Action Research

9-8 Monday
Today I was able to conduct my writing attitude surveys for the six students I am going to use for my Action Research. The results were interesting, as it seems that on average, students enjoy writing. However, the question with the lowest average score was if students liked to read.

9-22 Monday
Today was our third time writing in our dialogue journals. I am worried that my data is not going to be quite what I was hoping or expecting. The positive aspect so far is that my students truly are excited to write in their journals. Since it is only the third time I am not ready to hit the panic button quite yet and modify the implementation. The only thing I am going to add is a list of the 100 most commonly used words. I feel this will be a good resource for them to look off of to help them with spelling accuracy.

9/20/08 Tuesday
Today I realized that the time of day I implement my dialogue journals is critical in how much my students enjoy writing. A few times during my implementation I have allowed them to write in the afternoon due to various reasons. Through reflection, I am finding that they are less open to writing as the day goes on. This could be due to the fact that they just get back from lunch and recess before they come to my room. I need to make sure that from now on I implement the dialogue journals in the morning when my students are most apt to want to write.

10/21/08 Tuesday
Since implementing the Action Research in the morning I have seen a greater increase in student word count. I am pleased to see how much the students look forward to writing in their dialogue journals. So far, we have not been able to get deeper questions and responses. Questions and responses still focus around things they have done at home and school.

11/12/08
I have continued to see an improvement and excitement in the dialogue journals. We have been journaling for a few months now and students seem to enjoy writing more and more everyday. Today I saw the biggest increase in writing yet. I felt this was due to a new student entering our room. I gave her a journal to write in and she wrote a great deal. I thought this fueled my students competitiveness which made them want to write more and more. I will continue to monitor if this has a lasting effect on their writing.

12/2/08
Today was our last day writing in our journals. The students seemed sad that they were not going to have this opportunity anymore. I was glad to see this because at least they enjoyed the writing activity, even if my results show no real progress. I am looking forward to analyzing my data and seeing if they showed progress in the amount that they wrote. From observations, I believe some students will show progress while others will show minimal gains.