, and using optional seasonal story starters and writing optional book reports." "My current writing program involves writing once a week. The children write while looking at a picture or they use a story starter." 84 While six of the ten teachers made some use of learning centers, it was only after the inservice was under way five months that two of them reported beginning to use a center approach to writing. None of the teachers indicated regular use of journals or diaries to encourage free, unassigned writing in the classroom prior to the study. Only two teachers described specifically planned writing programs when the project began: "On Mondays the children use seven of their spelling words in sentences, which I evaluate for spelling, content and word usage. On Wednesdays we have "scribble" time, when the children write for fifteen minutes and then they share their writing if they like. It is then placed in special writing folders. I do not evaluate them. On Fridays they write letters to me about anything they want to. In my reply I try to use any words they misspelled, only spelled correctly." "I am using five to eight cards a week in a writing center, the language series twice a week, and the spelling test pages which allow for creative writing. Once a week I will start a story and say 'You finish it in at least five sentences.‘ On Fridays our boardwork is often to write a letter to parents telling about a new unit or concept, or a summary of the week's activities." Six of the teachers were using the center concept and the components provided by the inservice for at least a portion of their writing program as a result of the inservice. Two teachers were having their students write regularly in a journal by the conclusion of the study. Writing activities became a more frequent part of the instructional day, as indicated by the increased number of writings collected. 85 Number of Writings Completed There was an increase in assigned writing activities turned in to the researcher over the course of the year, in both total number of writing samples by each student per month and in the number of words per student per month. The total numbers of writing samples and words written, by students and by classrooms, are tabulated in Tables H.1 and H.2 in Appendix H. The total number of words written per sample per month ranged from nineteen to fifty-eight. The decrease in writings during January resulted from the teachers' increased concern with semester record-keeping. That information is graphically represented in Figures 4.2 and 4.3. 60 - 55 - 50 - 45 - 40 - 35 - 30 - 25 - 20 - 15 - Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Total Number of Writings Collected Per Month FIGURE 4.2 86 3900 - 3700 - 3500 - 3300 - 3100 - 2900 - 2700 - 2500 - 2300 - 2100 - 1900 - 1700 - 1500 - Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Total Number of Words Written per Month FIGURE 4 . 3 The teachers indicated that from two to twenty writing activities were not turned in to the researcher, even though they were requested, due to unforeseen circumstances: the missing writings were given to parents at a conference; they were displayed and inadvertently sent home; they were saved for open house folders and taken home by parents. Unassigned writings were not tabulated. Teachers indicated that although they encouraged unassigned writings as a "free choice" activity they were not emphasized as a part of the planned curriculum because of their unpredicta- bility, both in numbers and time. 87 "We are not encouraged to emphasize writing. Oftentimes we are discouraged from encouraging creativity in order to do work on 'the basics' from textbooks." Teachers felt the need to actively direct most instruction in order to have some tangible academic accomplishment to evaluate from each student during most time periods in their instructional day. Appendix I records the normal patterns and time periods of the daily schedules in partici- pating classrooms, in very general categories. Idiosyn- cratic deviations in the schedules, such as art and music times are not included. Excluding reading instruction time, the time spent on language-related activities ranged from thirty minutes a day to ninety minutes a day. Evaluation Procedures Used by Teachers ianheir Classrooms In mid-study surveys the teachers indicated that they based their judg- ments of the childrens' writing in their classrooms on unique and/or unusual ideas, precise word choice, length, grammatical correctness, logical sequence, and mechanical factors such as capitalization, handwriting, and punctuation. One teacher grades daily with A B C N grades and three teachers evaluate children's writing weekly by writing comments on it, while the other six teachers write comments on, or discuss orally, children's writing as the children complete each assignment. Two teachers indicated that they might also make a chart of common errors, or ditto some 88 sample grammar sheets to use as a guide for class discussion or as an example for the group. Used by Trained Raters in This Study The raters in this study were two experienced elementary school teachers, trained by the researcher using the holistic guide found in Appendix D. This guide contains both instructions to the raters and amplification of Diederich's analytic rating scale, as well as two of the sets of writing samples the raters used to practice rating. The directions were carefully followed and every twentieth paper was compared for inter-rater reliability. The raters maintained no more than .5 differ- ences on the average scaled ratings. The raters spent thirteen and one-half hours, or eight hundred ten minutes, holistically judging the two hundred seventy-six writing samples. That is 2.9 minutes apiece, which is longer than the two minutes for each writing sample that Cooper suggests holistic rating should take, but these were the writings of eight—year-olds whose handwriting, spelling, and sentence structure sometimes call for more decifering than those of the high school and college students Cooper used in his research. Studies reported by Hogan and Mishler (1979) using holistic scoring to rate third-grade essays indicated it took less than three minutes each. On the fifty-point Diederich scale, the holistic, scaled ratings of individual student writings, averaged between the two trained raters, ranged from eleven to forty- eight. (See individual analysis sheets in Appendix J.) 89 When these individual ratings were averaged to come up with average monthly ratings per student over all his/her transcribed writings, the scaled ratings then ranged from sixteen to forty-three. (See Table H.5 in Appendix H.) When a single overall rating was averaged for each student, the range was from twenty-one to thirty-eight. (See Table H.6 in Appendix H.) The overall average holistic scaled ratings by month improved slightly over the duration of the study. They are represented in Figure 4.4. This was not true of individual writings, as is shown in Table 4.1. 32 - 31 - 30 - 29 - r 28 ’ll/l, 27 - 26 - 25 - Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Overall Average Holistic Scaled Ratings Per Month FIGURE 4.4 Table 4.1 gives examples of the logging procedure followed for each student's writing samples. A complete compilation of the analysis sheets for each student's writing samples 90 has been placed in Appendix J. Each writing sample was given an averaged holistic scaled rating from the two trained raters, as well as a word count and a T—unit count, where a T-unit is a grammatically complete sentence, calculated by the researcher. The mean T-unit length for each writing was then calculated by dividing the total number of words written by the number of T-units. TABLE 4.1 Examples of Individual Student Writing Sample Analysis Teacher/ Writing Averaged Number Number Mean Student Sample Holistic of Words of T-Unit Number Scaled T-Units Length 1 2 5 154 16 9.3 2 3 5 131 14 9.3 3 4 l 129 15 6.6 D 4 4 4 3 113 16 7.0 5 3 4 164 16 10.2 6 4 3 201 36 5.6 and so on 1 2 3 52 9 5.8 2 2 1 58 7 8.3 3 1 3 3 1 3.0 A 1 4 1 4 51 8 6.4 5 3 1 14 4 2 7.0 6 2 2 98 12 8.2 and so on 91 The average number of words for each piece of writing ranged from thirty-one to one hundred twenty-four words, with the overall average being seventy words per writing. This is nearly twice as many words per writing as was reported in Graves' study, where he reported the mean length in words of total group writings as being 38.5. (Graves, 1973, p. 121) The average T-unit length showed little variation across children, from five to nine words per T-unit, with an average T-unit length of 7.3. Loban's 1966 study found comparable results for third graders with an average of 6.6 words per communication unit. (Loban, 1966, p. 28) In a continuation of that longitudinal study, reported by Loban in 1976, the average number of words per communication unit in a random group of third graders was 7.6. (Loban, 1976, p. 33) Because of the representative sample selection of students the writings were assumed to represent writings of average second- and third-grade students in these ten classrooms. Table 4.2 summarizes the analysis of the student writings. The Research Questions Question One: Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers feel better about their own writing skills? Nine of the ten participating teachers reported that as a result of this inservice they did feel better about their own writing skills. Only one did not. Half 92 TABLE 4.2 Summarization of the Analysis of Student Writings Teacher/ Total Average Average Average Overall Student Number Number Number Mean T- Averaged of of of Unit Scaled Writings Words T-Units Length Rating A l 20 52 8 7 21 B 2 ll 67 9 7 31 C 3 15 74 9 8 32 D 4 12 124 16 8 36 E 5 20 55 8 7 21 F 6 10 39 8 5 28 G 7 19 78 12 7 30 H 8 14 74 12 6 31 I 9 8 72 9 8 27 J 10 21 65 9 7 25 A 15 16 55 8 7 29 B 16 13 110 13 9 34 C 17 ll 31 5 7 29 D 18 13 104 13 8 36 E 19 12 87 10 8 38 F 20 9 68 10 8 32 G 21 17 63 11 7 26 H 22 17 63 ll 7 26 I 23 12 66 9 7 32 J 24 10 7 8 29 67 93 of the teachers in this study indicated that because of the inservice they write with their students during a writing session now, and read their writing when the children read theirs. Sara Lundsteen says that children need a strong competent adult with whom they can identify. It is a common observation that teachers who thoroughly enjoy writing and who share their products serve as stimulating models for children. (Lundsteen, 1976, p. 30) Kenneth Kantor concurs: Teachers who write themselves, and in parti- cular write along with their students, know that writing is often difficult but also rewarding. Thus they can offer sympathetic help to kids in their struggle to find the right word or sentence structure, and at the same time they can enthusiastically lead kids to experience the pleasure of having written something well and of sharing it with an appreciative audience. (Kantor, 1979, p. 746) The other five teachers are still not comfortable writing with children, or they do not write with children because they feel pressured to use the time in some other way-- often spelling words for the children who are writing. Four of the teachers in this study are doing more personal writing, such as descriptive, reactive, and journalistic writing, than they did before participating in this inservice.. The other six are not doing more personal writing. Again, time seems to be an important factor. Also, the inservice did not emphasize personal writing, as much as some of the other aspects of writing. 94 Question Two: Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers feel more confi- dent in teaching writing skills to children? Kenneth Kantor (1979) states that teachers need to feel better appreciated themselves in order to better appreciate the efforts of their students. All ten of the participating teachers indicated that they feel more con- fident in teaching writing skills to children as a result of this inservice. "I feel much more confident now." "This has done so much to make me feel unafraid of creative writing." "I never thought I could teach them to write better, but I am feeling much more confident now." Beginning with the second inservice support session the teachers began feeling comfortable sharing ideas and materials they had used successfully in their classrooms. It was evi- dent to the researcher when reading subsequent student writings that many of the shared ideas were being used in other classrooms. Several classes, in different buildings, used the same story starters and stimulators, such as making popcorn, or reading a specific literature selection, to initi- ate a writing activity. Question Three: Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers utilize more variety in presenting writing activities to children? Nine of the ten participating teachers stated that they now utilize more variety and offer more choices to children in presenting writing activities. They see writing 95 potential in activities they never thought of as writing activities before. Some of the experiences they shared in their logs follow: "After making wood sculptures in art the children wrote about them. They really liked this, and so did I." "The children completed a drawing from a single item picture provided for them and then wrote about it. They really enjoyed this activity. Creativity was activated by having to visualize the picture and create its setting. Their stories really took place in their pictures. All that was left to do was formulate it into words." "We saw the movie 'Doughnuts' and shared Bill Martin's book Round is a Pancake. Then we made doughnuts and shared them, and then we made a class doughnut-shaped book with each child con- tributing at least one page. They loved it!" "After much study of the solar system and talk of space travel I put up a piece of 'Star Wars' wall paper and said 'Write about this picture.‘ I put requested words on the board for about ten minutes and then they took off on their own. Several had Star Wars books which they used to find words and share with their friends. Everyone loved this activity--even children who had not seen the movie were excited about the picture and their story. I got the best results from this activity than any so far this year. Does this prove that movies can serve as good and lasting stimulation that can be captured in writing? It is interesting that they can still remember the details because it has been a year since most children saw the movie." "We made Short and Tall, Big and Small books. The children seemed to like having a pattern to follow." John Stewig (1975) says that reading literature to children results in better writing. Howard Blake agrees that reading to children not only stimulates thought and brings forms of literature to children that they might not ordinarily read, but it also: 96 helps improve their writing style through the vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar and syntactical arrangements, organization and approach used by other writers. (Blake, 1971, p. 606) Question Four: Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers increase oppor- tunities for children to write in the classroom? The teachers in this study indicated that their writing programs before the inception of the inservice program were limited, usually to the language text and spelling assignments only. All ten teachers judged their classroom writing activities as having increased as a result of the inservice. "I set up a creative writing table in conjunc- tion with our Fantastic February Reading Month. The kids love it! Most of the goodies in it were from the inservice." "I used the movie 'The Velveteen Rabbit' to stimulate writing. The students asked to be able to do it again." "We wrote while listening to 'The Nutcracker Suite.‘ The children seemed enthused to write to the music without restrictions. I enjoyed the session very much too." The number of assigned.writings turned in to the researcher each month for evaluation as a result of the inservice support system ranged from nineteen to fifty- eight, with an average of thirty—nine writings per month per classroom being turned in. The average number of writings per student received by the researcher from all clasSrooms per month was 1.7. An average of 1.3 writings per student was recorded in October, and 2.5 average writings per 97 student were turned in to the researcher in April. This compares with Graves' study where the average number of assigned writings per student per month in the two formal classrooms he reported was .5. The average total number of assigned and unassigned writings per pupil per month in those classrooms was 2.9. (Graves, 1973, p.85) The average number of writings per student is tabulated in Appendix H, and was summarized in Figures 4.2 and 4.3 on pages 85 and 86. Question Five: Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers develop a more positive attitude about instructing child- ren in the skills of written expression? All ten teachers indicated that as a result of this inservice support system they have a more positive attitude about writing instruction and therefore it is easier to respond to children's writing in a more positive way. Nine of them said they feel better about instructing children in writing. "This writing assignment worked out well. It gave me a good feeling." "I felt very good about the results of this lesson. I feel the children had a better idea of what they were going to write, and where they were going with their writing." But the one teacher who said whe was not sure if she had a more positive attitude about instructing children in the skills of written expression responded, "I can't get aroundtx>everyone--how frustrating!" She had not been able to translate Moffett's advocation of peer writing workshops into the classroom. He says, "students 98 can not write enough if you alone have to process it." (Moffett, 1976, p. 150) Question Six: Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help children develop a more positive attitude toward writing activities? Kenneth Kantor says: Young people note that their personal know- ledge is not much valued in school settings...but writing offers a means to 'show off'....and when we encourage children's efforts in writing we are mostly saying 'yes' to their signs of growth, to their knowledge and experiences. (Kantor, 1979, pp. 743, 744) Eighteen of the twenty students initially surveyed for this study described writing in positive terms, "really fun," "inristing" (interesting): compared with twelve students who described reading in positive terms, "pretty good," ”xsideing" (exciting). Another child described reading as "part of life” which the researcher did not categorize as positive or negative. Ten of the twenty students surveyed described school in general as positive, and thirteen described how studying made them feel in positive terms. There were thirty eight students interviewed, to keep the identity of the students in the study concealed. Of the thirty-eight students interviewed near the conclu- sion of the study in April, thirty like to write, at least sometimes. More students liked to write after lunch better than at any other time, and their favorite kind of story to write was an imaginative one. Thirty-two children think they have become better writers this year as compared to thirty-eight who feel they have become better readers this 99 year. They indicated that they not only write more, they enjgy writing more now than they used to. Of the thirty- eight students interviewed, thirty-six had very specific ways teachers could help students become better writers. Many of their responses confirmed what authorities in the field have frequently encouraged English language arts teachers to do when teaching writing. The question they were asked was, How do you think your teacher could help you become a better writer? "By helping me—-talking to me about what I write," and "By sitting down and talking to me about what to write." (Similar to Applegate, 1963; Lundsteen, 1976) "By writing a lot," "By having us write more," "By writing more." (Similar to Mearns, 1929; Blake, 1971) ' "By writing a sentence and Comparing it with. your old sentence." (Similar to Cooper, 1976; Hogan and Mishler, 1979) "By reading lots of good stories to us." (Simi- lar to Blake, 1971, Stewig, 1975) A complete summary of all thirty-eight responses to the interview questions is recorded in Appendix K. Question Seven: Can a teacher support system for writing ' instruction help children increase unas- signed writing being done at home or at school? All ten teachers participating in this study indi- cated that they have seen evidence of increased unassigned writing being done by students: children actually shared their unassigned writing with the teachers; they talked 100 with the teachers about it; and children's parents discussed with the teachers the children's eagerness to do unassigned writing at home. One of the teachers showed the researcher a story a girl in the teacher's class had dictated to her babysitter and then brought in for her teacher to see. A third-grade boy indicated to the researcher during the interview that he was writing at home and his mother was typing his stories to sell at a garage sale for two cents a page. Three of the teachers indicated that the increase they had seen in the interest their students had in writing was dramatic. Question Eight: Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help children increase the quality of their compositions and the number of words written? Many variables affect the number of words written and the quality of student compositions, particularly in the primary grades. Drawing from the teachers' logs and the classroom observations, the researcher found that the number of words and the subsequent quality of writing judged by skilled raters were not adequate descriptions of the writing of primary grade children. Because this study relied on the teachers assigning writing as a classroom activity, one very central concern was how often the teachers actually assigned writing, and what type of assign- ment it was. Was the assignment from the language book or spelling book, or from a story starter or a current news item, or In I!) 101 were the children free to select their own topic? Were they given the opportunity to orally discuss and brainstorm about the topic? In one third-grade classroom, before writing riddles a lengthy class discussion was held. Then each of the children was told to go to the area of the room designated by a large card with a matching number to the one on a small card they were each given. All of the groups so designated were instructed to pick a secretary and then they ‘were given a small paper bag with one item in it. Each group member was to peek in the bag without letting anyone else see it, and then they were to write five riddle clues as a group. The teacher circulated around the room as the children were involved in this activity, guiding the clue writing by asking questions, such as, What is it made of? What do you do with it? How can you use it? The items contained in the bags were an onion, a candle, a peanut, a Clothespin, a button, and a screw. Each group designated a reader to read their clues to the class for them so that classmates could guess the group's object. After this activity, the children were asked to make up a riddle of their own, with five clues, to be shared with the class later. After sharing with the class orally, the riddle answers were illustrated for inclusion in a class riddle book. Another important variable affecting how much and how well the children wrote was how the topic was introduced. One of the writing segments the researcher observed was 102 related to an elaborate, extensive science study of the body. The students had created a "Mrs. Health" and related their studies to her life-size body, drawn on butcher paper by the students during this study, and displayed on one of the classroom walls, with additional details being added as new information was learned. On this particular day the students had discussed the functions of the stomach. Their teacher had provided them with colored construction paper outlines of a stomach, in which they could draw or color what they imagined happened to food after they had eaten it. As they were drawing, the teacher provided them with their choice of oranges or cupcakes to eat, providing them with very real food items to relate to. The students were then asked to write a description of what happened to the food in their stomachs. In another classroom the delightful movie of the Eskimo folktale, 'The Owl and the Lemming,‘ was used to stimulate colorful chalk drawings and subsequent writings. In yet another room, Schultz's Happiness Is... book was used to generate a delightful class book. Two classrooms utilized Judith Viorst's The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Day as a pattern for individual student writings. An additional concern when considering children's writing is whether or not the students were involved in some physical or artistic interpretive expression first. "My slower students especially like to cut out the shape pages to put in our book. 103 They seem to have an easier time starting their stories after they have been physically involved with them." During the observation of one third-grade classroom, the children were separated into groups of three; with one child in each group designated as Captain, another as Navigator, and the third child designated as the Scientific Investigator. The role selection was to be determined without any verbal communication, using only hand signals and gestures. The teacher then began reading a description of the preparation for "take-off." The children linked arms as the count-down was called out. The window shades were drawn and the lights turned out as lift-off occurred. As the children listened in the dark, the teacher described their trip--landing on a planet, leaving the ship, seeing something, running back to the ship and returning home. When the simulation was com- pleted, the lights were turned on, and a brief discussion ensued on the different imagined happenings. Then a list of related Words was generated and placed on the chalkboard before the actual writing began. Another variable affecting writing quantity and quality is the concept level of the assigned writing. Was the concept level the children were being asked to write about appropriate? And were a great variety of words related to the tOpic generated and placed in plain view of the writers, or were children left to spell on their own? 104 One teacher wrote: "I think I was expecting too much from my third- graders; expecting them to expound ferociously on a given topic when it is difficult for them to even write a grammatical sentence or spell the words they need." One of her students wrote: Original (Translated by the researcher) Christmas is... Christmas is... ...opinen prazins ...opening presents. ...eotin to ...eating, too. And in another instance that same student wrote: Original (Translated by the researcher) Love is... Love is... ...cissen oor Buthr ...sisters and brothers. ...play with ech uth ...playing with each other. ...Ben nuen to eth pelpe ...being nice to other people. ...taken a wok ...taking a walk. Teachers tend to see spelling, as well as other mechanical aspects of writing, as the central features of good writing rather than ideas, so they are very concerned when they see this kind of writing, whether it is assigned or unassigned. They see the author's need for individual help from them, and there seems to be little time in a crowded curriculum to give it. It is no surprise that teachers often rely on fill-in-the-blank dittoed materials where children copy answers from a book and the obvious needs represented in 105 children's actual composing are not so evident. Another aspect of children's writing to consider is whether the writing is done in specially—shaped books. "I think the children enjoyed writing on a neat mouse page; it was a motivating force for them. I wonder if they would have been as anxious to write on a plain old paper?" As a result of one teacher's sharing a Christmas story shape book, nearly all the students in the study, those in other classrooms, also wrote stories in that shaped book. Yet another variable concerning students' writings involves time. Was the time for writing limited? During the classroom observations it was frequently observed that some students did not complete the writing assignment because it was time for some other scheduled activity, such as music or recess. In their logs teachers noted frustra- tion at the time constraints they feel. "We ran short of time." "Most of the stories were shorter than I thought they would be, perhaps they needed more time. And during which portion of the school day was the writing accomplished? Which day of the week was it, and what kind of day was it? Of the thirty-eight students interviewed at the conclusion of the study, twelve indicated the best time of day for them to write was after lunch. When describing a writing activity one of the teachers wrote: "They were sort of high that morning and they didn't write that much." ‘ 106 Another aspect of children's writing that must be considered is the sense of audience. What sense of audience was developed? Was the writing to be shared with classmates? "I think the part they enjoy most is sharing their story with the group." "When we read some stories orally, they enjoyed each others and really laughed. Some wanted to read the stories twice." About her students' writing a weekly letter to her, one teacher wrote: "I enjoy reading and answering the letters; plus, it gives me insights (that I sometimes over— look) on some of my 'quiet' kids, and my 'behavior' difficulties. And the kids seem to be getting more excited about doing it, which was a different reaction than I expected. I thought they would tire of doing it." Since the student writings that the teachers turned in were written under vastly different circumstances, and for a variety of reasons the teachers did not turn in all of the students' writings, it is interesting to note the differences in the analyses of the writing. All of the writings of the students selected to be in this study which were received by the researcher were analyzed by the holistic judgment of trained raters, as well as by the key syntactic features of total word counts, total T—unit counts, and mean T-unit lengths. These rating methods, as Cooper (1977), Diederich (1974), and Lundsteen (1976), have suggested, are useful for evaluating growth over a period of time when a writing sample is taken under simi- lar conditions in the fall and again in the spring. They 107 are not useful for comparing dissimilar writing circumstances on a day-to-day basis. Their usefulness in this study is in looking at the counts and ratings over time. Table 4.4 shows that the number of writings was not related to the average mean T-unit lengths or scaled ratings; but Table 4.5 shows that there is a relationship between the number of words written and the mean T-unit lengths and scaled ratings. As the number of words per writing increased, the average mean T-unit length increased; and as the average mean T-unit length increased, the average scaled rating improved. This information is summarized in Table 4.3. Complete analyses of each student's writings are in Appendix J. TABLE 4.3 Summary of Words Written Analysis Average Number Overall Average Overall Average of Words per Mean T-Unit Scaled Rating Writing Length Under 55 6.6 26 55-70 7.3 28 70-100 7.4 32 100-125 8.3 36 The teachers' informal judgments of their students' writings agreed with these findings. All ten teachers indicated that their students had improved over the course 108 TABLE 4.4 Analysis of Student Writings by Number of Writings Teacher/ Total Number Mean T-unit Average Scaled Student of Writings Length Per Rating Per . Per Student Writing Writing I 9 8 8 3 F 20 9 8 3 F 10 5 3 J 24 10 8 3 B 2 11 7 3 c 17 11 7 3 E 19 12 8 4 D 4 12 8 3.5 I 23 12 7 3 D 18 13 7 4 c; 21 13 8 2.5 B 16 13 9 3.5 H 8 14 6 3 c 3 15 8 3 A 15 16 7 3 G 21 17 7 2.5 G 7 19 7 3 A l 20 7 2 E 5 20 7 2 J 10 21 7 2.5 109 TABLE 4.5 Analysis of.Student Writings by Number of Words Written Teacher/ Average Number Mean T-unit Average Scaled Student of Words per Length per Rating per Writing Writing Writing C 17 31 7 29 F 6 39 5 28 H 22 49 7 25 A 1 52 7 21 E 5 55 7 21 A 15 55 7 29 G 21 63 7 26 J 10 65 7 25 I 23 66 7 32 J 24 67 7 29 B 2 67 8 31 F 20 68 8 32 I 9 72 8 27 H 8 74 6 31 C 3 74 8 32 G 7 78 7 30 E 19 87 8 38 D 18 104 8 36 B 16 110 9 34 D 4 124 8 36 110 of this inservice, some emphasizing that fact with exclama- tion points. The teachers judged their students' writings to be much more interesting as a result of their input from this inservice. "I can really see an improvement in the students' writings." "My kids seem to be able to sequence their stories better, using then and apd a little less frequently." "There are a few children in my room who the other children really enjoy listening to, and I find more and more students trying to pattern their writing after theirs, or at least making some attempt to write 'longer' stories." "The emphasis on writing is carrying over into every-day assignments. One example stands out in my mind--instead of saying the ketchup spilled, a girl wrote, 'The ketchup chased my napkin.‘ Wow! That makes it all worthwhile." Summary In the final evaluation survey, completed the last week in April, 1980, all ten of the teachers in this study indicated that they had gained useful information through this self-selected inservice support session format; this type of format can, in fact, meet teachers' felt and expressed needs. They also indicated they feel more confi- dent since the inservice about teaching writing to children. Nine of the ten teachers indicated that they have become more aware of the purposes and possibilities of creative writing. A response of one teacher was typical: "It helps, as I struggle in coming to grips with developing my own writing programs, to know others have the same problems and concerns that I have." 111 Three teachers found this format as good as the day-long district inservices while seven of the teachers found the monthly inservice format used in this study better than the day-long inservices. The reasons given for this included the feeling that extended inservice allows the participants to choose a topic of interest, to try out ideas and materials, and to participate in feedback during the sharing times. "I got lots of materials, ideas and information." "This was very well-organized; it met specific goals." "Both inservices offered sharing between staff members." Three of the participants liked this format better than five grant-sponsored inservices on metrics held in the district the previous year during released time. Some of their reasons included: the "choice of topic" involved in this study's support sessions, the time allowed to "think and digest material," the time to try things out and apply them "when inspired, not rushed," and the oppor- tunity for "sharing and feedback over the longer time period" in this format. Involvement in the tOpic selection for each monthly support session, and the opportunity to share with fellow teachers was valued very highly by the inservice participants. "Feedback is useful and stimulating." 112 "The individual involvement...keeps the spark and enthusiasm going." The other seven participants felt this inservice was as good as the five half-day inservices. Since none of the teachers had ever participated in a summer inservice program, most of them did not have an opinion about how the format of this study might compare with a summer inservice, but two of the respondents felt this format would be better because of summer scheduling problems; because participants would not be able to try out ideas with students right away; and because, by fall, the "neat ideas would no doubt be filed away, or perhaps even be inappropriate to a current teaching assignment." All ten of the teachers felt the writing center components were a very useful part of the inservice. The writing center materials included ideas and activities that could be used independently, perhaps in a special location in the room, when a child had completed other work. Nine of the participating teachers felt the ideas shared by the inservice leader were very useful, and six felt that the information shared by fellow teachers was also very useful. Information on participants' attitudes about the inservice project component parts is summarized in Table 4.6. This chapter included a description of the study's inservice format and the evaluation of that format by the teachers involved in the study. It also included informa- tion concerning the backgrounds and personal writing skills 113 TABLE 4.6 Usefulness of Inservice Components Components Very Gener- Not Very Not at Useful ally Useful all Useful Useful Writing Center 10 Components Information 9 1 Shared by Researcher Information 6 4 Shared by Fellow Teachers Current Pertin- 5 4 l ent Journal ‘ Articles Professional 5 4 1 Books Shared of participating teachers, as well as their attitudes towards teaching writing and the methods they use to teach and evaluate writing activites. Findings related to the research questions posed in this study were enumerated and will form the basis for the summary, conclusions, and implications to be presented in Chapter V. CHAPTER V SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS Summary of This Study Purpose of the Study With decreasing budgets and continually escalating demands on schools, inservice education has become increas- ingly important. The purpose of this longitudinal study, extending over an academic year, was to develop an inservice format that would give teachers on-going support throughout a school year in a particular area of the curriculum; not to simply provide a graduate "course of study" transferred to a local school, but rather a forum in which teachers could meet together as professionals and share ideas and effective teaching procedures. The topic for this inservice program, writing instruc- tion, was selected because it is an area of national concern, one in which teachers are least prepared in their preservice education, and in which they have the least expertise themselves. The common concerns of teachers involved in the teaching of writing were identified through classroom 114 115 observations, discussions, essays, surveys, and logs. The on-going support was provided through monthly inservice support sessions where the concerns of the teachers were dealt with through presentations by the inservice leader, directed discussion, and sharing with colleagues, and multiple copies of professional materials provided for inservice participants. Review of the Literature While a review of current literature confirms the increased need for inservice education, it reveals that past efforts involving inservice teacher education have not always been successful in meeting the goals expressed by teachers. Since most teachers now teaching have at least a bachelor's degree, and nearly half have a master's degree, there is not much motivation to return to the university to update one's skills, so inservice education must become a higher priority than ever before in local school districts. Effective on-the-job education has been difficult to achieve: it is difficult to plan for it in a way that meets individual teacher's needs at convenient times, without involving excessive cost either to the individual teacher or to the district, and it is difficult to establish carefully thought out, meaningful methods of evaluation. The teaching of writing was selected as the topic for this inservice because it is an important area of 116 i language arts instruction that is neglected in the elemen- tary school. There are several reasons for this: teachers do not feel prepared to teach writing, it is time-consuming to teach, and to evaluate writing well; and writing has not received the emphasis in the curriculum other subjects have had in recent years, in textbooks, school board recommendations or state-wide testing programs. Design of This Study This study was designed to be an on-going inservice that would support teachers as they expanded and strengthened .their teaching of a particular curricular area of concern to them (writing instruction) in order to draw conclusions and make useful recommendations for further planning of teacher education programs. This study attempted to avoid a fragmentary, interventive approach by gathering data in a case study procedure over a full school year on ten teachers and twenty students in eight different elementary schools. It utilized a format that involved the partici- pants in selecting the topic and specific areas of that tOpic in which they each felt the greatest need. The on-going support meetings were held for one hour once a month during one school year. Since the inservice leader was a teacher in the district with a knowledge of the curricular area under study, the only cost involved in the inservice was for the related professional materials given to the partici- pating teachers. 117 Ten second- and third-grade teachers, ranging in age from twenty-four years old to fifty-one years old and in teaching experience from three years to seventeen years, volunteered to participate in this inservice program. They committed themselves to attend the monthly support sessions, to share the writing of students in their classrooms, to keep a log on their feelings about writing instruction, and to allow the researcher to make classroom observations. The support sessions were designed to provide the teachers with presentations on writing instruction, professional materials and the opportunity to share common concerns with colleagues. The students, selected as a representative sample of their respective classrooms, and their parents, agreed to let the researcher interview the students and collect their writing for further analysis. Data was col- lected through field notes and tape recordings taken dUringy the monthly support sessions, through bi-weekly collections of student writings, through student interviews and surveys, through written essays and surveys completed by the teachers, and through notes made by the researcher during in—class observations. Analysis of student writings was made by trained raters and the researcher. From these sources of data, sufficient information about current classroom practices during the teaching of writing in these classrooms was gathered to draw conclusions and make recommendations concerning future practical on-the—job training for teachers in writing instruction. 118 Findings of This Study The findings of this study were derived from the following data gathering procedures: 1) essays, 2) surveys, 3) interviews, 4) observations, 5) field notes and recordings. They were limited to the perceptions, attitudes, and opin- ions of the ten volunteer teachers, the twenty selected students, and one researcher, over the period of one school year. The teachers involved in this inservice program found the format utilized to be a useful one that can meet teachers' felt and expressed needs. In response to the questions, Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers feel better about their own writing, and Can it help teachers feel more confident teaching writing skills to children, the teachers indicated they do feel better about their own writing. They feel more aware of the purpose and possi- bilities of creative writing and therefore more confident in teaching writing to children as a result of the supportive nature of this on-going support program. In response to the questions, Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers utilize more variety in presenting writing activities to children, and Can it help teachers increase opportunities for children to write in the classroom, the teachers judged the monthly for— mat to be better than past day-long district inservice programs because of the greater potential for self-selection 119 of topic, for the continually increasing depth of information, and for the continuing growth of variety in classroom practices it presented. Actual classroom tested materials and information shared by the researcher and fellow teachers were judged to be more valuable in increasing opportunities for children to write than were journal articles and profes- sional books. In response to the questions, Can a teacher support system for writing instruction help teachers develop a more positive attitude about instructing children in the skills of written expression,and Can it help children develop a more positive attitude toward writing activites, the teachers in this study could not recall doing much writing in their own elementary school days, except letter writing to relatives; and they could mainly recall writing in response to literature during high school days so their feelings about writing initially were not exceptionally positive. Only two of the ten teachers remembered doing any writing for their own enjoyment during their youth. Four of the teachers indicated they felt uneasy or uncomfortable teaching writing. Reasons given for this included lack of knowledge about, preparation for, and experience in teaching writing. At least partially as a result of their feelings of inadequacy, children in their classrooms read twice as much as they wrote, and only two teachers reported having a very specific, planned writing program prior to the inservice program. It was also noted that writing is not really 120 encouraged in this district, only as a small portion of the language arts and spelling texts; that there does not seem to be time available in the instructional day to deal adequately with children's creative writing; and that research relating the need for writing in elementary class- rooms is not readily available to them. As a result of this inservice, teachers reported feeling much more positive about writing instruction and therefore about responding positively to children's writing. There was no change in the positive attitudes of the students toward writing from the initial surveys to the interviews at the conclusion of the study. Eighteen of the twenty selected students liked writing at the beginning of the study and those eighteen still liked writing at the end of the study. The two students who consistently disliked writing were both boys. Although no change was indicated in their liking or disliking writing, thirty-two of the thirty-eight children said that they write more now that they did last year, and that they enjoy writing more now too. It was found that the teachers in this study initially based their judgments of children's writing on unique and/ or unusual ideas, precise wording, length, grammatical correctness, logical sequence, and mechanical factors such as capitalization, handwriting, and puctuation. The inservice program encouraged the teachers to handle evaluations indivi- dually with each student author or in peer groups, but the teachers felt very limited in the time aVailable to do this. 121 Discussion of This Study The purpose of this study, to identify and examine the concerns of classroom teachers regarding instruction in writing and to describe an inservice format to give teachers on-going support in the area of those concerns, involved two major sections, inservice education and writing instruction. This study sought information for planners of future inservice programs, particularly inservice for teachers on writing instruction. A question dealt with by this study concerning inservice education was, How can school districts help the most teachers most effectively for the least money? This study described a program whereby a school district could have a specific plan for upgrading the effectiveness of teachers using the cadre of skillful teachers already on its staff. It was suggested that this study may have significance for other school districts, curriculum areas, and grade levels as well. The choice of topic by the teachers involved in this study ensured its relevance to their particular needs as the literature has indicated must happen for inservice education to be effective. On a larger scale, district-wide teacher felt needs could be identified and several support systems of the type described in this study could be operative at the same time. If a person, knowledgeable about and interested in the topic(s) selected by the teachers, was not available within the district's staff, arrangements might need to be made 122 with an outside source, but a careful search for district personnel should be made first. School personnel have the advantage of a close involvement with current practices as a base for extensions or additions to them. Another advantage of local personnel is their immediate availability, both during and after the actual program itself. The likelihood of teachers voluntarily becoming involved with any inservice program is related, at least in part, to how convenient that program is. Must they spend an hour of their closely quarded time to travel to the inservice program, and then another two or three hours at the meeting, after an already full day? The centrally located meetings described in this study were well—accepted, as was the hour-long, once a month format. Ideally, released time for the inservice might be best, with children dis- missed an hour or two early once a month throughout the school year. Short of that kind of committment in district- wide scheduling, the format used in this study was judged as adequate by the participating teachers: a convenient location, a common interest with active involvement, and informal, quick-tempoed sessions. The funding of this program was minimal, the only cost being for the professional materials, provided by the researcher for the teachers. This cost would usually be assumed by the district in district-initiated inservice programs, as well as the cost of a stipend for the inservice 123 leader. The costs of these in-district support sessions should be nominal enough to allow several to operate at once, depending upon the needs expressed by district staff. The question of adequate evaluation of inservice programs was also considered in this study by looking at the two major criteria of the effectiveness of an inservice program, changes in the teachers' activities and actions, and subsequent changes in pupil behavior and learning. A collaborative view of the evaluation process, which includes the reflections and perceptions of both the recipients and the planner/evaluator of the training program was used. In reflecting on the perceived benefits of this inservice, both the recipients and the planner/evaluator felt there were positive changes in the teachers' activities and actions, as well as subsequent changes in the pupils' behaviors, indicated by the apparent changes in attitude and activities reflected in the surveys and interviews, along with the overall increase in the quantity and quality of student writings as a result of this inservice format reflected in the analysis of that writing. A question dealt with by this study concerning writing instruction was, How can school districts help teachers become more knowledgeable about and confident and comfortable with, writing? An important consideration in helping teachers feel more confident and comfortable with teaching writing is to increase their knowledge of writing 124 and related activities to a level that will allow them to know what is best for children. This study describes a program whereby school districts can help teachers become more knowledgeable about writing by providing inservice support sessions for them over the course of a school year which include specific presentations on various aspects of writing, ideas and materials for use in their own classrooms, and time for feedback and sharing among the teachers them- selves. In the judgment of the teachers and researcher, this inservice program helped teachers become more aware of the fact that writing focuses thinking and shapes our perceptions of the world, and that if writing is actually an act of thinking, then children must actually write (think» not just fill in a lot of meaningless blanks on a ditto sheet. The fact that children learn to write by writing, and that a teacher's management of the atmosphere of their classroom makes a great deal of difference in the quality and quantity of writing that children in that classroom do, was emphasized in this inservice, and the teachers and researcher judged that the classroom atmosphere and the activities presented were, in fact, affecting the amount and type of student writing done there. The increase in word counts, mean T-unit lengths, and averaged holistic scaled ratings of student writings, over time, substantiate that claim. ‘This inservice included an emphasis on providing 125 increasingly varied experiences and opportunities for children to write with real purposes and audiences for that writing. "Back-to-basics" and accountability concerns tend to preoccupy teachers in many disciplines, but especially in the area of writing instruction. This inservice pre- sented the participants with a rationale for the use of conferences and writing workshops for providing both audi- ence and meaningful positive evaluation; emphasizing the more important aspects of writing, content and clarity, rather than the traditional aspects of mechanics and usage. While not all of the teachers were able to translate this information into classroom practices, they all indicated that as a result of this inservice it is now easier to respond to childrens' writing in a positive way. Conclusions Undoubtedly, the attention given to teachers about writing instruction, and to children about their writing, supported the positive conclusions of this study. The format for inservice education described in this study did provide an effective framework for teachers to gain knowledge about writing instruction. This inservice format included support sessions which provided time for feedback of unique problems in specific classroom situations and the sharing of common professional concerns, as well as successful teaching 126 procedures. The fact that they were on-going in nature was judged as being very important by the teachers. The presentations made by the leader in this inservice program originated from expressed teacher needs and were judged as helpful in meeting those needs, in providing infor- mation about specific curricular areas and the support teachers needed to accept new ideas and to try them out in their own classrooms. Presentations on writing instruction might not begin with evaluation, one of the last things to happen in a writing sequence; but this was the teachers' greatest concern, and consequently the first leader presen- tation they requested. It was also concluded that this format helped these teachers feel better about their own writing and therefore more confident and comfortable teaching writing. This teacher support system was judged helpful to teachers in utilizing more variety in presenting writing activities to children as well as increasing the fre- quency of opportunities for writing in the classroom. It was also concluded that this teacher support system for writing instruction helped teachers, and subsequently students, feel more positive toward writing activities. The teachers judged that children were writing more unassigned writings, although they were not evaluated and hence not tabulated: and the analysis of the children's assigned 127 writings indicated that they had increased both in quality and quantity as a result of this inservice. One of the ways suggested by teachers that inservice could further help them was to be able to observe master teachers or the inservice leader actually teaching. Another way inservice could further help teachers would be to provide practice in rating children's writing holistically and in participating in writing workshops. Implications It is hOped that the findings and conclusions of this study may contribute useful information to the planners of future inservice education for teachers, and to the teachers of writing as well. Inservice education will continue to be an important aspect of teacher development and needs to be carefully planned, pursued, and evaluated to meet teacher's expressed and felt needs. 1. This inservice utilized a teacher on staff in a district as its leader. It might be helpful to school districts to compile a roster of personnel who would be willing to lead inservice programs, staff members who have extensive current knowledge of particular curricular areas and an ability to work with other teachers. 2. Much of the value of this inservice format derived from its small size allowing for interaction and feelings of support from the leader and colleagues. 128 Group size should be a consideration when planning for inservice that involves an interactive format. 3. With very little time available for sharing inspirations or aspirations, there is a great deal of professional isolation among teachers. Time for discussion and sharing should be a planned part of future inservice programs. 4. While it would be considered ideal by many to have released time inservice, the teachers in this study felt the one-hour meetings once a month were not burdensome and could be useful for future inservice programs. 5. Since letter writing was the one form of written communication used by all the adults involved in this study and many of the students, letter writing is an aspect of writing instruction that should be more fully developed and its possiblities for instruction more carefully examined. 6. The fact that the only two teachers who now write for their own enjoyment wrote in journals as young people, would seem to warrant a greater emphasis on journal writing in the classroom. 7. The hesitancy of the teachers in this study to use informal procedures in the various aspects of writing, when Graves' study showed such a dramatic difference in the quantity and quality of writing in classrooms that used informal methods, indicates that this is an area of class 129 room management that needs to be looked at more closely for its significance to teachers of writing. 8. Children need to learn to enjoy expressing them- selves and their feelings. The children in this study maintained their interest in written expression throughout the year, increasing their enjoyment of it through the inservice—stimulated activities. Future inservices in particular curricular areas need to provide materials that are readily translated into classroom activities. 9. Children need to have many opportunities to write in order to learn to write well. The on-going aspect of this inservice provided continuing encouragement to teachers to present frequent and varied opportunities for writing in the classroom. When planning for inservice education, the helpfulness of an on-going format should be considered. 10. Teachers expressed frustration at not being able to adequately respond to student writing. School districts need to provide time for daily experiences in writing and time for peer and teacher response to that writing. 11 . Teachers feel pressured to evaluate those aspects of writing which lend themselves to grading. School district curriculum guidelines should direct teachers away from such specific concerns with the less important aspects of writing, and toward evaluation which 130 considers the ideas contained in writing, made possible by conferences, holistic rating, and peer evaluation. 12. The overall format of this inservice, planned for a single curricular area of interest at a particular grade level, proved useful to the participating teachers and should be considered by state departments of education, and colleges of education, who are increasingly involved in the development of practicing teachers. Some questions for further research are listed below: 1. This inservice format involved only ten teachers, which allowed for much discussion and interaction. What would be the results of an inservice program of like format which involves a larger number of participants? 2. This inservice format evolved from the expressed needs of teachers. What would be the results of an inservice format in which administrators helped teachers look beyond their immediate concerns to the less obvious, perhaps more fundamental, needs of children? 3. This inservice format involved only writing instruction. What would be the results of an inservice program of like format in another curricular area? 4. This inservice format involved only primary level teachers. What would be the results of a similar inservice format at a different grade level? 131 5. Only classroom teachers were involved in this inservice program. What would be the results if building administrators were involved in the inservice program? 6. The teachers in this study did not use journals extensively as a teaching device. What would be the results in terms of quantity and quality of writing over time if students were required to maintain a writing journal with daily entries? 7. Only one of the teachers in this study included letters to pen pals in her writing program. What would be the result in terms of quantity and quality of writing over time if students were involved in a letter writing program with other students in a similar grade within a district, where as a regular part of the classroom writing program they were encouraged to write at least one letter a week? 8. The teachers in this study did not use peer evaluation or writing workshops extensively. What would be the results in terms of the quantity and quality of writing over time if the students' only evaluation was of their best weekly writing, self-selected, and judged by peers in a weekly writing workshop? 9. Some of the growth in writing quantity and quality reported in this study may have been due to normal development in writing skill over the year's time. What would be the results of an experimental, statistical 132 study with an analysis of a control group's writing as well? 10. The same single writing activity was not utilized in all classes in the fall and again in the spring in this study. What would be the results of a study comparing duplicate writing activities over time? Summary of This Chapter This final chapter has summarized the study, and presented the conclusions and implications drawn from the description and analysis of a model for teacher inservice in a school district. The conclusions were drawn from the findings recorded in Chapter IV and they have answered the research questions posed in Chapter I. The implications were offered in an effort to discuss implied results not included in the findings. APPENDICES APPENDIX A Invitations to Participate in Study 133 Metamora School September 12, 1979 Dear I am looking for some second-grade teachers who would be willing to give some time to reap some benefits in teaching children how to express themselves in writing. I am beginning work on a dissertation entitled "A Descriptive Study of a Primary School Teacher Support System for Writing Instruction," and in order to complete it I need the assistance of some classroom teachers. The school superintendent has given his approval for district teachers to participate. Being a part of this program will commit you to one-hour after-school support meetings (once a month from September to April) with me and the other teachers in the study; involving your students in writing activities (and letting me view them). keeping a personal journal reacting to the writing activities; and allowing me to observe your classroom in February, March or April. For this committment you will receive: -—copies of current literature on different aspects of teaching writing skills, according to your interests and concerns. --specially prepared writing folders for each of your students. --a writing center for your classroom, with opportunity during your monthly meetings, to make appropriate materials for different monthly emphases. --an opportunity to share with, and learn from, colleagues. 134 --an abstracted copy of my findings. Everything connected with this study will be kept strictly confidential--identified only by numbers. This study is not in any way designed to be critical of current teaching methods. It is designed to try to determine more effective ways to help classroom teachers feel more con- fident in their teaching of a particular content area by gaining knowledge and materials and by sharing with other teachers outside the traditional "paid per credit" class or workshop. If you think you might be interested in partici- pating in this study and would like more information, please complete the bottom portion of this page and return it to me at Metamora School by Friday, September 21, 1979. Thank you very much for your consideration. Diane Orchard Second-grade teacher Metamora School Name Grade taught Building Graduated from Degree 135 Metamora School September 21, 1979 Dear I am looking for some third-grade teachers who would be willing to give some time to reap some benefits in teaching children how to express themselves in writing. _ I am beginning work on a dissertation entitled "A Descriptive Study of a Primary School Teacher Support System for Writing Instruction," and in order to complete it I need the assistance of some classroom teachers. The school superintendent has given his approval for district teachers to participate. Being a part of this program will commit you to one-hour after-school support meetings (once a month from September to April) with me and the other teachers in the study; involving your students in writing activities (and letting me view them), keeping a personal journal reacting to the writing activities; and allowing me to observe your classroom in February, March, or April. For this committment you will receive: --copies of current literature on different aspects of teaching writing skills, according to your interests and concerns. --specially prepared writing folders for each of your students. --a writing center for your classroom, with.the opportunity during your monthly meetings, to make appropriate materials for different monthly emphases. --an opportunity to share with, and learn from, colleagues. 136 --an abstracted copy of my findings. Everything connected with this study will be kept strictly confidential-~identified only by numbers. This study is not in any way designed to be critical of current teaching methods. It is designed to try to determine more effective ways to help classroom teachers feel more con- fident in their teaching of a particular content area by gaining knowledge and materials and by sharing with other teachers outside the traditional "paid per credit" class or workshop. If you think you might be interested in partici- pating in this study and would like more information, please complete the bottom portion of this page and return it to me at Metamora School by Friday, September 28, 1979. Thank you very much for your consideration. Diane Orchard Second-grade teacher Metamora School Name Grade taught Building Graduated from Degree 137 October 4, 1979 Q4 Dear I would like to meet with you and the other teachers who indicated an interest in participating in my project on Thursday, October 11, at Schickler School from 4 until 5 o'clock. (There are teachers from 8 different schools represented--I am really excited about the possibilities!!!) At that time I will explain fully the project, show you the materials, and we will discuss what direction you would like future meetings to take. You are under no obligation to continue in this project until after you see what it entails and whether or not you feel it will meet your needs. Since it seems phone lines are always busy, can I ask you to call me at Metamora School by Monday, October 8 (so I can re-schedule if necessary) only if you can ESE make it? Otherwise I'll look forward to meeting with you Thursday night around 4 o'clock, at Schickler. Many thanks, Diane Orchard 3 )> Metamora School Phone--678-2291 \ APPENDIX B Informed Consent Form 138 INFORMED CONSENT FORM Child's Name As the legal parent/guardian of the above named student, I hereby give my permission for his/her partici- pation in a research project being conducted by Diane Orchard of the Community Schools. I understand that Ms. Orchard may read my child's written work and analyze it by holistic judgment and by word and sentence counts, and that she may interview my child concerning how he/she feels about writing activities. I further understand that information gained from this project will appear in Ms. Orchard's dissertation, although no mention will be made of any names. Finally, I under- stand that participation in this project may be terminated at any time my child or I desire. Parent/Guardian Address Date APPENDIX C Cover Letter 139 Metamora School November 16, 1979 Dear Parent(s): As a graduate student at Michigan State Univer- sity I am conducting a research project on teacher inservice in writing instruction. As a part of that project I would like to look at the writing of some of the students in participating teachers' classrooms. Your child's teacher has volunteered to be a part of my study, so I would like your permission to look at your child's writing efforts during the next few months. For my study, I will need to read student writings and analyze them by holistic judgment (considering the writing as a complete unit), and by word and sentence counts. I would also like to talk to those children selected about how they feel about writing acti- vities. The information gained from this project will appear in my dissertation. The location for this study will be described, but no mention will be made of school, teacher, or student names. In order for me to use your child's writing in my study, I need you to sign the accompanying "Informed Consent" form and return it to your child's teacher by Friday. Thank you for your time and interest. If you have any questions, please call me. I look forward to sharing your child's writing. Sincerely, Diane Terry Orchard Metamora School Phone--678-2291 APPENDIX D Research Instruments 140 INITIAL TEACHER INFORMATION ESSAY Personal Information Please Include: Your name, birthdate Today's date Your marital status--length of time married, if married # of children, if children, ages Family background--# of siblings description of homelife (rural/city, happy/ tragic, etc.) Writing Background Please Include: Do you remember writing as a child? Do you remember your high school English classes? Did they include much writing? Do you write much now? How often? For what purposes? Do you ever choose to write in place of another activity? Classroom Information Please Include: How many students you teach. How large your building is. Is there a building-wide emphasis on writing? Does your principal encourage it? How would you describe your teaching methods? (tradi- tional, open, centered, structured? Could you give examples?) Describe your current writing program--amount of time spent per week, kinds of writing activities provided/ assigned, problems incurred. What kind of assis- tance do you give? How do you evaluate your stu- dents' writing presently? Do you involve parents? 141 INITIAL STUDENT INFORMATION SURVEY My name is . I am in grade. I go to ' school. I am in ' ' ' '5 class. I have brothers and sisters. Today I feel My most fun thing to do is Reading is Studying makes me feel I like to do schoolwork when My favorite T.V. program is The last book I read was I like stories about School is usually Writing stories is When I can do what I want to do I 10. 142 TEACHER SURVEY -- MID-STUDY What time of day do you find best for writing activities? first thing mid-morning mid-afternoon early morning early afternoon last thing Any day(s) of the week best? M Tu W Th F How often would you say you have your children write creatively in any given week? once twice three times four five more How does this compare to how often you have them read? Are those writing activity topics mainly structured by you, or selected by the children? In which type do the children write the best? sturctured free How do you feel about your students' writing? Do you think it's generally pretty good, given their ages and abilities? About average? Poor? What do you base that decision on? Amount of writing Unique/unusual word usage Legibility Spelling Grammar Punctuation Other How do you work with individual children's writing needs? How do you feel about writing activities in general, and your ability to help children improve their skills? very comfortable comfortable a little uneasy uncomfortable very uncomfortable; How do you feel about reading activities in general, and your ability to help children improve their skills? very comfortable comfortable a little uneasy uncomfortable very uncomfortable 143 11. Do you know why you feel this way--about reading? about writing? (Ex. Good introduction to writing activities in elementary school, parents who encouraged writing, no college class in how to teach writing skills, etc. 12. Would you like to have your students write more often? yes no 13. What would you feel was an optimum amount of writing? 14. What do you feel restrains you from currently having children write that often? (Ex. Too many interruptions during day, administra- tion does not encourage it, I don't feel com- fortable with it. 15. What aspect of your teaching of writing skills do you feel best about? Imaginative writing Factual writing Grammar/spelling Letter writing Evaluation Other 16. What is your greatest concern about your teaching of writing skills? program? principal 17. Do you feel your[school districj support your writing co-teachers Do you share ideas about writing as a staff? 18. How can this in-service best help you? 1. 2. 144 FINAL TEACHER SURVEY How many students do you currently have in your class? What would be a normal daily schedule for your class? Are most of your writing assignments from your language book? your own materials? another program? Do you like your language book? yes no Would you feel your spelling program relates to it? yes no If yes, how? ' Do either or both support, reinforce, or encourage your writing program? . Spelling book How? Language book How? _ How would you describe your school? STRUCTURED OPEN (few choices by students) (many choices by students) 1 2 3 4 5 How would you describe your classroom? STRUCTURED OPEN (few choices by students) (many choices by students) 1 2 3 4 5 Do you grade your students' writing activities? daily S+ S N weekly By points A B C N By writing comments on the assign- ment Other 10 ll 145 10. Have you been able to turn all of your students' writing activities in to the researcher? yes no Were there some that needed to be displayed or sent home immediately? yes no If yes, could you estimate how many writing assign- ments were not turned in? 11. As a result of participating in these six hour-long inservice support meetings do you think you... a) have gained useful information in the teaching of writing skills? yes no b) feel better about your own writing skills? yes no c) feel more confident teaching writing skills to children? yes no d) have changed anything about your way of instruc- ting writing? yes no e) utilize more variety in presenting writing activities to children? yes no Explain f) have increased the number of writing activities in your classroom? yes no g) have more opportunities for children to write in your classroom? yes no h) have offered your students more choices of writing activities? yes no i) feel you can better help children develop a positive attitude about writing activities? yes no j) have seen any of your students become more interested in writing activities? yes no 12. Has this type of inservice been helpful to you? yes no If yes, how would you say it has been most helpful? How might it have been more helpful? longer sessions shorter sessions more sharing 5 less sharing more meetings less meetings other 13. Do you feel this type of inservice can meet the needs teachers feel to improve their teaching in specific areas of the curriculum? yes no 146 14. How would this type of inservice compare with the day- long inservices held in the past by this district? Better than As good as Not as good as Why? How would this type of inservice compare with the five half-day inservices on metrics held by the district? Better than As good as Not as good as Why? How would this type of inservice compare with the two-day inservice held by the district in the summer? Better than As good as Not as good as Why? ‘ ' 15. Could you see this same format (one hour a month after school) being used effectively in other curricular areas, for say... ...a current literature update taught by a librarian, reviewing recent award-winning books and ways of using them in the classroom? yes no ...a photography workshop taught by an amateur photo- grapher, sharing methods for using photographs in the classroom, and simple black and white devel- opment techniques? yes no ...a science inservice taught by a fellow teacher who is "into" science experiments and science fair projects? yes no 16. How would you rate the following aspects of this in- service? Very Generally Not Very Not at all Useful Useful Useful Useful Books Writing Center Components Information Shared by Researcher Information Shared by Fellow Teachers Journal Articles 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 147 Where did you receive your college degree? When? How many years have you been teaching? Where? What was the year of your last college class? Is it easier for you to respond to childrens' writing after this inservice? yes no Have you ever written with your children? yes no If yes, could you describe it? Have you done any personal writing since you began this inservice? yes no If yes, could you describe it? Do you see any greater interest in writing now on the part of your students that you did in the fall? yes no Have your students' writing efforts improved since fall? yes no Are they writing longer pieces? yes no Do you find them using more interesting style, words? yes no Do you feel better about instructing students in writing skills? yes no Do any of your students indicate to you that they are writing at home? yes no Have you shared teaching ideas with any other par- ticipants in this study? yes no Have you shared any information gained through this inservice with other teachers in your building? yes no 148 STUDENT INTERVIEW GUIDE What do you like to do best? Do you like to write? yes no Is there any best time of day for you to write? What do you like to write best? True stories Poems Advertisements Letters Imaginative stories Riddles Do you like to write about something you choose, or about something your teacher tells you about? Do you ever write at home? How often would you say you write each week? Is that because your teacher asks you to, or just because you decide to? What do you like to write about best? Animals Your family Make-believe things Monsters Yourself Friends Books How much do you usually write? A couple of sentences 8 page Whole page More 10. Do you think your writing is good? Pretty good? Fair? Not good? Why?" 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 149 Is your handwriting good? Pretty good? Fair? Poor? How about your spelling? Good? Poor? Do you know where to put capitals and periods? yes no Does you teacher ever talk to you alone about your writing? yes no Does she talk to the class about writing? yes no Do you like to read? yes no Are you a good reader? yes no How do you know? Do you get your reading workbook pages correct? Can you read lots of things? Newspapers? Signs? Cereal boxes? Have you become a better reader this year? yes no Do you read more? Have you become a better writer this year? Do you write more? Do you like to write more now than you used to? How do you think your teacher could help you become a better writer? 150 Diederich's Holistic Rating Scale General Merit—- Low Middle High Ideas 2 4 6 8 10 Organization 2 4 6 8 10 Wording 1 2 3 4 5 Flavor 1 2 3 4 5 . Mechanics-- Usage 1 2 3 4 5 Punctuation l 2 3 4 5 Spelling 1 2 3 4 5 Handwriting l 2 3 4 5 Sum 151 INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE OF A HOLISTIC ANALYTIC SCALE Using a holistic analytic scale provides a way for teachers to quickly sum up the characteristics that determine whether a paper is high, middle, or low in general merit. The use of the scale also provides teachers with a common vocabulary for discussing the merits and defects of papers. To use a holistic analytic scale you must work rapidly, the average grading time should be 232 minutes. Trust your first impressions, do not write anything on the paper, only on the scoring guide. Some papers must receive the highest scores, some the lowest, and most should fall in the middle range. Raters should check the reliability of their ratings during training, using the sample writings included in this guide, to insure that they reach an acceptable level before they start the actual scoring. Then once the scoring is underway, they should periodi- cally check themselves on every twentieth or twenty- fifth paper. 152 EXPLANATION OF THE SCALE FACTORS General Merit-- Ideas 2 4 6 8 You can't The author's figure out point is not the main idea very clear Organization 2 4 6 8 No sense Not very of order or clearly tied time together Wording l 2 3 4 Very limited, General, flat common, abstract Flavor 1 2 3 4 Nothing to Very ordinary attract reader Mechanics-- Usage 1 2 3 4 Full of Few errors errors Punctuation l 2 3 4 Many errors Mostly correct Spelling 1 2 3 4 Many mis- Few mis- spellings spellings Handwriting 1 2 3 4 Sloppy, diffi- Average cult to read legibility 10 The author has a point to make 10 Clear, well- organized, ending follows sensibly from story 5 Precise, makes a detailed, vivid picture 5 Unique, intri- guing style 5 No obvious errors 5 Consistently correct 5 No mis- spellings 5 Clear, attrac- tive, well- spaced 153 0136(le 1 Wm +6 Hm [Dai- sh-P omd 36+ 0 Hu'sh li’WQSHyI't/t‘j QYOund 'HQC V'Oom FH’HY If anPee‘ Ovid had 6‘17 BCS THUS War; And Thai- NOW Scum “I we” West- Q\\ oVer Was the (1131’, 154 WE. $34) J'hQFGOa/J ‘15] One cl?) wlnuq I was Swimmin I Saw Somef‘ll'y $3] QU‘osseoQ. fly AfiaCQ. 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Chou/ed). ‘HHE. +212P‘30nc line 0“: J: Sh u+~ Me cQoor cmco Pooree‘wafc» on my Moms Qace MaCQ Var} mac! S146 Jo‘IL (LP my Aque m AdaSe 1's MVQM Wifh ”WW" Fly/2)} $13A§§$d alt& quufecfl, ocjcu'm I Cleaned) ow‘ 1496 SHEA 'm We CUam‘z'cK Gel/wen CIVICQ a// We SLIQV/‘SS Q/‘c fhewz. and m ”70m Wo/Se q «no? +haf~ W45 (th fuel 0‘: +493 {VJ/Ln} 4313/7, APPENDIX E Initial Student Information Survey Responses 159 INITIAL STUDENT INFORMATION SURVEY RESPONSES 1. Today I feel... 2. My most fun thing to do... good great ride a horse play fine good art watch T.V. good yucky ride ponies baseball very good great read math happy good roler skate roll skate good sick go to the have a sick fine Smokies birthday hot happy play football ride pony's happy good playing play ball pretty good good ride my math motorbike 3. Reading is... 4. Studying makes me feel... bad fun good bad boring fun sick boring fabulous fun happy happy fun fun good bad bad dumb good good fun xsideing awful weird fun awful yukky happy part of life prety good good smart bad fun smart good good smart 5. like to do schoolwork 6. My favorite T.V. program when... I'm at home morning I'm at home sick good at this time school out at school I under- stand it when I feel good at home I'm down- stairs it's morning I'm sick I'm at home I'm in a good mood I'm done playing spose to I I feel like it I have nothing to do is... cartoons cartoons Dukes of Hazard sports Dukes of Hazard Hulk Dukes of Hazard Godzila Dukes of Hazard Mork and Dukes of Hazard Mindy Dukes of Hazard Bugs California Fever Get Smart Flintstones Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny Bunny special cartoons B.J. and the Bear 160 7. The last book I read 8. was... I don't know Moon Magic Grandfather football book and I Jonny Lon's bad day Jack 8 Jill Upside and Down The Love Upside and Down Bug Reptiles Ghosts, Ghosts, Ghosts Charlie Brown Morris & Borris Henry Huggins I like stories about... witches spooky stuff animals Yogi Bear ponies cats baseball bunnys mysteries Mother Goose football dogs anamals football jokes mysterys monsters ghosts peanuts superman Dead at the Dock Mickey Mouse What's in the box Arthur cluck Stone Soup 9. School is usually... 10. Writing stories is... bad boring fun fun good and fun fun sick bad sick fun fun busy great funny soper good the best fun fun good fun really fun fun boring fun fun fun hard terrible inristing fun boring fun awful fun boring fun very, very fun bad good pretty good 11. When I can do what I want to do I... play stuff ride bikes ride my bike feel good ride my bike will do it dance with get a job someone ride my bike shoot a gun go over to go to the my neighbors store play with do it‘ stuffed animals go outside play with a friend put together 90 t0 the my modles store get a motor play games cycle APPENDIX F Support Session Content and Materials List (Information presented not sequen- tially time ordered.) 161 FIRST SUPPORT SESSION October 11, 1979 4-5 o'clock TOPIC: Introduction of Participants and Inservice Program Use of Writing Centers ATTENDANCE: Ten teachers, plus inservice leader Gave out name addresses and LEADER PRESENTED: TEACHERS SHARED: tags, made introductions, checked on telephone numbers. Background. Teaching Stiutation. Events leading to this study. Explanation of this study. How children's writing skills develop. Need for children to write every day. Need for teachers to write- Concept of writing centers. Demonstration of writing center components- Backgrounds. Teaching situations. Tch. F. Specific reading series writing adtivities. Tch. A. "Scribble Writing". MATERIALS PROVIDED: TOPIC SELECTED FOR File folders for each student Three shape books, squirrel, black cat, and pumpkin Initial Student Information Surveys Teacher Essay Guides Copies of Language Arts Journals Books to share Four file folder activities NEXT SESSION: Evaluation of Writing 162 SECOND SUPPORT SESSION November 15, 1979 4-5 o'clock TOPIC: Evaluation of Written Expression ATTENDANCE: Eight teachers, plus inservice leader Greeted each other, shared month's happenings in district, shared writing activities. LEADER PRESENTED: Need for children to write every day, to develop a sense of audience, to be frequently encouraged to write in unstruc- tured settings. Need for many ways of responding to writing. Teacher does not always have to respond. Students can respond to each other's writing. It can be shared orally, or written, in large groups, or small. Several sample evaluation guides which were then discussed: Carlson's Analytical Originality Scale. Grosse Pointe Public School's Model for Evaluation. Holistic Guidelines for Assessing Writing- Fitzgerald's Progress in Writing Guidelines. TEACHERS SHARED: Tch. Tch. Tch. Tch. Tch. E. "Scribble Art" activity initiating descriptive writing. Kids are more creative after doing a related concrete activity. Use of cross-grade helpers (tutors) works well with second-graders. Expressed concern about lack of background in writing. Expressed concern about lack of time to respond to children's writing. 163 Tch. C. Expressed concern about need to write comments on all writing. Tch. B. Voiced concern about parents concern about correction. MATERIALS PROVIDED: Classroom quantities of pictures for writing stimulators, glued on individ- ual manilla sheets Patterned books bibliography Sample turkey shape book and leaf shape book Box of laminated Fantastic Animal story stimulators ‘ NCTE Composition Statement Ten file cards of suggested writing activities Two file folder activities Seven writing ideas booklets put together by the researcher Directions for book making, sample book Writing center storage boxes Books to share Cover letters and informed consent forms for students TOPIC SELECTED FOR NEXT SESSION: Positive Approaches to Writing 164 THIRD SUPPORT SESSION December 10, 1979 4-5 o'clock TOPIC: Positive Approaches to Writing ATTENDANCE: Seven teachers, plus inservice leader Greeted each other, shared district Christmas plans, shared holiday writing activities. LEADER PRESENTED: TEACHERS SHARED: The more children write, the more they will write. Valuing their writing encourages develop- ment of positive self-concept, because you are valuing their thoughts. Need to use a variety of teaching techni- to accomodate individual styles of learning and abilities. - Use of overheads of literature samples to present models of good description. Use of dittoed children's writing samples to use for small groups to look for strengths and weaknesses. Use of sentence combining and extracting transparencies for awareness of sentence structure. The five "W" questions and "How" questions in magnetic laminated form, to use with sentence expanding on the chalkboard, and when children are "stuck" while com- posing. Transparencies involving sequencing. Tch. C. Described the use of daily mystery sentences, with mistakes in them, placed on the chalk- board for children to figure out. Tch. F. Described "Monty Hall" pages. Tch. B. Expressed concern about encouraging better writing. Tch. A. Shared how some children can tell great stories but need help getting them written down, via older students, tape recorders, etc. 165 Tch. J. Shared book patterns for stories with a particular theme. Tch. F. Described the use of a theme projected on an overhead to look at errors rather than using children's actual papers. MATERIALS PROVIDED: Ten interesting pictures for picture files to motivate descriptive writing Classroom sets of picture puzzles, envelopes, and holders Ten writing center stimulator sheets to be laminated for independent activities Books to share Copies of Writer's Digest Magazine Four sample shape books, Santa Claus, Santa Mouse, Reindeer, Christmas Tree Language Arts Journal article (3/78) Spelling test for teachers TOPIC SELECTED FOR NEXT SESSION: Journal Keeping 166 FOURTH SUPPORT SESSION January 15, 1980 4-5 o'clock TOPIC: Journal Keeping ATTENDANCE: Seven teachers, plus inservice leader Greeted each other, shared vacation happenings, lamented "volumes" of record keeping at semester time, shared writing activies. LEADER PRESENTED: Guidelines for journal keeping: (Discussed at length) Write every day, 10-15 minutes. Date each entry. Write at least 3-4 sentences. Teacher should write too. TEACHERS SHARED: Tch. B. Expressed concern about child who doesn't like to write. Tch. F. Shared turkey "crime" stories. Tch. B. Shared Where the Wild Things Are writings. Tch. A. Expressed concern about child who simply copies other's ideas. Tch. H. Shared use of "mini-mind bender" tapes as story stimulators- MATERIALS PROVIDED: Language Arts Journal article (10/78) Teacher Magazine article (1/79) Sample snowman shape book Fifteen individual writing center stimulator sheets to be laminated for independent activities Sample blank journals Books to share Six sample fill-in-the-conversation cartoon cards TOPIC SELECTED FOR NEXT SESSION: Use of Patterned Books to Stimulate Writing 167 FIFTH SUPPORT SESSION February 18, 1980 4-5 o'clock TOPIC: .Use of Patterned Books to Stimulate Writing ATTENDANCE: Six teachers, plus leader Greeted each other, shared school happenings from Valentine's Day, shared writing activities. LEADER PRESENTED: Rationale for the use of patterned books as writing stimulators. Patterned books and sample student writing stimulated by them. TEACHERS SHARED: Tch. E. Using sentence, "The bird flew," to stimulate sentence expansion and bulletin board display. Tch. D. Shared students'patterned writing from Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day in individual books. Tch. H. Shared students' patterned writing from Someday class books. Tch. A. Told how her children love to share with each other best of all. Tch. E. Shared a writing to music activity- .MATERIALS PROVIDED: Teacher mid-study survey Seven file cards of suggested writing activities Sample rabbit shape books Eleven individual writing center stimulator sheets to be laminated for independent activities Additional patterned books to share 'TOPIC SELECTED FOR NEXT SESSION: Elements of a Good Writing Program Scheduled classroom observations. .3...“ 168 SIXTH SUPPORT SESSION March 17, 1980 4-5 o'clock TOPIC: Elements of a Good Writing Program ATTENDANCE: Nine teachers, plus inservice leader Greeted each other, shared St. Patrick's Day cookies, shared writing activities. LEADER PRESENTED: Elements of a good writing programs. Composition statement from NCTE. Need to write daily, encourage often, require occasionally. Need to evaluate in positive ways, perhaps exchange papers and write one sentence about the other child's writing beginning with "I like..." Learn to write by writing. Need to provide for audience. TEACHERS SHARED: Tch. E. Shared stories about leprechauns children Tch. F. Tch I. Tch A. Tch. G. Tch. J had written. Shared samples of science-stimulated stories. Shared "Student of the Week" books. Explained how children wrote dialogue for puppet skits to use in class puppet stage. Told about making popcorn in class and using Tomie de Paola's book about popcorn to stimulate writing- Explained the use of "Wanted " posters in her class room, and her students' enjoyment of them. Told of the use of student silhouettes to make a collage about things they like, and then to write a diamonte poem describing themselves on the back. Shared the use of different dinosaur shapes to cut out and color before writing about dinosaurs. Told of using mobiles to record titles of all stories written by individual students. bflNTERIALS PROVIDED: Language Arts Journal article (10/79) Ten individual writing activity pages to laminate for writing centers 169 Two file folder activities Laminated, magnetized category strips for sentence expansion work at the chalkboard Books to share Shamrock shape book TOPIC SELECTED FOR NEXT SESSION: Successful Classroom Writing Activities 170 SEVENTH SUPPORT SESSION April 21, 1980 4-5 o'clock TOPIC: Successful Classroom Writing Activities ATTENDANCE: Eight teachers, plus inservice leader Greeted each other, shared vacation activites, and writing activites. LEADER PRESENTED: Successful writing activities should produce writing that: Involves children's experiences, interests, and needs, and provides an outlet for imaginative, creative impulses. "connects" with its intended audience. is often integrated with other subject areas and activities. TEACHERS SHARED: Tch. A. Sample "Me" shaped books made by students, as well as samples for articipants. Tch. H. Shared samples of indiVidual student Feelings books. Tch. B. Shared alliterative goose shaped books made by students, and a sample shape book. Tch. C. Explained making Simile Picture Books. Tch. J. Shared writing about make-believe Easter happenings stimulated by large colored cut-outs hung from a wire across the front of the classroom the day of the story writing. Tch. E. Shared outer space related imaginative stories. DENTERIALS SHARED: Summary of Student Interviews Elementary School Journal article (5/75) Five file cards of suggested writing activities Seven writing center stimulator sheets to laminate for independent activities Final Teacher Evaluation Surveys Kite shape book Tulip shape book 171 MATERIALS USED IN THE STUDY The materials provided for participating teachers by the researcher included the following things: Materials for a writing center, including task cards, pictures, puzzles, independent activities, large group materials, story starters, and so on. A large contact paper covered box for storing writing center components Individual sample copies of blank student books Individual sample copies of blank student journals Classroom sets of writing folders Cardboard holder for writing folders Seven booklets of teaching ideas put together by the researcher, -Purposeful Writing -A Mixed Bag of Tricks -Using Literature to Stimulate Good Writing -Fun With Words -Fun With Poetic Forms -Resources for Teaching Writing in the Elemen- tary School -Bookmaking Copies of recent pertinent journal articles, Hillerich, Robert. "Deve10ping Written Expression: How to Raise--Not Raze-- Writers," Language Arts, October, 1979. Tripp, Janny. "The Positive Approach: Response-Evaluation of Children's Writing," ‘ Language Arts, March , 1978. Graves, Donald. "We Won't Let Them Write," Language Arts, October, 1978. 172 Grummer, Mabel, Jean Larson, and Marilyn Zimmer. "Journal Keeping and Reaping,” Teacher, January, 1979. Hoskisson, Kenneth. "Writing Is Fundamental," Language Arts, November/December, 1979. Professional books to be shared, among them: Bernhardt, Bill. Just Writing: Excercises to Improve Your Writing. 1977. Carlson, Ruth K. Writing Aids Through the Grades. 1970. Gerbrandt, Gary. An Idea Book for Acting Out Language K-8. 1974. Hennings, Dorothy G. Content and Craft. 1973. Jackson, Jacqueline. Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail. 1974. Koch, Kenneth. Wishes, Lies, and Dreams. 1970. Lopate, Phillip. Being With Children. 1975. Lundsteen, Sara. Help for the Teacher of Written CompositiOn. 1976. Petty Walter, and Mary Bowen. Slithery Snakes and Other Aids to Children's Writing. 1967. Individual copies for each participant of: Moore, Walter J. A Thousand Topics for Compo- sition: Revised. Urbana, IlIinois: Illi- nEis AssociatIOn of Teachers of English, 1971. Patterned children's trade books to be shared, among them: Barry, Katharina. A Bug to Hug. 1964. Brown, Margaret Wise. The Important Book. 1949. Cameron, Polly. "I Can't," Said the Ant. 1961 Charlip, Remy. What Good Luck, What Bad Luck. 1964. 173 Emberly, Barbara. Drummer Hoff. 1961. Fisher, Aileen. ‘You Don't Look Like Your Mother. 1973. Hutchins, Pat. The Surprise Party. 1969. Joslin, Sesyle. What Do You Say, Dear? 1958. Krauss, Ruth. A Hole Is to Dig. 1952. Meyer, Mercer. If I Had. 1968. Schultz, Charles. Happiness Is... 1962. Shulevitz, Uri. One Monday Morning. 1967. Zolotow, Charlotte. If It Weren't for You. 1966. . Someday. 1965. APPENDIX G Attendance Pattern at Support Sessions 174 TABLE G.1 Attendance Patterns at Support Sessions Teacher 10/11 11/15. 12/10 1/15 2/18 3/17 4/21 Total A x x x x x x x 7 B x x x x x x 6 C x x x x 4 D x x x x x 5 E x x x x x x x 7 F x x x x x 5 G x x x x x 5 H x x x x x 5 I x x x x x x 6 J x x x x x 7 Total 10 8 7 7 6 9 8 APPENDIX H Student Writing Analysis Summarization Tables 175 TABLE H.1 Number of Writing Samples by Selected Students per Month Tch./Stu. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Total Av. A 1 4 2 2 3 3 3 3 20 ‘2.8 B 2 2 4 1 1 1 1 1 11 1.5 c 3 2 2 1 1 5 1 3 15 2.1 n 4 2 2 o 1 3 2 2 12 1.7 E 5 o 2 1 o 6 6 5 20 2.8 F 6 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 10 1.4 G 7 1 2 8 o 6 o 2 19 2.7 H 8 2 5 2 o 1 3 1 14 2.0 I 9 o o 2 1 2 2 1 8 1.1 J 10 o 5 o 4 5 2 5 21 3.0 A 15 2 2 2 1 2 2 5 16 2.2 B 16 1 o 1 3 6 2 o 13 1.8 c 17 o 2 1 1 2 2 3 11 1.5 D 18 2 3 1 o 2 3 2 13 1.8 E 19 o 3 1 1 2 1 4 12 1.7 F 20 o 4 o 1 2 2 9 1.2 c; 21 3 1 7 o 4 o 2 17 2.4 H 22 2 3 o o 1 5 2 13 1.8 1: 23 1 o 4 o 2 1 4 12 1.7 J 24 1 1 0 1 3 2 2 10 1.4 Total 26 41 40 19 58 41 51 276 39.4 176 TABLE H.2 Number of Words Written by Selected Students per Month Tch./Stu. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Total Av. A 1 164 112 93 135 217 196 129 1046 149 B 2 137 295 61 48 73 34 87 735 105 C 3 69 191 103 48 432 58 230 1131 161 D 4 285 242 0 164 403 195 197 1486 212 E 5 0 44 51 0 327 288 402 1112 158 F 6 33 83 91 34 32 22 94 389 55 G 7 98 167 764 0 429 0 119 1577 225 H 8 178 203 210 0 30 365 54 1040 148 I 9 0 0 140 102 181 96 58 577 82 J 10 0 222 0 495 336 59 253 1365 195 A 15 164 71 150 7 101 40 346 879 125 B 16 34 0 79 298 643 0 282 1336 190 C 17 0 34 44 41 59 64 96 338 48 D 18 147 272 46 0 264 343 284 1356 193 E 19 0 112 110 136 90 133 463 1044 149 F 20 0 0 321 0 20 173 122 636 90 G 21 192 48 582 0 383 0 i116 1321 188 H 22 96 107 0 0 23 362 61 649 92 I 23 31 0 168 0 213 44 337 793 113 J 24 90 118 0 65 231 89 81 674 96 Total 1718 2321 3013 1573 4487 2561 3811 19484 2783 177 TABLE H.3 Number of Writing Samples by Classroom per Month Tch./Stu. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Total Av. 1 A 6 4 4 4 5 5 8 36 5.1 15 2 B 3 4 2 4 7 3 1 24 3.4 16 3 c 2 4 2 2 7 3 6 26 3.7 17 4 D 4 5 1 1 5 5 4 25 3.5 18 5 E o 5 2 1 8 7 9 32 4.5 19 6 F 1 2 6 1 2 3 4 19 2.7 20 7 G 4 3 15 o 10 o 4 36 5.1 21 8 H 4 8 2 o 2 8 3 27 3.8 22 9 I 1 o 6 1 4 3 5 20 2.8 23 J 10 1 6 o 5 8 4 7 31 4.4 24 Total 26 41 40 19 58 41 51 276 .39.4 178 TABLE H.4 Number of Words Written by Classroom per Month Tch./Stu. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Total Av. 1 A 328 183 243 142 318 236 475 1925 275 15 2 B 171 295 140 346 716 34 369 2071 295 16 3 C 69 225 147 89 491 122 326 1469 209 17 4 D 432 514 46 164 667 538 481 2842 406 18 5 E 0 156 161 136 417 421 865 2156 308 19 6 F 33 83 412 34 52 195 216 1025 146 20 7 G 290 215 1346 0 812 0 235 2898 414 21 8 H 274 310 210 0 53 727 115 1689 241 22 9 I 31 O 308 102 394 140 395 1370 195 23 ' 10 J 90 340 0 560 567 148 334 2039 291 24 Total 1718 2321 3013 1573 4487 2561 3811 19484 2783 ,3.IJ TABLE H.5 Individual Averaged Scaled Ratings per Month Teacher/ Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Student A 1 17.7 26.5 25 21.3 21 21 21 B 2 29.5 27.7 29 36 41 23 42 C 3 28 34 32 22 33.2 42 30 D 4 30 42 0 34 35 36 36.5 E 5 0 42 0 34 35 36 36.5 F 6 38 34 22.5 24 30 14 30.5 G 7 34 32 31 0 29.6 0 22 H 8 30 29.6 34.5 0 35 32.3 23 I 9 0 0 25.5 22 28.5 28 27 J 10 0 21.8 0 29 24 22.5 25.4 A 15 30 21 23 20 31 25.5 36.4 B 16 35 0 26 37 34 0 34.5 C 17 0 22.5 30 34 30.5 27.5 30 D 18 37.5 34.3 30 0 38.5 32 42 E 19 0 34.3 43 43 35 41 38 F 20 0 0 31.7 0 37‘ 35.5 27.5 G 21 21.6 36 24.7 0 28.5 0 31 H 22 27 27 0 0 33 20.4 26 I 23 29.5 0 27.5 0 37.5 27 36 J 24 36 41 0 32 24 21.5 26 .180 mm Nm mH Hm mm Hm . 46 MN ON ca 6N om SN NN oN mN 6N Nm mN mN mm mN Na Na on an SN NH mH mm «H ov Hm NH ON mm 6N 6N SN N6 N6 om Hm N6 aN SN NN mN NN NH mm on mm. NN .Ham «N «N mm om HN mN mm mN mm oH NH mN HH mN Hm Nm NN SN mN am «N Na mN ON AN NH Na H4 N6 mN .. . aN NH Hm om 6H 6H om N6 NN NH .umz -_ 1mm... :1 .. mm em 1 cm Hm He ON mm Hm Sm mH HN mH mm 6N Nm mN om NN NN SN an «m mH 6N mm SN aN em mN Hm AN MN on an MN mN om ON SN km mm NN Sm H6 ma Nm mm mm 6N HN mm Hm om aN me Hm He mN .nma om. 5N mm Nm M HH hm mm L 1 Hm Nm ma «H mm ON ON NN «N am NN ”om NN .cmn 111A NN_ Nm H NH mN . mN NN Nm . oN vm mm NN NN mm mN mN «m mN mN mN mm Hm aN m6 om om SN NH SN me am ON . NN mN 6N HSN Nm mN em Nm .mN mN .666 SN (NN .mm . HN am umN Hm mm mm NH _ HN ANN 6m mN mm 6N ON 4N “SN 6N on NN N6 aN NN NN Ha SH on am 4m HN NN mN WEN mm Nm ON Hv mm .Nm Hm .>oz w «H1 NH NH NN 6N ma mm mm mm mN om HN mN om NN NN HN Nm mm mN mN «H mm mN Hm mN NN .uoo «N16 NN1H NN-m HN-u ONua aHnm mHua NHuo wHum mH-< OHIS muH~mum Sum mum mum 6-6 muo Num H14 “use: E 6633 Hmuoa pmmmuw>< sucoz >Q ucmosum xn mmcflumm omamom HHmuw>o nusoz v.3 mqmdfi APPENDIX I Daily Schedules of Participating Classrooms 181 Daily Schedules of Participating Classrooms- ClaSerom A Lang. 9:30-9:45 Lang. 1-2:00 Spel. 9:45-10 Rdg. 10-10:45 Math 11-12:00 LANGUAGE=75 minutes SCL/ 2:30-3:3o Hea. "Classroom‘B Rdg. 9:30-10:45 Math 1-2:15 Lang. 11-12:3O Sci/ . _ Hea.2'30 3:20 LANGUAGE=90 minutes Cla§§room C Rdg. 9:30-12 Math 1-1:30 1:30-2 2:30-3 Spel. Lang. Classroom D Rdg. 9:30-10:45 Spel. 11-11:20 11:20-12:30 SCi/ 2:30- Math 1:15- 2:15 SCL/ _ . Lang. Hea.3 3.30 Hea. 3:30 LANGUAGE=60 minutes LANGUAGE=8O minutes Classroom E Classroom F Rdg. 9:30-11 Lang. 1-1:30 Rdg. 9:30-11 Spel. 1:15- 1:30 Math 11.15-12.15 Spec. 1.30 2 Math 11 12 Wk. per. 1:30_2 Classes 12.45_1.15 Sci/ ' ' Lang. 2:30-2:50 Hea.2-3:15 Sci/Hea-2:50- 3:20 LANGUAGE=30 minutes LANGUAGE=35 minutes Classroom G Math 9:15-9:45 Lang. 1:00- Rdg. 9:45-10:30 1:30 10:45-11:30 Rdg. 1:30- Spel. 11:30-12 3‘15 LANGUAGE=60 minutes Classroom H Math 9:30-10:15 Rdg. 10:15-10:45 Lang.1:20- 11-12:15 2:15 Sci/Hea.2:30- 3:15 LANGUAGE=55 minutes Classroom I Spe1.9:30-9:45 Lang.1:10-1:45 Rdg. 9:45-10:45 Math 1:45-2 Math 11-11:30 Sci/Hea.2:30- 3:20 Rdg.ll:30-1l:55 LANGUAGE=50 minutes Classroom J Math 9:35-10:30 Spel/ _ . Rdg.l 1.30 Lang.1:30-2 Sci/Hea.2:15- 3:15 LANGUAGE=60 minutes- Rdg.10:45-11:45 APPENDIX J Individual Student Writing Analysis Sheets 182 Student Number: A 1 Grade: 3 Sex: M Reading Level: 22 Age: 8yrs, 2mo. 23da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 52 9 5.8 23 " 2 58 7 8.3 21 " 3 3 1 3.0 13 " 4 51 8 6.4 14 Nov. 5 14 2 7.0 31 " 6 98 12 8.2 22 Dec. 7 19 6 3.2 28 " 8 74 10 7.4 22 Jan. 9 82 10 8.2 22 " 10 46 10 4.6 31 " 11 7 1 7.0 11 Feb. 12 121 18 6.7 25 " 13 35 8 4.4 20 " 14 61 9 6.8 18 Mar. 15 39 8 4.9 18 " 16 66 8 8.2 28 " 17 91 15 5.4 17 Apr. 18 54 7 7.7 22 " 19 30 5 6.0 17 " 20 45 6 7.5 24 Average 52 8 6.5 21 183 Student Number: B 2 Grade: 3 Sex: M Reading Level: 22 Age: 8yrs. 7mo. 4da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 54 8 6.7 29 f 2 83 9 9.2 30 Nov. 3 73 9 .8°1 32 " 4 112 20 5.6 27 " 5 86 12 7.2 29 " 6 24 4 6.0 23 Dec. 7 61 7 7 8.7 29 Jan. 8 48 6 8.0 36 Feb. 9 73 11 6.6 41 Mar. 10 34 4 8.5 23 Apr. 11 87 13 6.7 42 Average 67 9 7.1 31 184 Student Number C 3 Grade: 2 Sex: F Reading Level: 22 Age: 8yrs. 5mo. l7da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 38 6 6.1 31 " 2 31 6 5.0 25 Nov. 3 85 9 9.4 39 " 4 106 10 10.6 29 Dec. 5 103 10 10.3 32 Jan. 6 48 9 5.3 22 Feb. 7 75 8 9.4 31 " 8 78 10 7.8 30 " 9 74 8 9.2 34 " 10 107 12 8.9 38 " 11 98 12 8.1 33 Mar. 12 58 7 7.4 42 Apr. 13 90 10 7.0 30 " 14 70 10 7.0 31 " 15 50 7 7.1 29 Average 74 9 8.3 32 185 Student Number: D 4 Grade: 3 Sex: F Reading Level: 31 Age: 8yrs. 2mo. 13da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 154 16 9.3 25 " 2 131 14 9.3 35 Nov. 3 129 15 6.6 41 " 4 113 16 7.0 43 Jan 5 164 16 10.2 34 Feb. 6 201 36 5.6 43 " 7 33 5 6.6 28 " 8 169 19 8.8 34 Mar. 9 47 6 7.6 30 " 10 148 20 7.4 42 Apr. 11 48 10 4.8 33 " 12 149 19 7.8 40 Average 124 16 7.7 36 186 Student Number: E 5 Grade: 3 Sex: M Reading Level: 22 Age: 8yrs. Smo. 6da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Nov. 1 l7 3 5.6 20 " 2 ' 27 4 6.7 28 Dec. 3 51 7 7.3 34 Feb. 4 40 6 6.6 29 " 5 44 5 8.8 23 " 6 68 18 ' 3.7 26 " 7 74 10 7.4 15 " 8 39 7 5.6 20 " 9 62 8 7.7 24 Mar. 10 74 7 10.6 14 " 11 19 5 3.8 24 " 12 84 10 8.4 10 " 13 31 5 6.2 28 " 14 42 12 3.5 23 " 15 38 9 4.2 24 Apr. 16 136 15 9.2 12 " 17 70 12 5.8 14 " 18 53 7 7.5 20 " 19 44 6 7.3 20 " 20 79 8 9.8 15 Average 55 8 6.6 21 187 Grade: 3 Reading Level: 3 Student Number: F 6 Sex: M Age: 8yrs. 2mo. 2da. 1 Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 33 7 4.7 38 Nov. 2 18 4 4.5 32 " 3 65 8 8.1 36 Dec. 4 41 5 8.2 25 " 5 50 6 8.3 20 Jan. 6 34 17 2.0 24 Feb. 7 32 12' 2.7 30 Mar. 8 22 2 11.0 14 Apr. 9 37 6 6.1 23 " 10 57 9 6.3 38 Average 39 8 5.1 28 188 Student Number: G 7 Grade: 3 Sex: F Reading Level: 31 Age: 8yrs. 1mo. 3da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 98 14 7.0 34 Nov. 2 106 14 7.6 38 " 3 61 10 6.1 26 Dec. 4 151 22 6.8 34 " 5 140 19 7.4 29 " 6 35 6 5.8 25 " 7 98 14 7.0 35 " 8 98 14 7.0 32 " 9 69 9 7.7 29 " 10 121 14 8.6 32 " 11 52 7 7.4 32 Feb. 12 66 11 6.0 31 " 13 82 11 8.2 31 " 14 89 14 6.3 23 " 15 92 12 7.5 21 " 16 52 8 6.5 41 " 17 48 8 6.0 28 Apr. 18 96 11 8.7 29 " 19 23 4 5.7 15 Average 78 12 6.7 30 189 Student Number: H 8 Grade: 2 Sex: F Reading Level: 21 Age: 7yrs. Smo. 24da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 41 9 4.5 25 " 2 137 20 6.9 35 Nov. 3 43 7 6.1 27 " 4 41 5 8.2 26 " 5 30 3 10.0 21 " 6 34 5 6.8 39 " 7 55 7 7.8 35 Dec. 8 48 7 6.8 26 " 9 162 22 7.4 43 Feb. 10 3O 6 5.0 35 Mar. 11 41 5 8.2 30 " 12 270 30 9.0 34 " 13 54 7 7.7 33 Apr. 14 54 8 6.7 23 Average ‘ 74 12 6.2 31 190 Student Number: I 9 Grade: 3 Sex: M Reading Level: 31 Age: 8yrs. lOmo. 20da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Dec. 1 42 4 10.5 24 " 2 98 10 9.8 27 Jan. 3 102 15 6.8 22 Feb. 4 74 12 6.2 21 " 5 107 15 7.1 36 Mar. 6 53 6 8.8 31 " 7 43 5 8.6 25 Apr. 8 58 7 8.3 27 Average 72 9 7.8 27 191 Student Number: J 10 Grade: 3 Sex: M Reading Level: 31 Age: 8yrs. 6mo. 26da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Nov. 1 32 4 8.0 25 '1 2 50 6 8.3 24 " 3 77 11 7.0 17 " 4 29 4 7.2 21 " 5 34 5 6.8 22 Jan. 6 122 16 7.6 20 " 7 176 18 9.7 25 " 8 141 22 6.4 32 " 9 56 9 6.3 39 Feb. 10 78 12 6.5 24 " 11 72 12 6.0 23 " 12 53 8 6.6 23 " 13 66 13 5.0 19 " 14 67 9 7.4 31 Mar. 15 36 7 5.1 18 " 16 23 4 5.7 27 Apr. 17 58 8 7.2 29 " 18 25 4 6.2 18 " 19 44 8 5.5 23 " 20 74 9 8.2 23 " 21 52 6 8.6 34 Average 65 9 7.0 25 192 Student Number: A 15 Grade: 3 Sex: F Reading Level: 22 Age: 8yrs. 0mo. 21da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 76 9 8.4 25 " 2 88 12 7.3 35 Nov. 3 30 6 5.0 22 " 4 41 4 10.2 20 Dec. 5 45 7 6.4 17 " 6 105 11 9.6 29 Jan. 7 7 2 3.5 20 Feb. 8 17 4 4.2 35 " 9 84 10 8.4 27 Mar. 10 34 6 5.6 29 " 11 6 1 6.0 22 Apr. 12 50 7 7.1 47 " 13 76 16 4.7 27 " 14 121 23 5.2 26 " 15 60 8 7.5 44 " 16 39 7 5.6 ' 38 Average 55 8 6.6 29 193 Student Number: B 16 Grade: Sex: Reading Level: 31 Age: 8yrs. 3da. Month Writing Number Number of Mean T-Unit Average Written Number .of Words T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 34 13 2.6 35 Dec. 2 79 8 9.8 26 Jan. 3 118 11 10.7 38 " 4 104 9 11.5 37 " 5 176 14 12.6 36 Feb. 6 98 12 8.2 38 " 7 63 7 9.0 31 " 8 245 29 8.4 36 " 9 79 7 11.3 37 " 10 50 8 6.3 34 " 11 108 10 10.8 29 Apr. 12 51 9 5.7 31 " 13 231 27 8.5 38 Average 110 13 8.8 34 194 Student Number: C 17 Grade: 2 Sex: M Reading Level: 12 Age: 8yrs. 0mo. 20da. Month Writing Number Number of Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words T-Units Length Holistic Rating Nov. 1 13 2 6.5 21 " 2 21 4 5.2 24 Dec. 3 44 7 6.3 30 Jan. 4 41 7 5.8 34 Feb. 5 33 5 6.6 32 " 6 26 4 6.5 29 Mar. 7 39 6 6.5 23 " 8 25 3 8.3 32 Apr. 9 41 4 10.2 30 " 10 18 3 6.0 30 " 11 37 7 5.3 30 Average 31 5 6.5 29 195 Student Number: D 18 Grade: 3 Sex: F Reading Level: 31 Age: 8yrs. 3mo. 13da. Month Writing Number Number of Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 52 13 4.0 32 " 2 95 9 10.5 43 Nov. 3 59 5 11.8 34 " 4 155 19 8.1 33 " 5 58 6 9.7 36 Dec. 6 46 5 9.2 30 Feb. 7 168 22 7.6 43 " y 8 96 10 9.6 34 Mar. 9 165 16 10.3 42 " 10 125 15 8.3 31 " 11 53 9 5.9 23 Apr. 12 122 18 6.8 42 " 13 162 25 6.5 42 Average 104 13 8.3 36 196 Student Number: E 19 Grade: 3 Sex: F Reading Level: 32 Age: 8yrs. 3mo. 16da. Month Writing Number Number of Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words T-Units Length gglifigic Nov. 1 16 6 2.7 39 " 2 51 6 8.5 28 " 3 45 6 7.5 36 Dec. 4 110 15 7.7 43 Jan. 5 136' 14 9.7 43 Feb. 6 51 7 7.3 41 " 7 39 5 7.8 29 Mar. 8 133 13 10.2 41 Apr. 9 205 17 12.1 47 " 10 166 19 8.7 48 " 11 52 8 6.5 26 " 12 40 7 5.7 31 Average 87 10 7.9 38 197 Student Number: F 20 Grade: 3 Sex: F Reading Level: Age: 8yrs. 2mo. l7da. 3l Month Writing Number Number of Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words T-Units Length Holistic Rating Dec. 1 57 21 2.7 29 " 2 66 9 7.3 29 " 3 90 12 7.5 35 " 4 108 12 9.0 34 Feb. 5 20 2 10.0 37 Mar. 6 144 16 9.0 42 " 7 29 4 7.3 29 Apr. 8 61 6 10.2 27 " 9 61 9 6.6 28 Average 68 10 7.7 32 198 Student Number: G 21 Grade: 3 Sex: M Reading Level: 31 Age: 8yrs. 6mo. 2da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 94 15 6.3 21 " 2 57 10 5.7 26 " 3 41 6 6.8 18 Nov. 4 48 8 6.0 36 Dec. 5 34 10 3.4 31 " 6 75 11 6.8 34 " 7 57 7 8.1 , 22 " 8 97 14 6.9 20 " 9 92 16 5.7 22 " 10 80 14 5.8 17 " 11 37 6 6.2 27 Feb. 12 226 30 7.6 27 " 13 70 11 6.4 27 " 14 23 4 5.8 29 " 15 64 9 7.1 31 Apr. 16 32 5 6.4 24 " 17 84 8 10.5 38 Average 63 11 6.5 26 199 Student Number: H 22 Grade: 2 Sex: F Reading Level: 1 Age: 8yrs. 6mo. 0da. 2 Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 65 11 5.9 32 " 2 31 7 4.4 22 Nov. 3 38 6 6.3 16 " 4 38 6 6.3 34 " 5 31 3 10.3 31 Feb. 6 23 6 3.8 33 Mar. 7 75 13 5.7 13 " 8 49 7 7.0 11 " 9 99 11 9.0 33 " 10 57 8 7.1 ' 21 " 11 82 11 7.4 24 Apr. 12 36 6 6.5 24 " 13 25 5 5.0 28 Average 49 8 6.5 25 200 Student Number: I 23 Grade: 3 Sex: F Reading Level: 22 Age: 8yrs. 4mo. 9da. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 31 - 4 7.7 23 Dec. 2 39 5 7.8 29 " 3 39 5 7.8 33 " 4 41 5 8.2 25 " 5 49 7 7.0 - 23 Feb. 6 80 12 6.7 37 " .7 133 16 8.3 38 Mar. 8 44 6 7.3 27 Apr. 9 30 5 6.0 38 " 10 49 8 6.1 28 " 11 186 23 8.0 40 " 12 72 10 7.2 38 Average 66 9 7.3 32 201 Student Number: J 24 Grade: 3 Sex: M Reading Level: 22 Age: 7yrs. llmo. llda. Month Writing Number Number Mean T-Unit Average Written Number of Words of T-Units Length Holistic Rating Oct. 1 90 10 9.0 36 Nov. 2 118 10 11.8 41 Jan. 3 65 9 7.3 32 Feb. 4 126 13 9.6 26 " 5 71 9 7.8 24 " 6 34 5 6.8 32 Mar. 7 45 6 7.5 20 " 8 44 6 7.3 23 Apr. 9 38 4 9.5 20 " 10 43 7 6.1 32 Average 67 7 8.1 29 APPENDIX K Student Responses to Interview Questions (Total Interviewed=38) 202 Student Responses to Interview Questions 1. 2. 3. What do you like to do best? ACTIVE THINGS--25 ACADEMIC THINGS--1O WATCH T.V.--3 Do you like to write? YES--24 YAH, SORT OF--5 SOMETIMES--l NO--8 Is there an best time of day for you to write? IN THE MORNING-~3 AFTER LUNCH--12 AFTER SCHOOL--7 AT NIGHT--4 WHENEVER--7 NEVER--4 OTHER--l What do you like to write best? IMAGINATIVE STORIES--24 TRUE STORIES--7 JOKES & RIDDLES--2 POEMS--2 ALL KINDS--2 DON'T Care--1 Do you like to write about something you choose, or about something your teacher tells you about? I CHOOSE--26 TEACHER CHOOSES--9 DON'T CARE--3 Do you ever write at home? YES--25 NO--5 SOMETIMES--8 How often would you say you write each week? ONCE/day--10 ONCE/week--9 TWICE/week--8 THREE/week--5 FOUR/week--1 OTHER--5 Is that because the teacher asks you to or because you choose to? TEACHER--12 STUDENT--17 k + k--9 203 8. What do you like to write about best? ANIMALS--11 FAMILY/FRIENDS--6 MONSTERS--7 OTHER--8 9. How much do you usually write? FEW LINES--3 % PAGE--13 WHOLE PAGE--16 2 PAGES--4 OTHER--2 10. How is your writing? NOT SO GOOD--5 FAIR--6 PRETTY GOOD--19 GOOD--8 How is your handwriting? ' POOR--8 FAIR--8 PRETTY GOOD--6 GOOD--16 What about your Spelling? POOR--6 FAIR--3 PRETTY GOOD--14 GOOD--15 What about capitals and periods? Do you know where to put them? YES--33 NO--3 USUALLY--2 11. Does your teacher ever talk to you alone about your writing? YES--10 NO--24 SOMETIMES--4 12. Does your teacher ever talk to the class about writing? YES--28 NO--3 SOMETIMES--7 13. Do you like to read? YES--32 NO--3 SOMETIMES--3 14. Are you a good reader? NOT SO GOOD--5 FAIR--5 PRETTY GOOD--4 GOOD--24 15. 16. 17. 18. 204 Do you get your reading workbook pages correct? USUALLY--25 % + %--13 Can you read other things? Newspapers? Signs? Cereal boxes? YES--29 NO--1 NEWSPAPER, NO; SIGNS, CEREAL BOXES, YES-'8 Have you become a better reader this year? YES--36 PROBABLY--2 Do you read more? YES--37 NO--l Have you become a better writer this year? YES--32 NO--4 DON'T KNOW--2 Do you write more? YES--31 NO--6 SO-SO--1 Do you like to write more now than you used to? YES--3l NO--5 NOT SURE--2 How do you think your teacher could help you become a better writer? --SHE COULD GIVE ME IDEAS FOR STORIES. --SHE COULD STUDY WRITING WITH ME. --SHE COULD USE WRITING BOOKS AND PAPER WITH ME. --I COULD GO TO A SPECIAL CLASS. SHE COULD GIVE ME IDEAS FOR STORIES. --BY WRITING MORE STORIES. --BY WRITING MORE, AND BY GIVING ME IDEAS TO WRITE ABOUT. --BY HELPING ME KNOW HOW TO WRITE BY WRITING STORIES. --BY LETTING US WRITE IN OUR FREE TIME--THAT HELPS ME. --BY PRACTICING WRITING MORE THINGS. 205 --TALK TO STUDENTS SO THEY'LL KNOW MORE ABOUT WHAT THEY'RE WRITING ABOUT. --TELL THEM WHERE PERIODS ARE. TALK TO THEM ABOUT WORDS THEY USE. HELP THEM WHERE THE WRONG WORDS ARE AND TELL THEM TO TRY AGAIN. --TO HELP US IMAGINE BETTER BY ASKING QUESTIONS TO MAKE US THINK BETTER. BY WRITING ALOT. --BY HELPING ME--TALKING TO ME ABOUT WHAT I WRITE. --BY PRACTICING WITH ME. --BY WRITING MORE AND TALKING TO ME ABOUT MY WRITING. --PRACTICE. --CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING. --HAVE US WRITE MORE THINGS. --WRITE MORE OFTEN. NEED TO USE A SHARP PENCIL. --BY SITTING DOWN AND TALKING TO ME ABOUT MY WRITING. --BY GIVING US IDEAS ABOUT WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT. --BY WRITING A SENTENCE AND COMPARING IT WITH YOUR OLD SENTENCES. --BY TELLING US TO GO SLOW AND BE CAREFUL. --SHE COULD HELP ME BE BETTER AT PUTTING IN COMMAS AND PERIODS AND STUFF. --SHE COULD HELP US THINK UP STORIES. IT HELPS TO HAVE SOME SUGGESTIONS. --BY WRITING MORE. --BY GIVING ME IDEAS AND LETTING ME WRITE A LOT. --EACH DAY DO SOME KIND OF WRITING ACTIVITIY. --BY TELLING OUR MOMS HOW TO DO IT AT HOME. --BY BUYING MORE OF THOSE WORDS IN BOXES, AND BY HAVING SOMEONE WHO KNOWS HELP ME. --SHE COULD WRITE WITH ME. 206 --BY READING LOTS OF GOOD STORIES TO US. --BY GIVING US PAPER AND MAKING US WRITE MORE. --SHE COULD PLAY WORD GAMES WITH US SO WE KNOW MORE. --TELL ME WHERE TO PUT MY PERIODS AND STUFF. --CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING. --GIVE ME SHEETS TO PRACTICE. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY Almy, Millie. Ways of Studying Children. Columbia Univer- sity, New York: Teacher's College Press, 1974. Applegate, Mauree. Freeing Children to Write. New York: Harper, Row, 1963. Applegate, Mauree. Helping Children Write. Evanston, Illinois: Row, Peterson and Company, 1954. Artley, A. Sterl. "Reading: Skills or Competencies?" Language Arts, May, 1980. Biberstine, Richard. 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