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Justin Talley
Professor Maeng
5-1-18
EDIS 7991
Practitioner Article

Through the Eyes of an English Teacher:

One teacher’s foray into Datawise and Action Research

I had a rare opportunity in my last semester as a pre-service English teacher at

the Curry School of Education. Most students finish their teacher internship in the fall

semester of their last year, but, due to some unrelated complications, I found myself in

my Spring semester finishing 3 classes of course work on top of my student internship.

Now, knowing past-me, I would have floundered in this situation if I didn’t get on top of

my work early.

So, in January, I set out to complete coursework that would be due within the

next three months. I did all the readings, took notes, completed projects, and pushed

myself to complete everything that I reasonably could, so that I could give my students

the great majority of my time and attention throughout the semester to come. Though all

of these assignments had their value, one of my professor’s assignments in particular

inspired me greatly: the Datawise course hosted on edx. I devoured the content in the

course, writing reflections and completing comprehension questions. Finally, I felt as

though I had a template for using data to inform my practice -- something my education

program had been pushing for the past two years. With this template, I knew I needed

to put this data-based instruction into place in my classroom this coming semester.

I taught at a suburban high school in Virginia with a majority white population.

The classes I will be discussing in this space are three sections of AP Literature and
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Composition. These classes consisted of twenty-two to twenty-seven students of higher

readiness levels than most. They were an excellent group of students that welcomed in

a new teacher in the middle of their last year at school, and, as the day that I would

completely take over the classes drew nearer, I began to get excited to implement the

principles that I learned in the Datawise course in my classroom.

I fleshed out a unit on analyzing the Western Canon. We looked at classical texts

through postcolonial and feminist lenses, and we asked questions like, “Who decides

what is added to the canon? Why did these authors choose this specific language to

discuss these groups of people?” We looked at sampling in music and discussed its

similarities to intertextuality. I had all of this planned from the beginning of the semester.

My students were going to put a critical eye to the canon and the media that they

consume every day. But, in my planning, I purposefully did not include any plans for

writing instruction. I was going to let my data steer me in a certain direction later in the

semester. So, halfway through the unit, students completed a formative assessment: a

timed write on “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell. I modeled the question after

past questions on the AP test and decided to grade them just like an AP grader would

when they took the test in May. I decided that this would be my initial data, and it would

completely inform my writing instruction for the next two weeks prior to their summative

assessment paper due date.

I graded these assignments and got some AP number scores. My classes

averaged a 6.18 out of 9; the mode was 5 out of 9, and the median 6. But, scores in and

of themselves aren’t helpful in guiding my instruction. So, with this, I started to think of

ways that I could pinpoint exactly what I should address in the next couple of weeks. I
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looked back through my feedback that I provided students, and began my “noticing”

process. I looked through my comments, about a paragraph long with some highlights

to catch my students’ eyes on areas of improvement as they looked over their work.

And, I began to notice what I thought was a pattern. I came up with three different topics

to consider teaching in the next few weeks: more specific, lengthy literary analysis, the

elements of a thesis, and reducing paraphrase in favor of direct quoting. But, rather than

going with a gut feeling, I decided to quantify the topics to see just how prevalent they

were in my feedback. As it turns out, 71% of my students needed help in further

developing analysis, 45% of students in thesis elements, and 54% in direct quoting. In

two topics, the majority of my students could use instruction, and, in one topic, the

plurality. These seemed to be great focus points for the next couple of weeks.

In Datawise language, so far, I had set out with a priority question: “where do my

students struggle in writing a literary analysis paper?” Then, I identified a student-

centered problem after looking at my feedback data: “when writing literary analysis

papers, students tend to need assistance in becoming more specific in their analysis

through quoting and dedicating writing time to develop their analysis.”

Now, the next step in the data-wise process is pointing out a “problem of

practice” -- where I have been falling short in my instruction. I have yet to teach these

students any writing instruction, so one could say that I was failing simply by not

instructing. But, to be a little less harsh on myself, as I had just taken over the

classroom, I decided that I would make this problem of practice a bit more focused.

Over the next two weeks, I would focus my direct instruction on counterarguments and
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direct quoting. And, I would cover these topics through models of my own writing,

followed by workshops, and required one-on-one meetings.

I had quite the plan in place, and I was excited to finally get to do this reflective

practice and data-informed instruction. But, I had some complications after laying out

my instructional plan, and I couldn’t adjust for them but so much due to the nature of a

student teaching semester. I had two weeks to do my writing instruction and this two

weeks was bookended by Spring Break: an excellent week to grade these 75 papers.

Following break, my mentor teacher would take her classes back from me, and I would

only be instructing pieces of class time rather than all of it. This left me five instructional

days total with all of my classes. I planned for those five days’ lessons with multiple

models of counterarguments, direct quoting, and I even sprinkled in a few minutes of

just going over organization of their essays. But, as it goes, we had two snow days and

a senior field trip that I had not accounted for. With three days, I set out to make the

most of my time to put my action plan into place.

I looked back to my classes in the Curry School and remembered the importance

of models of literary analysis that reflected works that students were already familiar

with (Bomer 161). But, I had done literature circles, meaning finding a text with which all

students would be familiar consisted of drawing from up to ten different texts. So, I

decided to continue the theme that I developed earlier in the unit by focusing on music.

On my way home from work, I plugged my phone up to my car and put on the “A-List

Hip-hop” playlist on Apple Music and heard the song, “Bodak Yellow” by Cardi B and

started to listen intently to the lyrics. I thought to myself, “Okay, that’s vulgar. No, I can’t

use that. But, wait, what about just the hook? Clean the lyrics up; keep the meaning.
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Yeah, I can do that.” I had found a model with which all of my students would be

familiar, and the use of this text would be research-based. I remembered just last year,

when we read about connecting the canon to newer texts. This piece of music would

help students see the relevance in the process they were learning (Chadwick, Grassie

87). I wrote my own literary analysis of the song and created a lesson based on my own

model. The linked URL on “lesson” leads to a “flipped classroom” version of the lesson

that I taught in class. I uploaded a few videos to YouTube of my instruction for my

classes to watch for refreshers and for snow day drafting. Next, I created another lesson

based on the same model for direct quoting.

Now, I knew that I couldn’t just keep coming back to these “expert” models, as

they were done by someone that has been doing literary analysis for the last seven

years. Instead, I decided to go back to my first year at the University of Virginia, to my

first rough draft that I ever wrote here. And, it just so happened to be on a text that one

of my literature circle groups was reading: Pride and Prejudice. I used this essay to

show them organization of essay elements, direct quoting, and counter-argumentation

for specific analysis. I purposefully picked a rough draft and picked a text that would

show an openness to my students. I showed them an unfinished work from when I was

about their age, as they would be showing me their unfinished works for the next two

weeks. And, naturally, these imperfect models are the most useful for student

understanding (Bomer 162) (Gallagher 49).

And, last but not least, I planned on requiring students to come see me outside of

class to meet with me during their directed study time, after school, or during one of our

mutual break periods. These meetings would be ten minutes in length, students would
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come with a specific question, and I would give them a plan to improve their essay by

writing them quick bulleted notes (Gallagher 153). Snow days prevented me from

making this a requirement. Instead, in order to encourage student participation, I gave

students 2 points extra credit for attending one of these meetings. So, I had my action

plan, and I was ready to implement these evidence-based practices into my instruction.

Now, I needed to develop a plan for assessment.

Of course, due to the nature of a student teaching experience, I couldn’t follow

the Datawise process in full, unfortunately. So, I could only do a medium-term

assessment. Students would be completing a 4-5 page AP literary analysis essay, and

this is how I would assess their growth as it relates to my instruction. Again, I based this

prompt and rubric on past AP tests -- language and format.

Over Spring Break, I analyzed my student data from their summative

assessment. I did see growth, which was promising. My students’ average raised about

a half a point on the rubric to a 6.7, the mode raised to 6, and the median to 6.5. But,

what impressed me even more was that 76% of my students included an adequate

amount of direct quotations to make their arguments and had a counterargument in their

essays. In my initial set of data, 2% of students included a counterargument and 45%

had adequate direct quotations for their analysis. On the surface, I am glad that my

students made progress over the course of the two weeks. But, I don’t believe that this

growth is statistically significant enough for me to attribute it to my action plan. I would

need more data to either prove or disprove my claim. But, I can point to my students’

sharp increase in the use of counterarguments and direct quotations as attributable to

my instruction. Now, in the weeks following Spring Break, I had more time to reflect on
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my implementation of Datawise and action research to see where I would improve in the

future.

In retrospect, there are a few things I would change about my implementation of

Datawise and action research. For one, I will collaborate with my PLC in my data

analysis. This semester, I did not collaborate with my mentor teacher in my data

analysis because I felt a need to be independent in my endeavor. I felt that I needed to

prove myself and my ability to implement solid data and research based practices. But,

knowing what I know now and better understanding the collaborative nature of this

process, I’ll be sure to employ the help of a team next year. A team of professionals can

better analyze data due to the simple fact that more eyes means more people are able

to notice important aspects of the data. With a team, I’d be better able to identify the

most important issue my students are having, and I would have their help in developing

a better action plan to address their need.

Perhaps more importantly, I would want to reconsider the assessments I used for

my students. For one, I would want to make sure that my initial data collection and then

short term, medium, and long term data collection were more similar assignments. With

more similar assessments, I would be able to track growth in a more definitive manner

and rid my action research process of conflating factors that may skew the data. I could

then make better claims and be able to develop a better idea of my next steps in

improving my instruction. In addition to this, I will want to implement assessments over

the course of the year. I will have more time to assess my students in my first year of

teaching because I will not be limited by the artificial time constraints of a teacher
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internship semester. This repeated Datawise research process would allow me to see

how my students are combining different aspects of my instruction in their writing.

With these things being said, it’s important that I remind myself of the strengths

of my first foray into action research. I followed the process through most of the way,

albeit in an independent and adapted fashion. I used evidence based practice that I

researched in my action plan. I had to reflect on how I could adapt these practices to my

specific classroom, and I seemed to have successful time with this. Students cited my

Cardi B lesson and continuous return to music (especially rap music) as their favorite

classes of the semester. And, they clearly retained information as there was a huge

increase in their use of counterarguments and direct quotations in their papers. The

data may not give the definitive answers I was hoping for, but there was measurable

growth that I am proud of. If nothing else, this gives me confidence in my ability to

continue to improve my practice by using data, research, and creative lesson planning.

Most importantly, I am excited to use Datawise again next year and track my students’

growth, and share it with them. I might not be able to clearly and definitively show that I

can affect student outcomes yet, but I will apply the valuable lessons I learned this

semester and have my students writing grow significantly starting next fall.
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Works Cited:

Bomer, Randy. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms.

Heinemann, 2011.

Boudett, Kathryn P. “Introduction to Data Wise: A Collaborative Process to

Improve Learning & Teaching.” EdX, Harvard, 5 Mar. 2018,

www.edx.org/course/introduction-data-wise-collaborative-harvardx-gse3x-1.

Chadwick, Jocelyn A., and John E. Grassie. Teaching Literature in the Context of

Literacy Instruction. Heinemann, 2016.

Gallagher, Kelly. Teaching Adolescent Writers. Hawker Brownlow Education,

2015.