Initial Mentor Teacher AR Meeting

I discussed the implementation of my AR with Mrs. Pratt. We have decided that I will begin with the first week of actual writing Monday, September 14th. This means that the process must be explained the preceding week. I had the idea of mentioning the journal prompts the afternoon before they will be assigned so that students might think about them somewhat overnight, instead of walking into class and having a prompt sprung on them. There is precious little journal writing time in the morning, and I wondered if this might cut down on “thinking time”. She agreed that this might be a good idea, so this is how she will proceed with normal journal time over the next couple of weeks. I will, in turn, present my prompts/titles, etc. the Friday before I give them to the class on Monday morning. However, I will have to consider whether this will skew my data. When planning my AR, I had, for some reason, thought it was necessary for the students to have no preconceived notions about what to write. I’ll have to read through my proposal to remember why I thought that. As of right now, I plan to give them advanced notice of the prompts at least through the first phase of my research (prompt writing). I’ll also need to consider whether doing so in one phase and not another will skew my data considering that length and breadth are data points that I will be considering. Might students write more simply because they have had more time to ponder the prompt?