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Running Header: Action Research Plan Workshop and Traditional Classrooms
Action Research Plan- Workshop and Traditional Classrooms Shaina Johnston CU Denver Research based: Overland High School
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Introduction and Problem Statement Former President Bill Clinton stated in his speech about Literacy in 1994 that “Literacy is not a luxury; it is a right and responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twentyfirst century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.” The goal of most English teachers is to encourage students to become literate in order to face their world and to reach their full potential as active and contributive citizens. As an English teacher at Overland High School I share in this belief. The added challenge that comes with this call to action is the fact that most students at Overland come from low income families with very diverse cultures and lifestyles. This creates a classroom environment that would fail under the normal “lecture” type situation. Therefore, the challenge at our school is to develop a classroom where students are the primary focus and do the majority of the reading, writing, and thinking. The model that has been instituted is called the “Workshop Model” and is developed through a program called “Literacy Lab.” Literacy Lab is made up of a group of teachers from various departments that are adapting a workshop classroom where the students are responsible for their learning and the teacher is a monitor. Literacy Lab and the Workshop Model promote a classroom that gives control and responsibility over to the students. In a typical Workshop class, the teacher will talk to students about a specific task or goal for the class. The teacher will then model that task for the students and make sure to answer any questions around that goal. This will only take about 10 minutes of class time. The teacher then releases control to students (either as individuals or as groups) to complete the work on their own. This allows the teacher to move around the classroom and confer with students individually on their personal understandings and sets up a differentiated instruction without having to plan around that differentiation. It also pushes students to take
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control of their learning and actually think during class and not just take notes. The class session ends with a quick debrief to make sure everyone is on the same page. There may be a couple “catch” sessions where the teacher pulls students back in for a quick second to mention something “discovered” by another student, but for the most part, students are working independently of the teacher. Literacy Lab was set up to help offset our low test scores. We are trying hard to improve on CSAP, Explore, PLAN, and ACT. Right now our school sits on the border between accredited and non-accredited. If we are pushed to the side of non accreditation, our seniors will suffer having to take a graduation test to verify that they know what they need to prior to leaving high school. We also risk the school being turned over to the State for drastic plans of remodeling that could include a full staff turnover. We have a few years to prove that we can change ourselves before extreme measures would be taken, but we need the evidence that what we are doing is actually working. Through my Action Research Plan, I am able to provide some evidence that Literacy Lab is improving students’ knowledge and understanding.
Purpose and Intended Audience The purpose of this research is to provide hard evidence either for or against the use of the Workshop model in the classroom. My intended audience will consist of the teachers who are devoting their time to learning this model as well as the administration that has funded Literacy Lab. The Literacy Lab as a whole has used much of the schools grant funds over the past 3 years and I want to know that this money is not going to waste.
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Research Questions My purpose was to determine if the Workshop model is an effective way to teach classes and if it can be proven through an increase in test scores and student achievement. I started this topic because the school I work for (as well as another in our district) has focused a lot of their time, energy, and money toward educating their teachers on this model. I want to verify that they are not wasting their money. Research Questions: 1. What is the difference in overall student achievement? This is my root question: do the students in the Workshop classes perform better on real world exams? The way to measure this is to look at student test scores. a. How is the Workshop model more effective in classroom teaching? The Workshop model has been discussed as being more effective in classroom teaching, but can we actually measure it? I am looking for specific reasoning behind the model being more effective. Basically I want to know what is reproducible in every classroom setting. 2. How long does it take to Prepare and Follow Up on this model? The Workshop model is taught by teachers who only have 1-2 classes. For these teachers, they have plenty of time to prepare and develop their lesson plans because they are not in the classroom constantly. For those of us who teach a full load of classes, I want to know if this model is time effective for us as teachers. If it takes a teacher 3 hours to prepare a 90 minute lesson, is that an effective use of their time?
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3. Does this model work effectively for the ethnically diverse climate that we have at Overland High School? One of the main things we discuss constantly at school is how to solve the achievement gap. I want to know if this model will help with solving that gap.
Context Overland High School is situated in Aurora, CO and while it is a part of a rich district, it is the poorest school within that district. Overland has faced many trials and tribulation during its 31 years, but the one that has remained constant is our diverse climate. We have over 50 native languages that are spoken in our school of only 2300. We have students from all over the world and many of them are refugees. The population that is mostly native to Colorado, consist of lower income students from various ethnic backgrounds. Our school is labeled as a minority majority school which basically means that the typical minorities are actually the majorities within our walls. We have approximately 45% African American, 35% Hispanic, 18% White, and the rest fall into the various categories. These are broad names though, in our African American group, we have students who range from wealthy Denver families all the way to Somalia refugees who barely escaped their country. This diversity is both a blessing and a curse. It is wonderful to get to interact and experience all these cultures and have real relationships with students from every corner of the globe. At the same time, the various cultures and economic backgrounds do create some difficulties when teaching these students as well. When I have a classroom full of 15-16 year olds who leave school at 3pm to catch the bus to their 4-11pm job so that they can keep up on bills because their parents are in and out of drugs or jail, the last thing those students usually think about is school work. They are usually sleep deprived and thinking about more important
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issues. Yet we are asked to reach these students and get them to care about school. Now not all students fall into this category but the ones whose parents have enough to support them, they generally feel entitled and so won’t work because their parents will take care of them. It creates the classroom of students who want to know the fundamental question of “why.” As teachers, we don’t always have a great answer for them. More importantly than having a straight answer, I feel like we need to show these students “why” or else it will never sink in fully. For this particular project, I am focusing on four classrooms (two teachers who use Workshop Model and two who do not). All four classrooms are Freshmen English Regular classes and vary in size from 25-35. The ethnic breakdown is fairly even in all classes. The classes are very similar to all the other classrooms at Overland and so I feel does a good job of representing the overall population.
Literature Review Literature Search Questions This Literature Review will address my Research Question: Does this model work effectively for the ethnically diverse climate that we have at Overland High School? One of the main things we discuss constantly at school is how to solve the achievement gap. I want to know if this model will help with solving that gap.
Search Procedures Searching for the literature to answer this question was somewhat difficult because it is so localized. I had to broaden my search somewhat and used key words such as: differentiated
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instruction in the classroom, solving the achievement gap, workshop model teaching, and UBD teaching. My search turned up too many articles to get through so I had to read through many to find ones that would work with my particular topic. I found interesting searches that discussed this issue in other countries as well as the United States, but for my particular research, I focused on the United States and where I could, I focused on articles written by Colorado professionals in particular. In addition to these articles, I was able to interview Cris Tovani and discuss with her about the Workshop model directly. She is the creator of this model, and so it was very helpful to get her insight into the model. Findings Differentiated Instruction There are several concerns that arise from the idea of Differentiated Instruction. One of the major issues is that as a teacher of 30 students, how do you teach to student with a 4th grade reading level while still challenging the student at a college reading level? These concerns were presented to Cris Tovani in a recent interview I was able to get with her. She talked to me about how districts have “differentiated” by placing students into groups. In English, the groups usually take on these titles: Essentials English, Regular English, and Honors English. We immediately know that the Essentials class is for the struggling readers and the Honors class is for the proficient or advanced readers. Tovani would argue that this is the opposite of differentiated instruction. She says, “Why after 8 years of literacy interventions are some 9th graders still entering the building as struggling readers?” (Tovani 2010). If we continue to put students into these groups that only have one expert in the room, they will continue to fall
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behind. She continued to discuss how having a classroom with a wide reading range should actually improve student learning because you have increased your number of experts. She also says it is still possible to challenge those college level kids too without too much added stress to the teacher. In addition to Cris’ interview, I was able to find several articles that also discussed the same topic. R. Routman describes reaching every student as a “hand over of responsibilities.” (Routman 2003). He claims that the more students are working individually or in groups, the more they are learning. Literacy “The more students read, the better readers they become.” (Scherer 2010). In several articles the idea of closing the Achievement Gap came back to the idea of Literacy, which is also a focus of the Literacy Lab group. I decided to investigate this because it fit well not only with this particular research question, but also with one of my other questions. It is a belief among many educators that the primary problem among students and their scores are the fact that they cannot read. They get no time or practice to read and so their reading skills are not developed enough to read for a standardized test. The fact that they can’t read the test, even if it is a science test, causes their scores to decrease. Another report shows that students need to not just have more time to read in general, but they need to have more time to read the material that they select, “Independent reading should be a time for students to follow their own intentions as readers” (Ray 2006).
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Problem Solving and Student Time A common theme discussed in Literacy Lab is the idea of allowing students to work independently of the teacher. The Literacy Lab ideology is: “Whoever is doing the thinking, the writing, and the talking is doing the learning.” Several articles were found to back this idea up. In a research study conducted in Washington DC, they were looking to see what way teaching method most improved student writing, the results came back that implementing writing strategies of which is “Collaborative Writing: [which] involves developing instructional arrangements whereby adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions” is the third most effective way to teach writing. (Graham 2007). George Hillocks, Jr, a professor at the University of Chicago, compared the differences of two identical classrooms where one learned the traditional way while writing (in which the teacher evaluates everything) and the nontraditional way where students write for a specific purpose. His studies showed that students improved by “.025” with a traditional method and “.45” with the nontraditional. (Hillocks 2002). Finally, in “That Workshop Book” by Samantha Bennet, she says a classroom where “works- concrete demonstrations of understanding- are created” is the ideal classroom to learn in. She boldly states that a classroom where students are learning to write well is a classroom where students write often and students write for a purpose. These two keys are essential in improving student writing ability. This directly reflects the Workshop Model that takes teachers out of the front of the classroom and gives power back to the students. (Bennet 2007).
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Quality of Literature The research information gathered came from a wide variety of backgrounds and people. I also was able to include a personal interview and several documents that charted growth as well as discussed it. All the data came from peer reviewed literature and studies and so I think it is safe to assume that it is all credible. I was surprised to find such a variety of literature, but I believe it only helps to answer my question. Gap in Literature Not all the literature specifically focused on solving the Achievement Gap, but they were all focused on raising students across the board and so I determined that they were the same thing. A major gap though would be in being able to duplicate the methods in every school and with every student that seemed to be missing. If that method is ever determined though, the person who discovered it would be labeled as a genius because the Achievement Gap has been around for a very long time. I would have liked to found some articles that went the other way, but it appears that all of my literature was in support of the Workshop Model helping to improve the Gap. My study is going to look at the scores of ethnic groups within the Workshop Model classrooms in order to better address this question. It will also look specifically at what students themselves feel about their education and chart their ethnicities here as well, so I my research will prove beneficial in closing this gap.
Methods Participants The people used in this study are teachers and students who use the Workshop Model and who do not use the Workshop model. In particular I looked at 9th Grade English because this is
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the class that has the most relation to me, and it is a set curriculum for every class so will have the least variation. We are all required to teach certain texts and certain skills each quarter. This keeps all the classrooms at the same basic pace and level so that students can transfer among classes as the need arises. It also sets up the perfect balance for me to conduct this study because I know that Teacher A who teaches the Workshop way will be teaching exactly the same thing as Teacher B who teaches in a more Traditional way. Data Collection The primary method of gathering data was through a review of test scores from the CSAP. These scores provide raw data about students in each teacher’s class. This data also breaks students down by ethnic groups so I can answer two questions at once. Data Analysis Section 1: CSAP Data Comparing Literacy Lab teacher’s students to Non Literacy Lab teacher’s students For the first section, data was gathered from State Scores on our annual test. Every student in the state of Colorado is tested from 3rd grade through 10th grade using a standardized test called the CSAP. The scores are then reported to the public. This helps districts see what students are excelling at or what areas need more improvement. It also breaks the test down on a teacher to teacher basis so that schools can see what teachers are being more successful in their teaching than others. This is the data that I looked at. CSAP also includes in its data a breakdown of ethnic groups. The groups are divided up into the stereotypical high performing students and the stereotypical low performing students: White and Asian together and Black and Hispanics together. This section showed some interesting data. I expected to see higher overall growth from students in the Literacy Lab groups, but that was not the case. In fact what I saw on average was that Black and Hispanic students growth was higher for those teachers, but White and Asian (typically higher performing
Workshop and Traditional Classrooms 12 students in general) did not grow as much. This is not to say that they were not already scoring high and just did not score higher, but I would think that they would have improved significantly regardless. As an average, Black and Hispanic students grew more with the Literacy Lab approach and White and Asian students grew more with a traditional classroom setting. The growth from White and Asian students is to be expected as that has been a norm for years, but the lack of growth from them when exposed to Literacy Lab teaching strategies was a bit confusing. I have understood it to be that the Workshop or Literacy Lab approach to the classroom is the “best” method for all students. According to the data collected in Section 1, that was not the case.
(Graphs found in Appendix under Section 1.)
Section 2: Chart of Student Achievement through Grades and Student Perspective In addition to charting CSAP growth, I also looked at Student Achievement through the eyes of the Student. Through a simple survey given to all 4 teachers, they were asked to have their students answer 3 simple questions: 1. What is their race? 2. On a scale of 1-5 (with 5 as the high) how well do they know the material they are currently working on in class? 3. What is their current grade in the course? In order to chart the data that I collected for this section, I put the grades into point value systems according to GPA. For the most part, students thought they knew material better than their grade actually showed. This is not surprising because most high school students tend to think they are smarter than they really are in class. On average, students ranked their knowledge (question 2) at a 3-4 average. This was across the board. This tells me that students thought they knew the material well regardless of the way it was presented to them.
Workshop and Traditional Classrooms 13 Their grades were a little different. When I looked at the point values on grades, I was faced with results similar to that of CSAP. The ethnic gaps were reversed once again if students were in Literacy Lab taught classes. Black and Hispanic students tend to show a higher overall grade in Literacy Lab classes and Whites and Asians perform better in the traditional rooms. I am still trying to decide what causes this separation and why I am seeing this trend. I am wondering about cultural upbringings at this point but am not sure overall if that is the case.
(Graphs found in Appendix under Section 2.)
Section 3: Teacher Time for Lesson Preparation for Grading The last thing I surveyed was the amount of “teacher time” that is needed in order to prepare a Literacy Lab lesson as opposed to a regular lesson. Each teacher was simply asked to document the amount of time they spent on average during a week preparing for their classes. Each teacher has the same number of classes and the same number of preps (although the preps themselves do differ). Based on the data from the teachers who are participating in this survey, there is typically less time spent grading student work, but more time spent on actual lesson planning. I did not realize there was a connection to grading time and Literacy Lab which I find interesting. I went back and e-mailed the founder of Literacy Lab with these results and she backed up my find and said that most grading takes place instantly in class rather than after class meeting time. The Lesson Preparation seems to take longer for Literacy Lab teachers because they try to build projects that are “real world.” Rather than pursue traditional projects such as: analyze a paper, write an essay, etc. So the data overall was a little inconclusive. On the Literacy Lab side, it takes longer to prepare the lesson but less time to grade and in the Traditional class, it takes longer to grade but less time to prepare. under Section 3.)
(Graphs found in Appendix
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Schedule Dates: Feb. 22-26 March 1-5
To be done by this time: Gather data from CSAP and Surveys Continue to gather any remaining data and start putting data into graph format.
March 8-11 March 15-19 March 22-April 2
Evaluating Literature surrounding my topic. Finalizing all data found Begin analyzing data and comparing the information gathered to the literature.
April 5-9
Combine all the learning into my Action
April 12-16
Research Project Finalize project and proof any remaining
April 19-23
sections Finalize project and turn in to class. Ethical procedures
The impact of this research will either determine the importance of the continued education of several teachers in the school in the Workshop model or it will discredit it and the money being used to fund their education can be used elsewhere. The participants are people who both think that this model is the best and those that think this model is just another “fad” in the teaching realm. I can see those that have completely adopted this model being very offended that my data has turned out to be inconclusive and/or only reaches half the students in a classroom, but I still believe it is something that needed to be explored. As for my personal findings, I am on the fence for this method of teaching and use it in half of my classes and not the other half. I have not noticed a difference in my classes directly but they are two very different classes to begin with and so I wanted a more direct comparison. I
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wanted to know the answer to my question about its effectiveness in order to finalize for myself what method I would continue to use. Because my results are inconclusive (or only help a few students), the result can be somewhat detrimental emotionally to those teachers who believe firmly in this practice because it will disprove what they have been working so hard at teaching to others for the past two years. Apart from those three individuals, the inconclusive result only results in some training that was not necessarily needed and wasted money by the state. The money that was spent will be the primary loss because any setting where teachers can collaborate on “best practices” always results in a benefit in some way or another. Checks for Rigor I gathered data from three different sources, teachers, students, and state (CSAP) in order to try and gather conclusive data from three angles. My results all prove the same answer as far as Literacy Lab only helping our Black and Hispanic students. I was glad to see that CSAP scores and Student Surveys both supplied the same information. Teachers who are currently using this particular method though are fairly one sided about it and that is why my survey for them focused primarily on time during preparation for the lesson and afterwards.
Findings After analyzing my data, I compared it back to my original questions. The first question I asked was about overall student growth in Literacy Lab classes as oppose to Traditional classes. For this question, my data was inconclusive. Students as a whole tended to score the same in both classroom settings so it did not verify one way or the other that Literacy Lab technique had improved student achievement. For the second question, I focused on overall time it took to prepare for lessons and follow
Workshop and Traditional Classrooms 16 up work (grading). Once again my data was inconclusive on this part as well. It was reported to me that teachers spent more time preparing for the Literacy Lab classes but less time grading afterwards. The reverse was true of the Traditional classroom. The final question was the only one I was able to answer somewhat in my studies. It has to do with closing the racial achievement gap. I found that in Literacy Lab classes, students in typically lower scoring ethnic groups, scored higher on both the CSAP and in the class. This shows obvious growth in lower achievement groups. However, the data also showed that typically higher scoring ethnic groups, did worse in the Literacy Lab classroom. The question of decreasing the achievement gap, the answer according to my data would be “yes” but the way it does it is by bringing the higher groups down and increasing the lower groups. I am doubtful as to if this is exactly what educators want to do in order to solve the gap. My data and tests are only marginally reliable and accurate. My main area of concern was the CSAP test scores. Students know that they don’t have to pass the CSAP to graduate and that their scores really don’t mean anything to them. Due to this fact, often times students will rush through the tests and not take their time to complete answers to the best of their ability. This fact could produce lower test scores than are accurate of the student. There is no way to know for sure if students did try their best or not and so this data can be slightly off. In addition to the CSAP scores, my testing pool was not very large. I only tested 4 classes with a wide range of students in each class. You cannot test “identical” classes because every student is different. Also, the teachers who I surveyed have different styles across the board. Even though there are two teachers teaching the Literacy Lab style, their classes may run very differently and therefore produce different results. In a traditional classroom, the teachers do not always lecture (which is often associated with a traditional classroom) and so their data could be off a little as well. I think overall my data was a good example of results and will be valuable to my high school for validation of the Literacy Lab program, but I don’t think it would be good data for a school in another
Workshop and Traditional Classrooms 17 state or even city. The student population dictates the type of classroom you should have and so it is a matter of understanding your students’ needs prior to implementing a new style.
Implications for Practice My results showed a great growth in the students who are generally scoring lower in classroom settings, but that it also was not a good teaching method for the students who generally perform well. Due to the conflict of findings, I feel that more research should be done. The best way to approach another research is to expand the pool used. I used four teachers in classes that varied in size from 25-35. I think for another round of research, the pool should be expanded to ten teachers (preferably at both schools using this teaching method) and contrast the classroom size down to 25-30 that way there is less room for flexibility. If at all possible, it would also be best to survey the students while they are all on the same subject, this way the content is the same across all classes. My recommendations following this research would be for teachers to look into the Workshop Model and determine if there classroom would benefit from it or not. More research should be done though prior to completely switching to this method and should continue as this method is used in order to see if students respond better or not.
Conclusion Through the course of this study, I have found an inconclusive result to students scoring higher who have experienced a Workshop classroom. I will be honest and say this is not the result I initially expected to find. I expected to see scores improve for all students in a Literacy Lab Classroom and be slightly less in a Traditional room. The fact that White and Asian students perform better in the Traditional room was somewhat surprising. This research is valuable to anyone who is a teacher and is looking for a new method of instruction that is more effective in the classroom. This evidence could help to decide if one
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should instill this method. My research is however limited to one school and various students and teachers within that school. The same data could be very different from another school and another set of teachers and students. I know that currently in my District, Smoky Hill High School is working with this same model and could also benefit from this study on a more direct level. Nationally though we as teachers have been shown the data that states our ranking educationally in the world and we are called to improve that score, so any practice that will help improve student achievement is worth pursuing. My research is still valuable in that it is at least one solid account of an unbiased opinion on the Workshop model. Anyone who teaches at a minority majority school could benefit from this data and use it to improve upon their teaching. The more teachers study and research the art of teaching, the more effective they will become in their own practice of it and I am hopeful that through this study I shed unbiased light on one of the latest fads in the teaching world.
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References Bennett, S. (2007). That Workshop Book. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Graham, S. (Sept. 2007). Writing Next. February, 28, 2010, http://www.centerforcsri.org/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=626&Itemid=7 Hillocks, G., Jr. (2002). The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Ray, K. (2006). Study Driven. Portsmouth: Heinemann. R. Routman. (2003). Gradual Release of Responsibility Lesson Planning Template. February, 28, 2010, www.ggusd.k12.ca.us/.../GRADUALRELEASEOFRESPONSIBILITYquestions.pdf Scherer, M. (March 2010). Reviving Reading. Educational Leadership, vol. 67 (number 6,) pgs 5. Tovani, C. (March 2010). I Got Grouped. Educational Leadership, vol. 67 (number 6,) pgs 2429.
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Appendices Appendix Charts from Section 1A: Comparing Individual Classroom Data Teacher A (Literacy Lab) 20 18 16 14 12
All Students
10 8
Black/Hispanics
6
White and Asian
4 2 0 High
Teacher B (Non Literacy Lab)
Typical
Low
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Teacher C (Literacy Lab)
Teacher D (Non Literacy Lab)
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Charts from Section 1B: Comparing Overall Teachers and Students Chart 1
Chart 2
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Chart 3
Charts from Section 2 Teacher A
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Teacher B (non Literacy Lab)
Teacher C (Literacy Lab)
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Teacher D (Non Literacy Lab)
Chart from Section 3