Secondary Education Presentations

This study explored the effects of repeated primary source analysis on the final score on a response to a Document-Based Question. The goal of the study was to increase the inclusion and use of analysis of primary sources in an essay responding to a Document-Based Question. The research question for this study was what is the impact of using a H.I.P.P.O.S. graphic organizer to analyze documents on the organization of Document-Based Question essay writing in a 9th grade honors American Studies II class? Participants consisted of 9th graders from Walkersville High School in Frederick, Maryland. Students were given a pre- and post-assessment Document-Based Question to evaluate their level of inclusion of analysis of primary sources. In between the two tests, students were given five Primary Source Analysis opportunities with various forms of primary sources. Students could use a graphic organizer to visually arrange the material about each source. Following an analysis of the scores between the pre- and post-assessment, the average score for the inclusion of primary source analysis decreased. Teachers need to give students the opportunity to practice analyzing primary source but also model the proper writing techniques for a Document-Based Question. Practice and modeling are the keys to creating a strong argument to respond to a Document-Based Question with sufficient analysis of the given sources.

This study deals with teaching 11th graders metacognitive strategies to aid in general writing mechanics with the overall goal of testing how well the SCOPE strategy can help fluent English-speaking eleventh graders improve their writing fluency and English mechanics in five weeks while also increasing student metacognitive awareness in an American high school English class. This action research project had a student-teacher teach students SCOPE once a week in order to help the students become more aware of their own thought processes and to help the students become more aware of different learning tools at their aid. Students were then graded on a five-point rubric once a week with an essay-prompt for five total weeks. The rubric used was the SCOPE strategies’ elements itself: spelling, capitalization, etc. The entire data collection process took seven weeks from pretest to post-test. Results indicate that students scored higher on the post-test than the pre-test thus implying that the SCOPE metacognitive strategy worked. Of the 20 participants, 18 of them improved their score while two students remained stagnant. No one decreased. While data shows that students struggled with Expression of thought and Order of words the most, scores in each SCOPE element category increased from benchmark one to benchmark five. Students had the highest consistent accuracy with Capitalization and Spelling. Part of this may be due to word processing programs not being generally designed to catch Expression of thought mistakes, but more so of the punctuation-type errors.