ARP Part 1 (Introduction) Writing allows individuals a way to express, persuade, and inform their thoughts and ideas

about any given topic. To be able to write well opens the doors to plenty of opportunities in the future, especially in education and employment. When a student struggles in his or her writing skills, it can be in a number of areas. The writing process includes prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. Many times the struggles are during the prewriting stage, where the task of even starting can be quite daunting. Sometimes it is during the drafting stage that the writing gets obscure - the ideas are not as free flowing due to the confines of structure and underdeveloped ideas. More often than not, writings tedious tasks lie in the revising and proofreading. In revising, it can be difficult: the student cannot see how to improve and seems content with its mediocrity. As for proofreading, more often than not, a bulk of the time is spent on fixing grammatical errors and punctuation problems. Occasionally, publishing can be a struggle, depending on who the intended audience is and how the information is disseminated.

The Catholic school that I work at lies in the heart of the entertainment industries. With a strong enrollment of 300, students can enroll from Pre-kindergarten to 8th grade. Demographics-wise, more than half of the children are of European descent, followed by 25% Asians (mainly Filipino), 20% Hispanic, and around 5% African American. Many of them have been in the same Catholic school since they were 4 or 5 years old. Others have transferred from other Catholic schools in the area and a small percentage came from public schools. Socioeconomically, the majority of the families can be

considered middle class to upper middle class. English is usually the main language spoken at home. English language learners tend to have a comfortable grasp of both their home language and English.

This particular focus student is a 6th grade english language learner who struggles with numerous aspects of the writing process. He is a boisterous child that will rarely raise his hand to participate; his words tend to proceed his hand going up. Often times he exhibits minimal self-control; he gets up to ask a question if I am deemed too great of a distance away from him. His writing is barely legible and he is still adjusting to a larger Catholic school.

The purpose of this study is to investigate a part of the writing process, namely, revision. Students do not take a lot of time making their writing better than making it correct. It is easier to find what needs a period in the sentence versus rewording an entire paragraph due to overused cliches. The questions that it will answer are as follows: Will providing more revision experiences create a stronger writing piece? Will providing graphic organizers make revision accessible to all students? I plan on implementing various graphic organizers to help build their understanding, as well as to provide a guide in developing their revising skills. This will be done through modeling the graphic organizers and giving students ample tries to scrutinize their writing.

ARP Part 2 (Literature Review) English Language Learners (ELL) by itself can be seen as a broad spectrum. When focusing on adolescent ELLs, Judith Rance-Roney states that to meet the needs of this population can be one of the most complex challenges for teachers. Although she classifies them in the 16 to 20 year old age bracket, one can surmise that this can be applicable to the junior high demographic. She brings up key questions to how education needs to be reformed in schools: from providing curriculum that should help ELLs to grow in their academic & language development needs to if the districts integrate ELLs to the general population versus having them in their own selfcontained classrooms or schools, or find a middle ground which incorporates both. Another point that is brought up in research is the additional time that ELLs need to learn a concept versus a student whose first language is English. They need time to learn new vocabulary, process through the information (often times from English to Spanish), link it to former material they learned, etc. Furthermore, some students may go to many different schools due to familial ties, housing, and job situations. Districts need to be able to share information with each other. Progress records for each student becomes vital so that educators know about the individual person no matter what school they have attend.

English Learners in the classroom have proven to have a difficult time in their writing. In Gilquin & Paquots research, academic writing varies for the english learner (2008). It is far easier to learn how to speak another language than it is to write in it. To take it a step further, academic writing is far more complex to undertake than merely learning

how to write. To put it into context, one writing project that was conceived by Hudson Valley Writing Project & the National Writing Projects Analytic Writing Continuum focused on the writing rubrics that teachers use According to (Gorlewski, 2012). For bilingual students that were majority migrants, the project encouraged them to use Spanish and English words and to write in their first language. The results were discouraging: the students that chose to write in English were graded low on the Analytic Writing Continuum, while even those that wrote in Spanish went un-scored. The team that completed the research wondered if translating the writing could help those that grade, however many cultural words & phrases could not wholly transfer to another language. Through Tom Meyer, Martha Young, and Fabiola LiebersteinSoleras work, they were able to create a Spanish version of the rubric that would take into account the other languages nuances. Thus, students could write in either language and make great advancements in their work.

ARP Part 3 (Cycle 1 Establish a Baseline) Salvador is a noisy and mischievous 6th grader. He was born in Mexico and raised in the United States as far as he remembers. This student comes from a Hispanic family his mother is a single parent raising her only child. She works long hours to provide the kind of educational opportunity that she was not able to have when she grew up. His mother often drops him off and picks him up from school in between her job employment. When she speaks to me, it is in unbroken English. With Salvador, he speaks in English at school and at home in Spanish. When he tries to communicate an

idea that he has, he says in Spanish, Como si dice, which translates to How do you say. He is sociable with the younger students in other grades, yet he is awkward with those in his own age group. He speaks without thinking his words through, one could say it is perhaps due to his need for attention. Most students will ignore him, yet many will scoff at his childish outburst of his uncensored thoughts. Whether it is in the playground or in the classroom, it is difficult to ignore the presence of Salvador.

Inside the four walls, Salvador would rather doodle than pay attention. He sits in the front, yet the constant refocusing given to this child seems to be lost. When he enjoys a particular discussion in class or has something to talk about, he can carry quite a conversation. His writing is sparse and few - he has not mastered cursive and his printing skills are poor. His strength lies in his love of technology; if an assignment involves a computer, website, or anything of that nature, he will more likely start it. Typing allows him the freedom to focus on his ideas than being shackled to his form of penmanship. Even with that, he struggles to write; revision is a burdensome process where he does not see what he needs to work on, yet he can pinpoint others mistakes.

In the beginning of the year, each student takes a CORE Vocabulary assessment. The area that I teach at tends to predominantly have higher assessment and test scores. However, compared to the students in his class, he has one of the highest, suggesting that the terminology used in class is not the obstacle. (See Figure 1: CORE Assessment.)

Figure 1: CORE Assessment Type of CORE Assessment Core Vocabulary Screening 27 Student Class Average Highest Score in Class 27 29 30 Highest Possible Points

Later on in the year, the class was given a learning styles questionnaire to assess how they best learn. Salvador best learns kinesthetic - a fact that I found interesting as I am a visual-audio learner and tend to instruct that way. (See Figure 2: Learning Styles.)

Figure 2: Learning Styles Learning Styles Kinesthetic Visual Auditory Visual/Kinesthetic Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic 16 11 7 2 1 # of Students 43% 30% 19% 5% 3% % of Students

In terms of summative assessment, Salvador has incomplete and missing scores from previous essays. (See Figure 3: Essay Progress.) This has taken place in the course of six weeks. His writing journal, where students are to write a paragraph of their liking, is sparse. When he does write, he writes in simple sentences. He also writes in run-on sentences, often times without punctuation and capitalization.

Figure 3: Essay Progress Before the Intervention Writing Process Prewrite Draft Revise Proofread Publish Completed Incomplete - late Incomplete - late No Incomplete - late No

As a result of the data collected, Salvador needs to vastly improve in his writing skills. Although I wanted to focus mainly on revision, he needs to work on completing the writing process. Through the use of technology, I am optimistic that my intervention will help him develop stronger writing abilities paired with his specific learning style.

ARP Part 4 (Cycle 2 Intervention and New Benchmark) My plan to help Salvador increase his writing skills is two fold: he would work on his social interaction with his peer group while employing his kinesthetic learning style in his composition. This would be done via several graphic organizers that would scaffold his essay writing and discussions with a peer after using it. I would model how to use each graphic organizer before him and his partner work together. This would help him organize his thoughts with more precision and reflect on his use of words. I repeated

this process through the various aspects of the writing process to see how Salvador progressed.

ARP Part 5 (Analyze Intervention and Reflection) Figure 4: Essay Progress After the Intervention Writing Process Prewrite Graphic Organizer -List -Spider web -Compare & contrast Venn diagram -Compare & contrast examples-Venn diagram Completed Yes Yes Yes - late Incomplete

Draft

The intervention could be seen as a success-in-progress. Salvador responded well with the use of the graphic organizers via Google Apps on the internet. Through Google Draw & Google Docs, his focus was not on the way his penmanship looked, but on the graphs and words he used. He enjoyed using technology and it was easier to motivate him in the beginning of the writing process. Through sharing with a partner, he was able to contribute to his peer discussion. Salvador was able to complete the majority of the prewriting. Toward the end of the first aspect of the writing process, he was starting to wane. The Venn diagram proved to be a challenge despite the graphic organizer & teacher modeling. I think that this occurred because this was the first time that the class used Google Draw. Most students were shaky in using it; eventually most of them became proficient in creating the graphs on their own. When it was time to

communicate with his peer partner, he was not able to do so since his work was incomplete. Salvador worked on the diagram and was able to finish the next day. After that, he seemed to have lost his work momentum and was not able to complete the draft in the allotted time frame.

Although the class is nearing the proofreading stage and he is still on drafting, I see that Salvador has vastly improved. Since he is an English learner who has grown up in the United States, he can speak with much proficiency. However, it looks like he needs time to process when the class learns a new concept or is working through writing. I consider this a vast improvement compared to before the intervention. Thus, I will continue to use more kinesthetic means to engage Salvador in his writing and give him more time to write for each writing step.

References Gilquin, G. & Paquot, M. (March 2008). Too Chatty: Learner academic writing and register variation. English Text Construction, 1 (1), 41-61.

Gorlewski, J. (Ed.) (2012). Research for the Classroom. English Journal, 101 (5), 93-96.

Rance-Roney, J. (April 2009). Best Practices for Adolescent ELLs. Supporting English Language Learners, 66 (70), 32-37.