“Questioning Your Research Plans”
from Hubbard and Power,
The Art of Classroom Inquiry
Imagine you have just spent half an hour explaining your research project to an older family member. What questions might she or he ask you about your project?
- What’s a writer’s notebook?
- What kind of things are the students going to write about?
- Why do you think this will work?
How would you respond to these questions?
- A writer’s notebook is a student constructed notebook that allows them to express themselves and provides a space to practice and organize their writing.
- Students will establish Writing Territories which are parts of their lives that they are experts in. They will use parts of the journal for organizing crafting and editing strategies as well as for the primary intended purpose: writing for a variety of purposes.
- Yes.
Imagine explaining your project to a colleague who has a very different philosophy of teaching and learning (think of a real person you know). What questions might she or he ask you about your project?
- Why are you wasting classroom time having students do arts and crafts projects? Isn’t this supposed to be ELA?
- Are they doing academic writing or just personal writing?
- How will you measure its effectiveness?
How would you respond?
- It’s not a waste of time if having the students invest in the design of their notebooks will foster buy-in and engagement. Just because it’s ELA doesn’t mean that there can’t be cross curriculum opportunities.
- They will do a mixture of both academic and informal writing that runs the range of low to high stakes writing prompts.
- I will sample student writing at the beginning of the study and at the end and conduct a pre, post, and summative assessment.
Imagine explaining your project to one of your students. What questions might she or he ask?
- Do I have to?
- Why?
- Can I doodle in this?
- How do you spell _____________?
How would you respond?
- Yes.
- It will help you become a better writer.
- You can doodle on the cover and back, as well as in margins, so long as you’re not doodling to avoid doing work.
- Here’s a dictionary.
Imagine explaining your project to a school board member. What questions might she or he ask?
- Is this common core aligned?
- How much is this going to cost?
- What other research will back yours up?
How would you respond?
- Without being overly snarky I would recite the standards it’s aligned to: W.9-10.1-5,7,10.
- You can create writer’s notebooks using paper scraps and recycled material for no additional cost. Otherwise, marble cover composition journals are available at Walmart for 89 cents.
- I will be building on the work of acclaimed writing teacher Kelly Gallagher. Check him out.
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