Collaborative Teacher Action Research: Improving the Literacy Skills of High School Freshman

• In Event: Action Research: Lessons Learned in K–12 Settings

Abstract

This proposal reports findings from a yearlong case study between August 2018 and June 2019 in which six English teachers in an urban high school in Northern California engaged in collaborative action research focused on developing and enacting teaching strategies to support improvement in their students’ writing. Scores from students’ on-demand writing assessments and instructionally supported writing tasks show growth in student writing from fall to spring. The lessons and activities developed in the collaboration and observed in practice, in tandem with student and teacher self reports, suggest a connection between the collaboration and student growth in both writing and other literacy skills: reading, speaking and listening and presentation.

Author

• Shannon Marie Pella, California State University - Sacramento