Q & A

Some of the feedback from a classmate caused me to reflect and further explain some key points that I had originally made in this journal. I am going to post the questions and responses below.

I found several interesting findings in your report. I was struck by the differences in the results for the first essay and thereafter. You explain that the first essay is 5-6 sentences, and the rest were 5 paragraphs. It is not clear that the directions were different; what accounts for the very poor essay scores on the first assignment? If the assignments ARE different, why did you include it with the others?

The first essay is a baseline. The kids come back after summer and are told to write as much as they can about something they did over the summer. It's purely a baseline. Then after several months of instruction they were given directions and explicit instruction on writing a 5 paragraph essay. One thing I definitely need to add to my inquiry is to say that MANY if not MOST are still not 5 paragraphs but they are drastic improvements from the first essay and I think that is to be expected since they would have at that point received several months of teaching. I included the assignments that I did because that was what I had to work with. I wanted to do a comparison of data and ideally I'd have time to do another essay but it can take several weeks and I've got other curriculum I need to teach before I can do another essay.

Also, did your first group have 10 returning students, too? The students that I have known who flunked a course the first time were able to frequently get an A the second time because it just took them hearing and doing it twice to finally do the expected work and get it. Maybe that also contributed to your improvements in 2010?

I always have about 20 kids and always about half are returning but NOT because they failed. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I know I get confused when I read everyone's inquiry about their context so I'm just saying this to remind you that I work in an all special ed school. We are ungraded. In my department the kids usually stay for 2 years-- It's kind of like Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2. Now if a child stays for a 3rd year then we may consider that being held back but that's only happened once and it wasn't for either group of children in the inquiry. Since there are always about the same number returning I don't think it played a roll in the data differences. I'd have to look back and check I want to say that last year's group had 11 returning from the year before and 24 total so about the same ratio. I thought I'd mentioned this in part 1 but I can't remember now. I'll go back and check.

Finally, did you really mean that you "wrote large portions of their speeches for them", and was that factored into the final essay assessment score? With all due respect, if this is true, how can your comparisons be valid since you are grading yourself in the first group, but not in the second group?

Ah yes, this. I know. It's hard to explain and I need to word it better. Again, they are special ed so I did allow students to dictate the entire thing in some cases. I guide them all a little differently depending on their needs but in the end the guidance is usually the same from year to year. So for example, in the first group I may get a speech that is 5-10 lines written on a paper and not a lot of details. So I sit down with them one on one and I start with what they have and then I ask, "so tell me more about ___" and I make them elaborate. If they are lost for a word I might give them 4 choices or refer them to several tools I have provided for them. Is this me doing it for them or is this them telling me what to write? It's a fine line that becomes easily blurred. All I know (and what I tried to report but I see I didn't do a very good job) is that this year, when I got the essays/speeches there was much less of me helping them fill in the gaps. They took the effort to improve their own language, include research and details.