Memo #4

***WILL BE EDITING AND ADDING POTHER SOURCES***

• Riley (Student)
• I loved talking to Riley because she told me exactly what she wants and what she does.
• One thing that really stuck with me,although unrelated, is that she doesn't like to hand write her rough drafts because she doesn't do well with mess. She doesn't like having to cross things out an put inserts in. As an educator, letting her type her rough draft is such an easy fix.
• Later thought for followup question: Does handwriting the rough draft end up lowering your motivation and therefore the quality of what you hand in?
•  Riley often skips G.O's because she has a good sense of forming ideas.
• She has used story plots and kites
• Brittany (Teacher)
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Memo #3 (Adding information)

  This is unfinished post. It is some brainstorming of other questions.

• For students:
• How do you feel when I say writing?
• What do you do in the writing process?
• What is pre-writing?
• How do you prepare to write?
• How do you organize your thoughts?
• How do you come up with ideas for writing?
• For teachers:
• What tools and strategies do you use to support student writing?
• What do you find useful with your students writing?
• How do you guide students to organizing their ideas?
• Do you use any other resources for pre-writing?

Memo #2.5 Follow-up on Secondary Sources

I am slowly making my way through a stack of books from the library and I noticed focusing on graphic organizers specifically as a search is limiting what I am getting. Other secondary sources that I will now be looking for are sources pertaining to pre-writing in general.

I have found an article about helping low-achieving students to become better writers using different strategies and I have hopes that this will lead me to more types of pre-writing that I can look into. As I was flipping through the article I was able to see a few different examples of prewriting and writing traits. In the back of this article several resources are also listed and I have pulled out a few I would like to find and have a look at.

As I continue to work on the I-Search research I found it helpful to talk to a teacher I know about what she uses for pre-writing. Fortunately this teacher has several books, which I should be getting today. My hope is that these books will help me to give me alternatives to graphic organizers that are successful in helping students develop their writing.

Overall my hopes are that by using these new sources that I will be able to come up with more ways that successful writing can come from prewriting preparation. Through my research in secondary sources I want to gain an understanding of what specifics parts of a pre-writing are useful to students.

Memo #3: Planning for Primary Sources

• Who are my primary sources? 
• Karyl C.- 6th grade Woonsocket Middle School English Teacher 
• Brittany R.- 6th grade Jamestown Middle School English Teacher 
• Riley L.- 4th grader at Portsmouth Middle School
• What will I ask them? 
• Karyl 
•  Have you used graphic organizers for student writing? 
• If yes, have you found them effective? Why or why not? 
• If no, why don’t you use them? 
• What do you use to help students organize their writing? 
• Brittany 
• Have you used graphic organizers for student writing? 
• If yes, have you found them effective? Why or why not? 
• If no, why don’t you use them? 
• What do you use to help students organize their writing? 
• Riley 
• How do you feel about writing? 
• How do you come up with ideas for writing? 
• Do you know what a graphic organizer is? 
• If yes, how have you used graphic organizers in writing? 
• What is my relationship to my participants? 
• Karyl C-  A co-worker to my mom 
• Brittany R- A previous co-worker, a mentor, and friend 
• Riley L- A good family friend 
• How will I gain access to them or their classrooms? 
• Karyl C- I will set up a day to observe and talk in her classroom 
• Brittany R- I will likely observe and talk in her classroom, or if needed at her home 
• Riley L- At her home