The Articles that I am reading right now are "Teaching Reading and Writing to Struggling Middle School and High School Students:The Case for Reciprocal Teaching" Wayne H. Slater and Franklin R. Horstman. This article talks about the ways that teachers can better prepare students that are struggling in both reading and writing. I will focus just on the writing parts of this article. And the other article that I am reading, is called "Achievement Goal Orientations and Self-Regulation in Writing: An Integrative Perspective" by Avi Kaplan and Einat Lichtinger. From what I've read the point of this article seems to be the possible differences between students from different types of learning environments and with different levels of writing achievement.
I received several more books from the school library before going on break, most of those books were focused on reading difficulties in a classroom, and because my project focuses only on the writing difficulties for students that are on different levels then others, I couldn't use those. But out of the several books I rented, two of which had chapters that focused on writing and the difficulties that some middle school students can have with it. I also found some helpful chapters and paragraphs on the techniques that teachers can use to help these students more. Those books are called "Creating Literacy" by Thomas G.Gunning, "Differentiated Literacy Strategies" by Gayle H Gregory and Lin Kuzmich
I will continue looking up books and articles on the library website, using keywords such as, "Writing" "Difficulties" and "Middle School". I would search for the last word because that is the age group that I want to focus on. This week I am also going to do some of the interviews for my primary, one of the teachers that I will be interviewing is actually going to let me sit in on one of her classes so I can see hands on how she teaches writing and so she can show me the techniques she using to help the students that are on different levels.
I'm finding it hard to get a hold of an entire book dedicated to my topic. I doubt it exists because I have not found one yet. You mention the same issue, that you can use a chapter or two that is relevant to your research, but not the entire source. I don't think it's a problem because like you said, it's still useful. At this point, any piece of information is useful. I think this will shape what we want to explore during our primary source interviews. Most likely, the lack of answers we find in research that already exists.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you and Casandra said. It is difficult to find sources with a writing focus. I've tried using "composition" or even "language arts" has helped. Perhaps trying to use different words for writing may be beneficial.
ReplyDelete