When was it implemented?
The writing conferences were implemented from February 6 until April 7 during an hour long writing block.
How was it implemented?
My nineteen second graders were split up into five groups. The students were assigned to random groups that were not based off of skill or ability levels. Groups were assigned a letter from A-E. Then each group was assigned a day of the week for writing conferences. I met with the students in that group for individual writing conferences on the day they were assigned. The groups sat with me at a kidney shaped table in the front of the room. While I was conferencing with one student, the remaining students were writing. In order to save time, I chose to have all students whose day it was for conferencing sit at the table with me in order to save time. Additionally, by having the students sit at the table, they were able to still listen in and hear the feedback I was giving another writer. I found that a lot of times the other writers would overhear my suggestion and make the correction in their writing before I even conferenced with them. By having the students sit in small groups, we saved transition time and they were able to hear feedback from other conferences.
Why were the strategies selected for implementation?
Based on my research, I felt that writing conferences would be the most effective strategy to implement. I chose this strategy because writing conferences allow for a variety of possibilities (Phillips & Larson, 2013). They allow the writer and the reader to have one-on-one discussions about the student's work. Additionally, writing conferences enable the student to get feedback right away and ask questions about their work (Bayraktar, 2013). Many researchers have found positive effects of writing conferences and I wanted to incorporate them into my own classroom to see if they would have the same positive effects for my students.
What data collection methods were used?
One method I used was a pre- and post- assessment where students responded to the prompt, "Describe a time you were happy". The students’ writing was scored using the district's second grade narrative rubric. The same rubric was used throughout the study to determine how much progress each student made.
Another type of data that was collected was the students' weekly writing. I chose to collect their writing at the end of every week because I wanted to keep ongoing data of my students throughout the action research.Their writing for the week was assessed using the district's second grade narrative rubric and received scores in the areas of: sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions. This monitored which students were making progress and which students were not.
The final formal method of data collection that was used was an attitude scale. This attitude scale was given at the beginning and end of the study, and it assessed students' opinions towards writing and writing conferences. I chose to use this because I wanted to assess how students felt about writing and see if the strategy had a positive or negative impact on their opinion of writing. Additionally, I kept a journal of every conference with the student. Each journal had an overview of each student's strengths and areas of growth of the student's writing along with the date and piece of work the student is working on.
The Timeline
