carp presentation
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Got Arguments?: GMHS CarpGreat Mills High SchoolSarah Shipley, Blair Dugan, Stephen Warner
Justification
Problem facing our school: Students lack experience in identifying arguments in textual sources. Continue to promote use of writing
processes consistently, with an emphasis on organization of ideas, use of relevant supporting detail…
What we have observed: Students are passive readers. Students experiences challenges
supporting their arguments with evidence.
Research Strategy
Pre and post intervention affective survey.
Content specific pre and post readings
Same prompt and same scoring rubric regardless of content
Research Questions
Do students feel comfortable dissecting an argument and its supporting points?
Can students dissect an argument and its supporting points?
Data collection planData source 1 Data source 2
Do students feel comfortable dissecting an argument and its supporting points?
Affective Survey
We will bookend the intervention with an affective survey.
Naturalist observation of our students as they completed the task.
Can students dissect an argument and its supporting points?
Content Analysis: Student Work
Give the same pre and post task with a comparable reading relating to our content
Affective Assessment Item
We designed a 22 question affective survey that implemented a five point Likert scale.
Examples of questions: o “I feel comfortable identifying a
thesis in a piece of writing.”o “I cannot support and defend my
opinions in writing.”
Argument Identification Assessment Item
Students were asked to read a document that related to our individual content areas.
Students answered the following prompt: Write a paragraph explaining the author’s purpose and giving three reasons for why you know this.
Observation Guidelines
We observed the students as they wrote their responses.
We paid close attention to their verbal and non-verbal reactions to the assignment.
The Data
Pre-post Findings forWriting Prompt On our grading scale 1=D – 4=A Pretest scores
The average student score was 2.64 On our scale this is about a C
Posttest scores The average student score was 2.77 On our scale this is a slightly better C
Unfortunately not a significant improvement overall T-test: 0.16
Writing Results Continued
• Sarah and Blair's scores were not significantly different
• But Stephen's Were!!
Pre-post findings for Affective Survey
Scale of 0 – 110. Greater the score the more positive opinion.
Average Pretest score: 71.57 Average Posttest score: 70.64
This was a difference of -0.93 points Thankfully this was not a significant
decline. T-test result: 0.27
Findings from observations
General sense of frustration Verbal and physical displays of
dislike
Implications Need to let students know that we
are conducting research Need to conduct a longer
intervention
Local Events
First Research Question
Do students feel comfortable dissecting an argument and its supporting points?
From our research, we cannot tell.
Why Inconclusive? School lock downToo intensive for a short period of timeLimited by how much we can do
Second Research Question
Can students dissect an argument and its supporting points? We cannot tell.
Why was this inconclusive? School lockdown. Too intensive for a short period of
time.
In The Future...
This is a worthwhile task Need more time Need more support
Ideally we could redo this study and control for crazy life events, but we cannot
Back to the big picture
Being able to identify an argument in a piece of writing is the first step in the process of being able to make an argument on your own.
Therefore, as teachers we need to provide our students with this valuable life skill.