AR Phase II

The second phase of my action research is this: students are shown an interesting picture and must write a story that passes through the photo at some point. I found it was helpful to explain the assignment as such: "Imagine that you are watching a movie. At some point- beginning, middle, or end- the movie is paused. Tell me what the movie is about." This seemed to click with the students.


The first image is from a calendar called Nuns Having Fun, and features a nun in sneakers dancing in front of a mural of ballerinas. The second is an image of a woman in dress attire crying; her mascara running down her face, and the third is a surreal image of a horse dressed in a raincoat (panic on his/her face) aboard a ship- holding a cat.....

A couple notes about the implementation of my AR:

First, I skipped a week. A shortened week containing Career Day & BioFuel Day threatened to rob the students of valuable work time, thus skewing my data. I decided to put a one week freeze on the proceedings. We picked back up last wee.

Secondly, I am absolutely buried in data. Turns out, my AR is quite time-consuming. I would rather not somehow choose a smaller sample size. I prefer to have a large sample so that I can make a more definite statement (one way or the other) about my data. I would have to narrow the field to 5 or so in order to have a chance at compiling data as I go. Instead, I am shoveling everything into folders that I will then pick through over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks.

Some notes about student participation:

So far, interest has been parabolic. Participation started out fairly high. I believe that by briefing them about my research (I had to explain why we were about to embark on this 9 week writing odyssey in which participation was essentially volunteer-based and nothing would be graded) I might have unintentionally created a high level of participation. There was some initial excitement just to be doing something new. Over the next few weeks, participation waned. I had to extend deadlines. Some never turned their writing in. I decided that if students are not engaged enough to even complete a writing, perhaps that is a valid measure of the relative intrinsic motivation inherent in the prompt. So, that's okay. Absences also play a part. There are students who have missed weeks at a time. Some are absent Monday and Tuesday. By the time they come back they have accumulated so much make-up work, it is difficult to say if they wrote 2 sentences because they were not engaged, or if they are simply just trying to get everything done! I guess that's just how it goes doing research in the classroom.

As we have progressed into the image prompt parts of the process, participation has been on the rise! There are less "submission problems" because students begin feverishly working on these stories that pop into their heads. Thus, they often finish them Monday or Tuesday of the week. The only participation problems seem to be related to disorganization (they lose their work), perfection (they have not been able to type their submissions that they are so proud of), or absence (they are out sick). That would seem to be an early indicator of their relative motivation.

As for the quality of their work, I'll say this. They are getting considerably more "free". At first, the majority of their submissions were horribly predictable. They simply did not understand the concept of creating fiction. I felt like I was freeing a cage full of rabbits. I stood there saying "Run! You are free!" and they just stared at me, thinking "run where?” I would say: write whatever you want. Say whatever you want to say. Write until you have told your story, then stop. They would come back with a thousand questions about how much they should write; would it be okay to write this or that....
Not so, anymore. I always read their selections and narrow them down to the best 5 or 6 to re-read. From there I choose 3 that I read in front of the class. I allow the authors to identify themselves if they wish. Lately, I have had a pile of 13 or 14 that I re-read. Last week I had to expand the readings to include 2 honorable mentions. There were simply too many good works to ignore all but three.

This would also seem to be an early indicator that by designing prompts to allow for more choice might be an effective way of increasing motivation. We'll see...