Design Research in Grades K-2: Responses to Reading and Opinion Writing through Strategy Instruction
Submitted by:
Zoi A. Traga Philippakos
Abstract:
Design Research in Grades K-2: Responses to Reading and Opinion Writing through Strategy Instruction
Philippakos, Zoi A., UNC Charlotte,
MacArthur, Charles, A. University of Delaware
The purpose of this study was (1) To develop an instructional approach to persuasive writing for primary grades and a PD model, (2) examine their feasibility, and (3) evaluate their effectiveness. Persuasive writing is a challenging type of writing for young students. These challenges may be due to developmental reasons (Coirier & Goldier, 1993) as the involvement of participants in a discourse of disagreement may not be perceived as valuable by younger students who think it may cost them in their interpersonal relationships (Kuhn, Wang, & Li, 2011). In addition, challenges may be due to the lack of an immediate audience that will challenge students to develop reasons.
An intervention was designed that was based on the principles of strategy instruction (Graham, 2006), connected reading and writing through the use of read alouds and employed collaborative reasoning (Anderson et al., 2001), emphasized evaluation for revision, and connected planning and evaluation through the use of text-structure elements (Englert et al., 1991). Teachers modeled how to retell a story using the genre elements and how to respond to questions that asked students’ opinion about the read aloud. Gradually, though collaborative practice students were able to perform independently. Then teachers transitioned to writing opinion essays.
This work methodologically draws on formative research methods with quantitative examination of writing performance and qualitative measures of student and teacher understanding (Reinking & Bradley, 2008). Two cycles of implementation were completed and revisions were made on both the instructional resources and the PD model from cycle 1 to cycle 2. Cycle 1 included 10 K-1 teachers and 168 students. Results showed statistically significant results from pretest to posttest on quality, on Opinion, and on the Restatement of Opinion. Revisions were made to Cycle 2 that included 12 K-2 teachers and 229 students. Data were collected three times across the intervention. Results found statistically significant effects on quality, and on all elements of persuasion. Implications on the use of formative experiments, on the format of the lessons, and on teachers’ PD will be discussed.
Anderson, R., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., McNurlen, B., Archodidou, A., Kim, S., Reznitskaya, A. (2001). The snowball phenomenon: Spread of ways of talking and ways of thinking across groups of children. Cognition and Instruction, 19(1): 1–46.
Coirier, P., & Golder, C. (1993). Writing argumentative text: A developmental study of the acquisition of supporting structures. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 8, 2, 169.
Englert, C. S., Raphael, T. E., Anderson, L. M., Anthony, H. M., & Stevens, D. D. (1991). Making strategies and self-talk visible: Writing instruction in regular and special education classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 28, 337-372.
Graham, S. (2006). Strategy instruction and the teaching of writing: A meta-analysis. In MacArthur, C. A., Graham, S., & Fitzgerald, J. (Eds), Handbook of Writing Research (pp. 187-207). New York: Guilford Press.
Kuhn, D., Wang, Y., & Li, H. 2011. Why argue? Developing understanding of the purposes and value of argumentive discourse. Discourse Processes, 48, 26-4
Reinking, D., & Bradley, B. (2008). On formative and design experiments. New York: Teachers College Press.