TechQuest Draft 1

Stiverson-Project Description 4/7/10
There is such a push for success that is associated with the MEAP, we bar our percentage of success on the MEAP dealing with No Child Left Behind. Our third graders are expected to come in get associated with their teacher, their teacher's rules, the classroom, and how the teacher runs the classroom, and to get started with the first steps to working toward the MEAP all within the first few weeks.When I started teaching third grade, three years ago, I had to prepare my students to take the writing section. I was very concerned with their success, I couldn't help them answer any questions and I couldn't use my coin phrases on them; "Did you check your work? Did you make sure you used complete sentences? Did you answer the question?" Those third graders did the best they could with what skills they were taught.The second year I taught third grade we didn't have to complete the writing selection that was saved for fourth grade. I was very concerned with my students from that year, did I teach them well enough to have them be able to complete that writing selections. Did I "allocate most of the available time to activities designed to accomplish instructional goals" (Brophy article). Were they going to success?My school uses "America's Choice" as our writing curriculum. I have found that there are holes within this curriculum, but I have yet to find the time where I would be able to fill those holes with appropriate supplementation for my students. My main concern was their ability to take one of their writing pieces through the writing process in a timely manner. We work on a writing piece, i.e. narrative, memoir, report (informational), and poetry for weeks to get it polished enough to become a final draft. My students are working on their piece for weeks; during that time I am teaching them lessons on strategies to add to their piece, we are having peer conferences, as well as teacher conferences. To be honest by the time the piece is read y for the final draft I am tired of listening to it because I have listened to it for so long and my students are tired of working on it because it takes so long. Keeping this in mind I wanted to come up with an idea of how I could keep my students interested in their writing piece to take it quickly through the writing process. I wanted them to use the writing process on the MEAP.This past summer I took CEP 811 where I learned about blogging. I decided that I would love to be able to use a blog to help my students learn to take a piece through the writing process, conference using other students' pieces, and to make sure that when they are writing they add enough detail to make the reader understand and be able to picture what they are talking about. I have a college friend that ended up going to North Carolina to teach, she teaches third grade. I spoke with her about the idea of blogging; I had to talk her into it. We experimented with blogging between us and we decided what day we would work on it and we each set it up so it was tailed to our individual classroom.My students blog every Thursday. "Practice is one of the most important yet least appreciated aspects of learning in classrooms. Little or no practice may be needed for simple behaviors such as pronouncing words, but practice becomes more important as learning becomes complex. Successful practice involves polishing skills that are already established at rudimentary levels in order to make them smoother, more efficient and more automatic, and not trying to establish such skills through trial and error." (Brophy article) This was what I was concerned about with my students. We work on the writing process starting in Kindergarten and yet they never were given opportunities to up the anti with the process.
Below are three research sites that I found on-line to support the benefit of using blogging within the classroom. The information under each site is a snippet of information from the article.
Research:-Education World http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml “Blogs, because of their ease of use, and because of the context of news and editorial column writing, have become a highly effective way to help students to become better writers. Research has long shown that students write more, write in greater detail, and take greater care with spelling, grammar, and punctuation, when they are writing to an authentic audience over the Internet.”
-Love to Know-Social Networking http://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/Educational_Blogs_for_Elementary_Students “Blogging can help students improve their writing skills, and can help them understand why learning to write is so important. While educational blogging is still in its early stages, some evidence suggests an increased interest on the part of participating students in the quality of their writing. This is attributed to the fact that the students' work will be published online and viewed by more people than just their teacher.”
-Teaching Today http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47 “In addition to providing teachers with an excellent tool for communicating with students, there are numerous educational benefits of blogs. Blogs are:
Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
Powerful tools to enable scaffold learning or mentoring to occur”
4 common places of education:
Someone teaching-I will continue to teach my students about the writing process and all the steps that go with the writing process
Someone learning-My students will be learning about the writing process, learning how to write letters, write paragraphs, as well as learn to type in a blog with their final drafts.
Some subject matter-The blog will be used as an extension of the writing process. I want to use it as something that encourages them to use the writing process quicker and more realistically than just using our writing program.
In some setting-This idea will be incorporated into my students “off” day. This is a day where we get an extra special and go to the library. Our time in our classroom is less than a normal day. We will use this day to do our blogging. The students will get come up with their blogging topics in the beginning of the day and will use the first half hour to, hopefully, get their first draft completed. The next section of the day will be used to work on revision, peer revision conferences, editing, and peer editing conferences. This will lead them into the final drafts of their blogs. Every student will be expected to take their blog to the final draft stage.
This project was implemented after the first two semesters of school. This gave me time to work on MEAP prep and MEAPs and it gave me time to establish my classroom rules and routines. It also gave me time to talk my friend into the idea of blogging and give us time to blog to each other so that she felt a little bit more comfortable with the blogging concept.
This TechQuest will be evaluated at the end of the year to see if it was truly a benefit to my students. I’m also going to speak with the fourth grade teachers next year and see if there is a difference between my students work that year and previous years. If this project was a success I would like to continue using it in years to come. I would continue to use it to improve my students’ writing process skills.