Draft+Research+Plan

Draft Research Plan

** Introduction **

Learning to write has been considered to be a cornerstone of U.S. education. (Citations) Writing is also acknowledged to be a skill that requires years of practice. (Citations) It is a non-linear process that requires the writer to rethink, review, and revise throughout the writing experience. (Citations) When learning to write sentences, paragraphs, and various genres, elementary students are learning to develop their ideas and express these ideas through writing. The new writers require time and guidance through the process. The stages in the writing process are defined as pre-writing/planning, writing, responding (to teacher, peer, or self evaluation), revising, editing, and publishing/sharing. (Citations) Writing instruction guides the new writers back and forth among the steps in the process until the students are ready to share their writing with others. (Suggest you include some citations from key literature in writing to support your initial arguments)

Today’s educators understand that students are part of the digital age. Instant messages, emails, texts on the telephone, abbreviating phrases, incorporating sound and images into messages are all now the norm. (Citations) Writing using pencil and paper can seem to be unrelated to students' interests and methods of communication. At school writing instruction is also competing with instruction in reading and math. Student progress in these two subjects are evaluated in annual high stakes tests and reviewed for Adequate Yearly Progress as defined in the federal legislation No Child Left Behind. (Citations -- Is this across the nation or only specific to Georgia?) There is no time to add a topic, but there the potential to integrate digital storytelling into writing instruction. (Why? This sentence before thsi comment seems to be a jump in your narrative -- think that you might need a transition) What is needed, however, is research that demonstrates an improvement in student writing once students have created their own digital stories.

This research is designed to determine whether or not the implementation of student digital storytelling in the third grade can contribute to improvements in student writing. Student writing requires strong literacy and language skills, the desire to communicate ideas, and a degree of creativity. (Citations) For third-grade students, the grade-level writing requirements can be extremely challenging. Student writing is evaluated in the State of Georgia using a traits-based rubric that covers six separate areas: ideas/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. When working with students and evaluating their writing samples, it is often clear that there are students who don't understand the expectations for their writing. Many count the number of the words, following the teacher's directions to "write more", but find that what they wrote was not what was expected.

Qualitative research conducted by Sylvester and Greenidge (2009) showed examples of students overcoming specific difficulties in writing through their experiences with digital storytelling. In this research, students recorded their writing and added images that were either selected by or created by the student to illustrate their narrative writing. The results included examples of how this initial digital storytelling project had started the students on the path to improve their writing. By conducting additional research in this area, teacher-interest may in digital storytelling as an instructional tool in teaching writing to third-grade students. Data will be collected and analyzed to answer the following research questions:  · How does implementing the digital storytelling process impact a student’s understanding of the writing process? (Make sure you have data that will answer this question)  · Does student engagement increase when digital storytelling is used in writing instruction? (Make sure you have data that will answer this question)  · Which of the six traits of writing is most improved after the digital storytelling project? (Make sure you have data that will answer this question) **Method ** This will be a mixed research study. (Why? Need to elaborate more) The qualitative research method for this project will use the collective case study, also known as the multiple-case design (Johnson & Christensen, p. 408) It will use “convenience sampling” (Johnson & Christian, 2008, p. 238) a nonrandom sampling technique. There will also be a qualitative aspect to the study through the analysis of the student writing by the rubric. (This section needs to be expanded)  **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Research Participants ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> (How did you choose your participating classes? Why these classes and not others?) The study will be implemented in two third grade classrooms of 18 students each. Both classes will contain students who are classified as general education. There will also be students in Georgia’s Early Intervention Program (EIP) in both classes. The EIP students have been identified to be at risk from their second grade CRCT scores or other screening methods if CRCT scores are unavailable. The students could be receiving services in either reading, mathematics, or both. One class will have a number of students in the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program. The ESOL students have been identified through testing as being English Language Learners through ACCESS test used by the State of Georgia for all students with a language other than English in their backgrounds.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Design **

The students will be divided into three groups of balanced historic academic performance and behavioral compatibility. The two participating teachers will coordinate their writing instruction schedules if additional support (not clear) i s needed while one of the instruction methods is being administered. The first group will receive the grammar mini-lesson and process writing instruction, a second group will receive 6 Plus 1 Traits writing instruction with written feedback, and the third group will receive instruction on both process and traits through the digital storytelling project. (Provide more description for each strategy) By completing the data collection within a 9 week period, some of the threats to internal validity that are inherent in qualitative research such as history, maturation, and testing will be minimized. (Johnson & Christenson, p. 258) (Check correctness of APA format)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">There will be three types of data collection instruments used in this study: student writing, observation checklists, and attitudinal surveys. (Why?) There will be two sets of each of these instruments as all will be administered pre and post project. The State of Georgia writing rubric will also be used to analyze student writing. (Include your instruments in the appendices)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Instruments **

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Procedure ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">At the start of the project, all students will complete the attitudinal survey on writing. (Did you explain the purpose of why this needs to be implemented?) Students will then produce their initial writing sample, with teachers completing checklists on their level of engagement during the writing process. (Explain more) Then each group will receive one of the three instruction methods. ( How will they get assigned?) Once instruction is complete, the students will produce final writing samples. All writing samples – pre and post – will be analyzed with student names obscured<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">. (Another word?) The analysis tool will be the state writing rubric and it will be conducted by a team of three teachers, two who are participating in the instruction and one who is not. (Maybe create a table to better illustrate how all of these will work) This will be the source of the data as to whether or not student writing has improved. Using three teachers should increase the inter-rater reliability of the data. (How? Citations?) After writing the final sample, students will complete a post survey to determine if attitudes toward writing have changed. (Is this enough to answer your research questions?)

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Data Analysis ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The data that will be analyzed will come from three sources: the observation check lists, the student writing samples, and the attitudinal surveys. That data from each will be entered into its own spreadsheet for comparison to detect any change in performance, behavior, or attitude. (How? Needs to be expanded. How similar is this in comparison to review of literature?)

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