Resource for educational journals

Hello fellow bloggers,

I found a useful resource to search for educational journals that I would like to share with all of you. Education Resource Information Center, ERIC, is a government website. I found it to be a very useful website to search for any research on any topic pertaining to education. Below is the websites description of what ERIC provides:

ERIC provides unlimited access to more than 1.3 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials, with hundreds of new records added multiple times per week. If available, links to full text are included.

Within the ERIC Collection, you will find records for:

• journal articles
• books
• research syntheses
• conference papers
• technical reports
• policy papers
• other education-related materials

This morning I searched "writing interventions" and found the research article "With What Frequency Are Teachers Employing Evidenced-Based Procedures in their Writing Classrooms?" by L. Karen Soiferman, Karen Boyd, and Stanley B. Straw. Their research looked at the frequency and effect of the following writing instructions: Planning Hand in A Plan Before Drafting, Revising, Revise After Teacher comments, Revise After, Writing summaries, Collaborative Writing, Specific Product Goals, Setting specific subgoals, Rubrics To Judge Writing, To write their own Papers To Evaluate Others, Word Processing, Sentence Combining Instruction, Prewriting – generate or organize ideas, Study of Models Expert Models Other Student Writing, Writing for Content Learning, Graphic Organizers, Journal Writing Free Writing/Discovery Writing, Formal Grammar Instruction Grammar & Usage Worksheets, Diagramming Sentences Parts of Speech, Specific Product Goals Rubrics To Judge Writing To write their own Papers, To Evaluate Others.

The research reported that teenagers report that they need additional instruction and focus on writing to improve their writing. The question is, Where do we find the time? I have a hard enough time trying instruct our genre writing studies, Fundations, Everyday Math, Tracks Science, etc.

The two writing instructional methods that I felt were underutilized in my own classroom were Collaborative Writing and the use of Word Processing. Below are some excerpts from the article about these two instructional methods:

Collaborative Writing
Graham and Perin (2007) found that having students engage in collaborative writing resulted in a strong average effect size, 0.75. The instructional arrangement involved “adolescents working together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions.” (p. 16). Students who participated in collaborative writing exceeded their peers who wrote independently by 27 percentile points.

In our research we found that approximately 1 in 7 teachers engage students in collaborative writing regularly (15%) while 43% say that they never engage students in collaborative writing at any time. Graham and Perin found that students who are allowed to work collaboratively on writing activities and who participate in peer responding activities help each other with all aspects of composition.

When teachers allow frequent collaboration in their classrooms, students learn how to read their papers with a more critical eye. Knowing that a peer will be reading and helping to revise the paper leads to more thoughtful word choices and a desire to make sure that the meaning is clear. Practicing collaborative writing often makes the process easier to use and students can get comfortable with the idea of sharing their work throughout the writing process and not just at the end of the process. Since collaborative writing improves student writing it makes sense to allow students to work collaboratively as much as possible. The need for employing collaborative writing in classrooms is supported by the work by Lunsford and Ede (1990) on the large frequency of collaborative writing that takes place in professional settings.

Word Processing
The use of word processing, whether used collaboratively or under teacher guidance, appears to be very effective in improving the quality of student writing. Word processing resulted in an average effect size of 0.55 meaning that students who engaged in writing with the word processor had scores that were 21 percentile points above the students who wrote their compositions by hand. The ability of the word processor to support writing allows students to “add, delete, and move text easily” while also allowing students to use such resources as grammar and spell checkers. The effects reported by Graham and Perin (2007) suggest that the effect for low-achieving students was even higher (effect size = 0.70).

Considering how important the use of technology has become in today‟s society, it is interesting to note that only 30% of the teachers in grades 4-12 frequently make use of computers and word processors as instructional supports for writing assignments. A further 34% indicated that they never use the word processor in their classrooms for writing. Using computers can be useful during each step in the writing process such as researching and using graphic organizing during prewriting, using cut and paste functions during the revising process to make changes to organization easier, and publishing a finished product is more efficient with a word processor.

I have found in my own classroom that the students love to write collaboratively. They become hyper engaged. Even after witnessing their engagement, I seldom allow the children to write collaboratively or have used this as an effective writing instruction. I am considering having my class write their "how-to" published pieces collaboratively. It is useful to have each child to have a finished product to publish, share, and assess. Although, what is more important, the product or the learning during the process? In my eyes it is the learning. I feel the children would learn more working collaboratively than working individually.