Goal

Students will improve their overall scores on argumentative writing assignments.

Objective
After being placed in small online peer-editing groups, students will be able to increase their individual score on the county wide argumentative writing assessment rubric with at least 80% of the students reaching the top tier of the scoring tool by the end of the trial period. After being placed in small online peer-editing groups, students will be able to evaluate one another's projects with 100% participation and 80% of students scoring in the top tier of the participation rubric.

Measurement
Students will be assigned to write 2 argumentative writing essays and their final drafts will be graded using the county wide scoring tool.

Successful At least 80% of students will be able to score in the top tier of the county scoring rubric (48-56 points). Most of the improvement should come from the student improving their counter argument and citation segments. Goal will be successful with 100% participation in the classes in the peer editing process. And students scoring an average of 7 or above on their 2 editing processes.

Unsuccessful Less than 80% of students will show growth into the top tier of the county rubric with a collective score of 47 and below.

Students will participate in peer editing of essays before turning projects in to be graded.

Students will be graded on a rubric of 1-10 for effective participation in the group throughout the trial period. For each argumentative essay that is assigned, students will have their critiques of each other's essays evaluated using a participation rubric. Students will be given an online pretest at the beginning of the trail period to determine the knowledge they have pertaining to proper APA citation. After participating in several online lessons in proper citation, students will be given a post-test in class. Students will receive a grade based on how accurate their citation is on the assessment.

Goal will be unsuccessful if there is less than 100% participation in the peer editing process, or if students fail to reach an average of 7 points on their 2 editing processes. Goal will be unsuccessful if fewer than 80% score 90% or better on the citation post-test.

Students will be proficient in the proper use of information in essays by developing proper citation and reference strategies.

After participating in an online citation activity through Edmodo, students will be able to properly cite sources with 80% of the students scoring 90% or higher for accuracy on a citation assessment.

Goal will be successful if at least 80% of students are able to score 90% or higher on the citation quiz that is given after taking part in an online citation seminar.

Daily Log Day 1 March 28th Activity: On the first day of the research project, I shared with the classes their benchmark scores on the previous essay along with the responses that they had for the survey (power point linked here). We discussed what students thought of the scores and what they thought would be a good way of improving their scores. Many confided that they were not really all that sure how to cite properly with APA and that they would appreciate some kind of refresher course on the process. When I suggested that we attempt a peer editing procedure for their essays, students seemed to be very open to the idea. To demonstrate the feasibility of the assignment, I took them to Edmodo on my laptop and projected the site using an LCD projector onto the front board. I walked them through the steps of how they would be able to get into small groups, upload papers, download papers, and then make comments on them. The class was highly receptive to this procedure and were glad to see that it Edmodo was a simple means of working on this assignment. Lastly, I assigned their topics and also assigned them to create small groups among themselves that they were comfortable with in order to make the peer editing process a comfortable one. With that, I also directed them to some resources that were available to them on Edmodo for writing their papers. Students were asked to have a rough draft ready for Monday. Observations: Students seemed hesitant at first but when they were able to see how easy accessing the information would be on Edmodo, their apprehension seemed to subside. Students seemed genuinely interested and accepting of the process, I thought that I would have experienced a lot more resistance on this assignment but after the first day it seems like the classes have bought in. Activities: All of the classes were taken to the Writing Center in order to work on the first round of peer editing. Students were given a checklist to guide their editing and we discussed the expectations about making comments on each others papers. Students were given the entire mod to peer-edit while I circulated to make sure students were remaining on task and to field any questions that students had about the editing process. Students were also assigned to work on the APA tutorial website discussed in Phase 3. Students were to have completed the tutorial and be ready to discuss it by the next class period. Observations: The majority of the class was engaged in the process, obviously there were a few peer groups that were not making the most of the time that they had to edit each others papers but I put pressure on them and by the end of the mod they had completed editing their papers. Also, there were a few students in each class that had not completed the rough draft over the weekend as directed, they were instructed to use this time to write their rough draft paper and they would receive points off for this first peer editing evaluation. These students were also instructed to sign up for a flex mod in the writing center to allow them time to peer-edit their groups papers before the next class period. Activities: Took about half of the class period to discuss the APA tutorial and pretest that the students had worked on. I was able to bring together all of their scores on the pretest from the print screen pictures they emailed to me over the previous two nights. Not all of the students completed the assignment, and they will receive a 0 in

Day 2 March 31st

Day 3 April 2nd

the grade book. Students on average scored a 6 out of 10 questions and we discussed the questions that were the most difficult for them. Students were also told that they needed to post a second time to Edmodo and allow for a second draft to be edited before the final draft would be turned in. Observations: Students responded quite positively to the APA tutorial, a few claim that the website was not able to open on their home computers and that they therefore were unable to take the pretest as well. I instructed them to sign up with the writing center for a flex mod to be able to go through the tutorial and the pretest before the end of the week or that they would receive a 0 on the assignment. I also informed those students who received a 10 out of 10 that they would be exempt from the post-test on citation because they have already demonstrated mastery of this skill. This applied to a total of 12 students spread throughout the 3 classes. Also, it still seems as if students are having difficulty in determining how to cite from webpages that are not necessarily periodicals, so I will be posting more to Edmodo on this topic to make sure that students are familiar with the process. Day 4 April 4th Activities: All final drafts were due today. In my macro class, we discussed the pros and cons of the Federal Reserve system and in the psych class we discussed the merits of paying students for their grades. Students provided feedback on the experience as well. The main components that they liked were the ease of uploading/downloading and adding comments to the essays. The main component that they criticized was reading everyones essay in the group because it took a long time to read and edit each persons. A second criticism that students had was that the second round of peer editing really was not necessary because there was not much left to edit after everyone had looked at it. Before the end of the class, students were given their final essay topic and told to begin outlining it over the weekend. They were also told that their essays would be returned on Monday with comments so that they can use the information from this essay to assist them on writing their final one for this project. Observation: As a result of the critiques from the students, for the second essay they will only need to read 2 essays from the group, but they are responsible for making sure that everyone in the group has at least two people read their essay. Also, for the following week I am going to remove the mandatory second round of editing. From our preliminary discussion, it seems like students were able to find good resources on the web to support their arguments Activities: Returned essays to students with comments and gave them time to read over whatever comments I made. I discussed with them that the essays were much better than they had been on the benchmark and that a significant amount of students who had performed poorly as a result of carelessly missing sections had improved their scores. Students were then given about 20 minutes to take out their outlines and start turning them into rough drafts to be typed up at night and posted to Edmodo. Students were allowed to work with partners on this component of the writing assignment to get a first round of editing from each other. Students were instructed to type and post their first draft to Edmodo by class tomorrow. Observations: I still have several students who are having a lot of difficulty getting their projects in on time, I have requested them for flex every day that I can this week in the hopes that I will be able to get their final 1st essay or get them on track with this 2nd essay. At this point though, it is getting a bit late to expect that they will

Day 5 April 7th

Day 6 April 8th

Day 7 April 9th

Day 10 April 10th

be able to write two essays in the next few days, so I may be removing them from the project due to their failure to comply with due dates. Activities: Students were taken to the writing center for half of the mod today to peer-edit their second paper. Due to the fact that students had been through this experience before, they were much quicker and more concise with their commenting process. Most of the groups had plenty of time to read and comment on the two essays that we had agreed upon earlier in the previous week. As with the last time in the writing center, I made sure to circulate to answer questions, check on groups, and make sure that the comments being made were of a quality that would help the student in their writing processes. Observations: Students were getting into more discussions about the arguments this time around as opposed to being focused solely on grammar, sentence structure, etc. It was interesting to hear some students saying that the counter argument was weak or that the source for a certain piece of information didnt seem to be the most reliable. I am sure that when I go to read the papers that these comments will be apparent in the higher quality of writing. I was impressed by how involved my students were in the process, and I do believe that it was because they knew that it helped on the previous essay and that it would help on this one as well. Also, as a side note, the students that are taking both Psych and Macro still took part in this editing process, but they only were responsible for creating a rough draft at this point. I have instructed them to finish the essay over the break for a grade, but as far as this project is concerned they will be left out of one of the classes final measurements. Activities: We took about 15 minutes to review the APA citation format by playing a simple review game in small groups. After that, students took the post-test assessment that can be found in Phase 3. The test took about 20 minutes for everyone to complete, those who were exempt from taking the test and those who finished early were instructed to work on material that was related to the curriculum. I will have the final score that each student received on the pre and post-test in a chart in Phase 5 when I have finished grading all of the assignments. Observations: From playing the game it was clear that students were confident in their knowledge of APA citation format. At the same time, I have many students who are athletes or who didnt take this assignment seriously so while the majority of the class was ready for the test, I am certain that there will be several in each class who still hadnt gone to the tutorial and who will perform poorly on the post-test as a result. If this turns out to be the case, I will have to readdress this issue for the future and potentially think of leading a class on citation format instead of allowing them to learn about it on their own. Also, today began the Every 15 Minutes presentation so from time to time students were pulled out of all of my classes to take part in it. This very much upset my students and caused a loss of concentration for those students whose friends were being pulled out of the class. Furthermore, it is hard to concentrate on taking a quiz when a 6 foot tall Grim Reaper walks into the classroom and calls one of your classmates into the hallway, only to then have a police officer read an obituary for that student. Hopefully this does not ruin the results of my citation assessments but if the grades for my 2nd mod are off from the other two, then Ill certainly know one possible reason why. Activities: Plans for the final wrap up day were completely shot due to an unforeseen assembly. The school runs a program called Every 15 Minutes every other year to

inform the Juniors and Seniors of the dangers of drunk driving. It began on the 9th with students being pulled out of class, being killed, and then returning to class with makeup on and not being allowed to communicate. Today, we had a 3 hour assembly that meant that the rest of the classes were significantly shortened. This would not have been so bad, except for the fact that the classes were so emotionally drained from the experience that I was not able to get much feedback on the entire process. Not to mention that many Seniors decided not to come to school today in order to miss out on the presentation. I was able to collect the final copies for those students who did show up to class, but I am hesitant to expect that those Seniors who skipped school today will be sending me their final copies via email. This being said, I will use their most recent posts to Edmodo to evaluate for this assignment, their grades will have an * next to them to denote that I did not receive their final copy on time due to absence. I was still able to collect the majority of the essays, but there are going to be 10 as of right now that I dont have a final copy for. We did briefly discuss the essay writing and peer-editing process but with the time we had I needed to make sure that we had gotten through the necessary content to stay on track to finish the curriculum before the AP exams. This being said, I did assign students to complete a reflection post and a post project survey so that I could get some feedback as to what was good/bad/needs revision for the next semester when I use a similar process.