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.