To What Extent Do Teacher Directed Journal Prompts and Other Various Teacher Modeled Writing Exercises Affect the Writing Abilities of Ninth Grade Students at Superior High School?

Abstract

A ninth-grade general education class at Superior High School, in Superior, Wisconsin, was used to discover to what extent using journal writing and other teacher modeled writing exercises affected the general writing abilities of those students. This study was conducted over a nine-week time-period, or one quarter. During the first week of the quarter The Test of Written Language ? Fourth Edition (TOWL-4) was given to create an individual baseline for each of the 130 students. There was a specific rubric used to score the test, and on this rubric there were 32 items that were being analyzed (Contextual Conventions ? 21 items and Story Composition ? 11 items). The TOWL-4 was again given at the end of the quarter in order to determine any student that may have increased, decreased, or stayed the same in their score. The results indicated that on the whole students made gains. Overall, when looking at the results for Contextual Conventions, out of the 21 total items students made gains in 17 items and decreased in 4 items. When looking at the 11 items analyzed for Story Composition, students made gains in all 11 of the items.