Memo #3

        In order to discover the positive correlation between writing centers and improved student writing, I will use multiple primary sources. I will first be interviewing Professor Griggs, who is the director of the writing center here at RIC. I will asked her questions such as: How do you measure success at the writing center? What evidence shows that the writing center is beneficial to students who use it? Do you believe writing centers can be just as effective at a secondary level and why? Etc. I will also interview a first year tutor at RIC’s writing center in order to learn how their writing has or has not improved since they started working as a tutor. I will ask questions such as: Have you noticed an improvement in your own writing since working at the writing center? Have you worked with certain clients exclusively? Have you noticed these clients improve their writing over a period of time? How so? Do you think the writing center is helpful for all students who use it? Etc. Additionally, I will interview a repeating client at RIC’s writing center to find out if visiting the center has helped them improve their writing. I will ask questions such as: How often do you visit the writing center? Has working with a peer tutor helped you to improve your writing? In what way? Do you think working with a tutor your own age is more helpful versus getting help from a professor? What are the pros and cons of the writing center? Do you think having a writing center available to you in high school would have been beneficial? Why? Etc. Although this is a college writing center and not a high school writing center, it still aligns with my burning question which is whether or not writing centers create better writers. However, in order to still keep my focus on the secondary level, I will conduct additional interviews with the director of the writing center at North Providence High School. The writing center at NPHS is fairly new, so I would like to learn if there is a noticed difference in improved writing since the center has been in place. I will ask questions such as: How is the writing center run? (Appointments, walk-ins, hiring process, etc.) How do you encourage students to use the writing center? Do you see a wide variety of students using the center, or is it mostly the same people time after time? How do you know that the writing center is helping to improve the writing of the students who use the center? Do you think peer tutors are also improving their writing by working one on one with their peers? I will also interview one or more of the peer tutors to hear their opinion on the writing center and hear testimony to why or why not the writing center is beneficial to both students who work there and students who use the center as a resource. I will ask questions such as: When did you start working as a tutor? What takes place during a typical session? Do you see an improvement in the students writing that you have worked with over time? In what other ways do students benefit from using this writing center? Do you think other high schools should implement writing centers? Why? Do you think your own writing has improved from working as a peer tutor? Etc.  

            As far as secondary sources, I will use a database from the RIC library catalog. I will also use sources that Professor Griggs has on file that advocate for writing centers and explain and prove why they are important. I will be looking for sources that not only advocate for writing centers, but that show evidence that they are indeed critical in improving students writing. I want to hear from the experts on what about writing centers makes them so beneficial for students. I want to learn exactly what about peer tutors makes them so effective to teaching other students. I will compare the findings in my secondary sources to my information gathered from my primary sources and come to a conclusion of my findings.  

Memo 2- Changed Topic!

Memo #2

           Although my original plan was to investigate the cognitive process that allows ELL student to become fluent in writing, I have been inspired to explore a new topic in its place. When attending the RIWP Conference, I visited a workshop that was run by two peer tutors at North Providence high school. The workshop was focused on teaching how to implement a writing center in secondary schools. Since I am currently a tutor at RIC’s Writing Center, I was very excited to learn that a local high school has had a positive experience with starting a writing center within their school. Until attending the workshop, it never occurred to me that writing centers can be beneficial in schools other than colleges and universities. During the workshop I was able to hear testimonials from the two students who worked as peer tutors for their writing center. They went over the basics Do’s and Don’ts of tutoring, and I was surprised to see that they use the same strategies to peer tutor that I do working in the RIC Writing Center. This lead me to think, how can secondary level writing centers be beneficial to both the student tutors, and the tutees? I want to explore this topic and speak to both the students who worked at the writing center, but also students who have visited the center, and also teachers who oversee the writing center. I want to find out if there has been results that link writing centers to improvement in students writing. If I find this to be true, I would then want to learn how to implement writing centers in more local secondary schools and make sure this is being done in order to benefit students.   

             I have been able to track down several scholarly articles for my I-search topic. I am interested in learning how writing centers in secondary schools can help improve the writing of students who utilize the center. I want to explore the ways writing centers help to positively assist, motivate and influence a school’s community. In order to find information on this topic, I explored Rhode Island College’s library databases. I used the database Education Full Text and was able to find several helpful scholarly articles. Specifically, I found articles that offer research findings that show a correlation between writing centers and improvement in students writing. I was excited to see that there a sources available that report the findings I was hoping to discover. One article in particular, listed several findings from a study conducted surveying students who use a high school writing center. Some of these findings included, significant improvement in GPA’s, improvement in performance, advancements in grammar skills, and improved test scores with students who utilized the writing center.  Another source I found examined the benefits of students who used the writing center, along with the benefits of peer tutors. The article also outlined how secondary schools writing centers can lead to college success, and expose students to a peer led learning experience, which can be rare. I was happy to see that every source I found reported the benefits of peer led writing centers. I did not find any negative comments about writing centers, but instead only positive results. Being a tutor at RIC’s Writing Center, I was intrigued by these results.

           Until the RIWP Conference I attended March 8^th, I had never thought of implementing a writing center at a secondary level. Using these articles as scholarly sources and the student volunteers and clients at local high school writing centers, will help me come to discover the overall academic gains that are linked to writing centers. I look forward to finding more sources and concrete evidence that proves the value of writing centers and why they are vital in secondary schools.

  

Research Memo 1

What is the cognitive process that takes place in ELL students that allows them to begin writing fluently in another language? This is the question that I am dedicated to finding an answer to. I came to this topic because I have recently been interested in teaching ELL students. As far as the process of teaching writing to ELL students, at this point I know very little about what takes place in ELL classrooms. Although I plan on earning an ELL certificate after I graduate, I have not yet taken any ELL courses. However, I am going to be observing several ELL classes in the near future at Central Falls high school, so hopefully I will get a better idea about what an ELL class looks like, and how these students are being taught to develop their writing skills in order to become fluent writers.  

Growing up in a school district that did not offer any ELL services, I was not exposed to the ELL program until my college years. Coming from a rural area, I was intrigued when learning that many of my friends at RIC spent years in the ELL program between middle and high school. My true interest in learning how ELL students begin writing in English sparked after witnessing a friend go from being able to produce hardly any spoken or written English, to speaking and writing fluently in only one year’s worth of schooling. I was, and still am stunned by how little time it took him to start speaking and writing papers fluently in English. Around this time last year I was helping him to write a short paragraph about himself in English. Today, he is able to write narratives easily with little effort, and he no longer has to translate his thoughts to English because he is now fluent in his second language. I find this amazing because I took Spanish in high school for four long years and was still not able to write fluently. I want to learn what needs to happen for students to make the leap from slowly writing in another language, to becoming a fluent writer. What was the key that lead my friend to become a fluent writer in English in such a short period of time versus my four years in taking another language?

ELL

Here is a short introductory video that questions how we can teach ELL students how to write fluently in English. Enjoy :)