action plan

Workshop and Traditional Classrooms 1

Running Header: Action Research Plan Workshop and Traditional Classrooms

Action Research Plan- Workshop and Traditional Classrooms

Shaina Johnston

CU Denver

Research based: Overland High School


Introduction and Problem Statement

Former President Bill Clinton stated in his speech about Literacy in 1994 that “Literacy is

not a luxury; it is a right and responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-

first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.”

The goal of most English teachers is to encourage students to become literate in order to

face their world and to reach their full potential as active and contributive citizens. As an

English teacher at Overland High School I share in this belief. The added challenge that comes

with this call to action is the fact that most students at Overland come from low income families

with very diverse cultures and lifestyles. This creates a classroom environment that would fail

under the normal “lecture” type situation. Therefore, the challenge at our school is to develop a

classroom where students are the primary focus and do the majority of the reading, writing, and

thinking. The model that has been instituted is called the “Workshop Model” and is developed

through a program called “Literacy Lab.” Literacy Lab is made up of a group of teachers from

various departments that are adapting a workshop classroom where the students are responsible

for their learning and the teacher is a monitor.

Literacy Lab and the Workshop Model promote a classroom that gives control and

responsibility over to the students. In a typical Workshop class, the teacher will talk to students

about a specific task or goal for the class. The teacher will then model that task for the students

and make sure to answer any questions around that goal. This will only take about 10 minutes of

class time. The teacher then releases control to students (either as individuals or as groups) to

complete the work on their own. This allows the teacher to move around the classroom and

confer with students individually on their personal understandings and sets up a differentiated

instruction without having to plan around that differentiation. It also pushes students to take


control of their learning and actually think during class and not just take notes. The class session

ends with a quick debrief to make sure everyone is on the same page. There may be a couple

“catch” sessions where the teacher pulls students back in for a quick second to mention

something “discovered” by another student, but for the most part, students are working

independently of the teacher.

Literacy Lab was set up to help offset our low test scores. We are trying hard to improve

on CSAP, Explore, PLAN, and ACT. Right now our school sits on the border between

accredited and non-accredited. If we are pushed to the side of non accreditation, our seniors will

suffer having to take a graduation test to verify that they know what they need to prior to leaving

high school. We also risk the school being turned over to the State for drastic plans of

remodeling that could include a full staff turnover. We have a few years to prove that we can

change ourselves before extreme measures would be taken, but we need the evidence that what

we are doing is actually working. Through my Action Research Plan, I am able to provide some

evidence that Literacy Lab is improving students’ knowledge and understanding.

Purpose and Intended Audience

The purpose of this research is to provide hard evidence either for or against the use of

the Workshop model in the classroom. My intended audience will consist of the teachers who

are devoting their time to learning this model as well as the administration that has funded

Literacy Lab. The Literacy Lab as a whole has used much of the schools grant funds over the

past 3 years and I want to know that this money is not going to waste.


Research Questions

My purpose was to determine if the Workshop model is an effective way to teach classes

and if it can be proven through an increase in test scores and student achievement. I started this

topic because the school I work for (as well as another in our district) has focused a lot of their

time, energy, and money toward educating their teachers on this model. I want to verify that

they are not wasting their money.

Research Questions:

1. What is the difference in overall student achievement?

This is my root question: do the students in the Workshop classes perform better on real

world exams? The way to measure this is to look at student test scores.

a. How is the Workshop model more effective in classroom teaching?

The Workshop model has been discussed as being more effective in classroom teaching,

but can we actually measure it? I am looking for specific reasoning behind the model

being more effective. Basically I want to know what is reproducible in every classroom

setting.

2. How long does it take to Prepare and Follow Up on this model?

The Workshop model is taught by teachers who only have 1-2 classes. For these

teachers, they have plenty of time to prepare and develop their lesson plans because they

are not in the classroom constantly. For those of us who teach a full load of classes, I

want to know if this model is time effective for us as teachers. If it takes a teacher 3

hours to prepare a 90 minute lesson, is that an effective use of their time?


3. Does this model work effectively for the ethnically diverse climate that we have at

Overland High School? One of the main things we discuss constantly at school is how to

solve the achievement gap. I want to know if this model will help with solving that gap.

Context

Overland High School is situated in Aurora, CO and while it is a part of a rich district, it

is the poorest school within that district. Overland has faced many trials and tribulation during

its 31 years, but the one that has remained constant is our diverse climate. We have over 50

native languages that are spoken in our school of only 2300. We have students from all over the

world and many of them are refugees. The population that is mostly native to Colorado, consist

of lower income students from various ethnic backgrounds. Our school is labeled as a minority

majority school which basically means that the typical minorities are actually the majorities

within our walls. We have approximately 45% African American, 35% Hispanic, 18% White,

and the rest fall into the various categories. These are broad names though, in our African

American group, we have students who range from wealthy Denver families all the way to

Somalia refugees who barely escaped their country.

This diversity is both a blessing and a curse. It is wonderful to get to interact and

experience all these cultures and have real relationships with students from every corner of the

globe. At the same time, the various cultures and economic backgrounds do create some

difficulties when teaching these students as well. When I have a classroom full of 15-16 year

olds who leave school at 3pm to catch the bus to their 4-11pm job so that they can keep up on

bills because their parents are in and out of drugs or jail, the last thing those students usually

think about is school work. They are usually sleep deprived and thinking about more important


issues. Yet we are asked to reach these students and get them to care about school. Now not all

students fall into this category but the ones whose parents have enough to support them, they

generally feel entitled and so won’t work because their parents will take care of them. It creates

the classroom of students who want to know the fundamental question of “why.” As teachers,

we don’t always have a great answer for them. More importantly than having a straight answer,

I feel like we need to show these students “why” or else it will never sink in fully.

For this particular project, I am focusing on four classrooms (two teachers who use

Workshop Model and two who do not). All four classrooms are Freshmen English Regular

classes and vary in size from 25-35. The ethnic breakdown is fairly even in all classes. The

classes are very similar to all the other classrooms at Overland and so I feel does a good job of

representing the overall population.

Literature Review

Literature Search Questions

This Literature Review will address my Research Question: Does this model work

effectively for the ethnically diverse climate that we have at Overland High School? One of the

main things we discuss constantly at school is how to solve the achievement gap. I want to know

if this model will help with solving that gap.

Search Procedures

Searching for the literature to answer this question was somewhat difficult because it is

so localized. I had to broaden my search somewhat and used key words such as: differentiated


instruction in the classroom, solving the achievement gap, workshop model teaching, and UBD

teaching.

My search turned up too many articles to get through so I had to read through many to

find ones that would work with my particular topic. I found interesting searches that discussed

this issue in other countries as well as the United States, but for my particular research, I focused

on the United States and where I could, I focused on articles written by Colorado professionals in

particular.

In addition to these articles, I was able to interview Cris Tovani and discuss with her

about the Workshop model directly. She is the creator of this model, and so it was very helpful

to get her insight into the model.

Findings

Differentiated Instruction

There are several concerns that arise from the idea of Differentiated Instruction. One of

the major issues is that as a teacher of 30 students, how do you teach to student with a 4th grade

reading level while still challenging the student at a college reading level? These concerns were

presented to Cris Tovani in a recent interview I was able to get with her. She talked to me about

how districts have “differentiated” by placing students into groups. In English, the groups

usually take on these titles: Essentials English, Regular English, and Honors English. We

immediately know that the Essentials class is for the struggling readers and the Honors class is

for the proficient or advanced readers. Tovani would argue that this is the opposite of

differentiated instruction. She says, “Why after 8 years of literacy interventions are some 9th

graders still entering the building as struggling readers?” (Tovani 2010). If we continue to put

students into these groups that only have one expert in the room, they will continue to fall


behind. She continued to discuss how having a classroom with a wide reading range should

actually improve student learning because you have increased your number of experts. She also

says it is still possible to challenge those college level kids too without too much added stress to

the teacher.

In addition to Cris’ interview, I was able to find several articles that also discussed the

same topic. R. Routman describes reaching every student as a “hand over of responsibilities.”

(Routman 2003). He claims that the more students are working individually or in groups, the

more they are learning.

Literacy

“The more students read, the better readers they become.” (Scherer 2010). In several

articles the idea of closing the Achievement Gap came back to the idea of Literacy, which is also

a focus of the Literacy Lab group. I decided to investigate this because it fit well not only with

this particular research question, but also with one of my other questions. It is a belief among

many educators that the primary problem among students and their scores are the fact that they

cannot read. They get no time or practice to read and so their reading skills are not developed

enough to read for a standardized test. The fact that they can’t read the test, even if it is a science

test, causes their scores to decrease.

Another report shows that students need to not just have more time to read in general, but

they need to have more time to read the material that they select, “Independent reading should be

a time for students to follow their own intentions as readers” (Ray 2006).


Problem Solving and Student Time

A common theme discussed in Literacy Lab is the idea of allowing students to work

independently of the teacher. The Literacy Lab ideology is: “Whoever is doing the thinking, the

writing, and the talking is doing the learning.” Several articles were found to back this idea up.

In a research study conducted in Washington DC, they were looking to see what way teaching

method most improved student writing, the results came back that implementing writing

strategies of which is “Collaborative Writing: [which] involves developing instructional

arrangements whereby adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their

compositions” is the third most effective way to teach writing. (Graham 2007).

George Hillocks, Jr, a professor at the University of Chicago, compared the differences of two

identical classrooms where one learned the traditional way while writing (in which the teacher

evaluates everything) and the nontraditional way where students write for a specific purpose.

His studies showed that students improved by “.025” with a traditional method and “.45” with

the nontraditional. (Hillocks 2002).

Finally, in “That Workshop Book” by Samantha Bennet, she says a classroom where

“works- concrete demonstrations of understanding- are created” is the ideal classroom to learn

in. She boldly states that a classroom where students are learning to write well is a classroom

where students write often and students write for a purpose. These two keys are essential in

improving student writing ability. This directly reflects the Workshop Model that takes teachers

out of the front of the classroom and gives power back to the students. (Bennet 2007).


Quality of Literature

The research information gathered came from a wide variety of backgrounds and people.

I also was able to include a personal interview and several documents that charted growth as well

as discussed it. All the data came from peer reviewed literature and studies and so I think it is

safe to assume that it is all credible. I was surprised to find such a variety of literature, but I

believe it only helps to answer my question.

Gap in Literature

Not all the literature specifically focused on solving the Achievement Gap, but they were

all focused on raising students across the board and so I determined that they were the same

thing. A major gap though would be in being able to duplicate the methods in every school and

with every student that seemed to be missing. If that method is ever determined though, the

person who discovered it would be labeled as a genius because the Achievement Gap has been

around for a very long time. I would have liked to found some articles that went the other way,

but it appears that all of my literature was in support of the Workshop Model helping to improve

the Gap. My study is going to look at the scores of ethnic groups within the Workshop Model

classrooms in order to better address this question. It will also look specifically at what students

themselves feel about their education and chart their ethnicities here as well, so I my research

will prove beneficial in closing this gap.

Methods

Participants

The people used in this study are teachers and students who use the Workshop Model and

who do not use the Workshop model. In particular I looked at 9th Grade English because this is


the class that has the most relation to me, and it is a set curriculum for every class so will have

the least variation. We are all required to teach certain texts and certain skills each quarter. This

keeps all the classrooms at the same basic pace and level so that students can transfer among

classes as the need arises. It also sets up the perfect balance for me to conduct this study because

I know that Teacher A who teaches the Workshop way will be teaching exactly the same thing as

Teacher B who teaches in a more Traditional way.

Data Collection

The primary method of gathering data was through a review of test scores from the CSAP.

These scores provide raw data about students in each teacher’s class. This data also breaks

students down by ethnic groups so I can answer two questions at once.

Data Analysis

Section 1: CSAP Data Comparing Literacy Lab teacher’s students to Non Literacy Lab teacher’s students

For the first section, data was gathered from State Scores on our annual test. Every student in the

state of Colorado is tested from 3rd grade through 10th grade using a standardized test called the CSAP.

The scores are then reported to the public. This helps districts see what students are excelling at or what

areas need more improvement. It also breaks the test down on a teacher to teacher basis so that schools

can see what teachers are being more successful in their teaching than others. This is the data that I

looked at. CSAP also includes in its data a breakdown of ethnic groups. The groups are divided up into

the stereotypical high performing students and the stereotypical low performing students: White and

Asian together and Black and Hispanics together.

This section showed some interesting data. I expected to see higher overall growth from students

in the Literacy Lab groups, but that was not the case. In fact what I saw on average was that Black and

Hispanic students growth was higher for those teachers, but White and Asian (typically higher performing


students in general) did not grow as much. This is not to say that they were not already scoring high and

just did not score higher, but I would think that they would have improved significantly regardless.

As an average, Black and Hispanic students grew more with the Literacy Lab approach and White

and Asian students grew more with a traditional classroom setting. The growth from White and Asian

students is to be expected as that has been a norm for years, but the lack of growth from them when

exposed to Literacy Lab teaching strategies was a bit confusing. I have understood it to be that the

Workshop or Literacy Lab approach to the classroom is the “best” method for all students. According to

the data collected in Section 1, that was not the case. (Graphs found in Appendix under Section 1.)

Section 2: Chart of Student Achievement through Grades and Student Perspective

In addition to charting CSAP growth, I also looked at Student Achievement through the eyes of the

Student. Through a simple survey given to all 4 teachers, they were asked to have their students answer 3

simple questions:

1. What is their race?

2. On a scale of 1-5 (with 5 as the high) how well do they know the material they are currently

working on in class?

3. What is their current grade in the course?

In order to chart the data that I collected for this section, I put the grades into point value systems

according to GPA. For the most part, students thought they knew material better than their grade actually

showed. This is not surprising because most high school students tend to think they are smarter than they

really are in class. On average, students ranked their knowledge (question 2) at a 3-4 average. This was

across the board. This tells me that students thought they knew the material well regardless of the way it

was presented to them.


Their grades were a little different. When I looked at the point values on grades, I was faced with

results similar to that of CSAP. The ethnic gaps were reversed once again if students were in Literacy

Lab taught classes. Black and Hispanic students tend to show a higher overall grade in Literacy Lab

classes and Whites and Asians perform better in the traditional rooms. I am still trying to decide what

causes this separation and why I am seeing this trend. I am wondering about cultural upbringings at this

point but am not sure overall if that is the case. (Graphs found in Appendix under Section 2.)

Section 3: Teacher Time for Lesson Preparation for Grading

The last thing I surveyed was the amount of “teacher time” that is needed in order to prepare a

Literacy Lab lesson as opposed to a regular lesson. Each teacher was simply asked to document the

amount of time they spent on average during a week preparing for their classes. Each teacher has the

same number of classes and the same number of preps (although the preps themselves do differ).

Based on the data from the teachers who are participating in this survey, there is typically less

time spent grading student work, but more time spent on actual lesson planning. I did not realize there

was a connection to grading time and Literacy Lab which I find interesting. I went back and e-mailed the

founder of Literacy Lab with these results and she backed up my find and said that most grading takes

place instantly in class rather than after class meeting time. The Lesson Preparation seems to take longer

for Literacy Lab teachers because they try to build projects that are “real world.” Rather than pursue

traditional projects such as: analyze a paper, write an essay, etc. So the data overall was a little

inconclusive. On the Literacy Lab side, it takes longer to prepare the lesson but less time to grade and in

the Traditional class, it takes longer to grade but less time to prepare. (Graphs found in Appendix

under Section 3.)


Schedule

Dates: To be done by this time:

Feb. 22-26 Gather data from CSAP and Surveys

March 1-5 Continue to gather any remaining data and start

putting data into graph format.

March 8-11 Evaluating Literature surrounding my topic.

March 15-19 Finalizing all data found

March 22-April 2 Begin analyzing data and comparing the

information gathered to the literature.

April 5-9 Combine all the learning into my Action

Research Project

April 12-16 Finalize project and proof any remaining

sections

April 19-23 Finalize project and turn in to class.

Ethical procedures

The impact of this research will either determine the importance of the continued

education of several teachers in the school in the Workshop model or it will discredit it and the

money being used to fund their education can be used elsewhere. The participants are people

who both think that this model is the best and those that think this model is just another “fad” in

the teaching realm. I can see those that have completely adopted this model being very offended


that my data has turned out to be inconclusive and/or only reaches half the students in a

classroom, but I still believe it is something that needed to be explored.

As for my personal findings, I am on the fence for this method of teaching and use it in half

of my classes and not the other half. I have not noticed a difference in my classes directly but

they are two very different classes to begin with and so I wanted a more direct comparison. I

wanted to know the answer to my question about its effectiveness in order to finalize for myself

what method I would continue to use.

Because my results are inconclusive (or only help a few students), the result can be

somewhat detrimental emotionally to those teachers who believe firmly in this practice because

it will disprove what they have been working so hard at teaching to others for the past two years.

Apart from those three individuals, the inconclusive result only results in some training that was

not necessarily needed and wasted money by the state. The money that was spent will be the

primary loss because any setting where teachers can collaborate on “best practices” always

results in a benefit in some way or another.

Checks for Rigor

I gathered data from three different sources, teachers, students, and state (CSAP) in order to

try and gather conclusive data from three angles. My results all prove the same answer as far as

Literacy Lab only helping our Black and Hispanic students. I was glad to see that CSAP scores

and Student Surveys both supplied the same information. Teachers who are currently using this

particular method though are fairly one sided about it and that is why my survey for them

focused primarily on time during preparation for the lesson and afterwards.


Findings

After analyzing my data, I compared it back to my original questions. The first question I asked

was about overall student growth in Literacy Lab classes as oppose to Traditional classes. For this

question, my data was inconclusive. Students as a whole tended to score the same in both classroom

settings so it did not verify one way or the other that Literacy Lab technique had improved student

achievement. For the second question, I focused on overall time it took to prepare for lessons and follow

up work (grading). Once again my data was inconclusive on this part as well. It was reported to me that

teachers spent more time preparing for the Literacy Lab classes but less time grading afterwards. The

reverse was true of the Traditional classroom. The final question was the only one I was able to answer

somewhat in my studies. It has to do with closing the racial achievement gap. I found that in Literacy

Lab classes, students in typically lower scoring ethnic groups, scored higher on both the CSAP and in the

class. This shows obvious growth in lower achievement groups. However, the data also showed that

typically higher scoring ethnic groups, did worse in the Literacy Lab classroom. The question of

decreasing the achievement gap, the answer according to my data would be “yes” but the way it does it is

by bringing the higher groups down and increasing the lower groups. I am doubtful as to if this is exactly

what educators want to do in order to solve the gap.

My data and tests are only marginally reliable and accurate. My main area of concern was the

CSAP test scores. Students know that they don’t have to pass the CSAP to graduate and that their scores

really don’t mean anything to them. Due to this fact, often times students will rush through the tests and

not take their time to complete answers to the best of their ability. This fact could produce lower test

scores than are accurate of the student. There is no way to know for sure if students did try their best or

not and so this data can be slightly off.

In addition to the CSAP scores, my testing pool was not very large. I only tested 4 classes with a

wide range of students in each class. You cannot test “identical” classes because every student is

different. Also, the teachers who I surveyed have different styles across the board. Even though there are


two teachers teaching the Literacy Lab style, their classes may run very differently and therefore produce

different results. In a traditional classroom, the teachers do not always lecture (which is often associated

with a traditional classroom) and so their data could be off a little as well.

I think overall my data was a good example of results and will be valuable to my high school for

validation of the Literacy Lab program, but I don’t think it would be good data for a school in another

state or even city. The student population dictates the type of classroom you should have and so it is a

matter of understanding your students’ needs prior to implementing a new style.

Implications for Practice

My results showed a great growth in the students who are generally scoring lower in classroom

settings, but that it also was not a good teaching method for the students who generally perform well.

Due to the conflict of findings, I feel that more research should be done. The best way to approach

another research is to expand the pool used. I used four teachers in classes that varied in size from 25-35.

I think for another round of research, the pool should be expanded to ten teachers (preferably at both

schools using this teaching method) and contrast the classroom size down to 25-30 that way there is less

room for flexibility. If at all possible, it would also be best to survey the students while they are all on the

same subject, this way the content is the same across all classes.

My recommendations following this research would be for teachers to look into the Workshop

Model and determine if there classroom would benefit from it or not. More research should be done

though prior to completely switching to this method and should continue as this method is used in order

to see if students respond better or not.

Conclusion

Through the course of this study, I have found an inconclusive result to students scoring

higher who have experienced a Workshop classroom. I will be honest and say this is not the


result I initially expected to find. I expected to see scores improve for all students in a Literacy

Lab Classroom and be slightly less in a Traditional room. The fact that White and Asian

students perform better in the Traditional room was somewhat surprising.

This research is valuable to anyone who is a teacher and is looking for a new method of

instruction that is more effective in the classroom. This evidence could help to decide if one

should instill this method. My research is however limited to one school and various students

and teachers within that school. The same data could be very different from another school and

another set of teachers and students. I know that currently in my District, Smoky Hill High

School is working with this same model and could also benefit from this study on a more direct

level. Nationally though we as teachers have been shown the data that states our ranking

educationally in the world and we are called to improve that score, so any practice that will help

improve student achievement is worth pursuing. My research is still valuable in that it is at least

one solid account of an unbiased opinion on the Workshop model.

Anyone who teaches at a minority majority school could benefit from this data and use it

to improve upon their teaching. The more teachers study and research the art of teaching, the

more effective they will become in their own practice of it and I am hopeful that through this

study I shed unbiased light on one of the latest fads in the teaching world.


References

Bennett, S. (2007). That Workshop Book. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Graham, S. (Sept. 2007). Writing Next. February, 28, 2010,

http://www.centerforcsri.org/index.php?

option=com_content&task=view&id=626&Itemid=7

Hillocks, G., Jr. (2002). The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning.

New York: Teachers College Press.

Ray, K. (2006). Study Driven. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

R. Routman. (2003). Gradual Release of Responsibility Lesson Planning Template. February,

28, 2010,

www. ggusd .k12.ca.us/.../ GRADUALRELEASEOFRESPONSIBILITY questions.pdf

Scherer, M. (March 2010). Reviving Reading. Educational Leadership, vol. 67 (number 6,) pgs

5.

Tovani, C. (March 2010). I Got Grouped. Educational Leadership, vol. 67 (number 6,) pgs 24-

29.

http://www.ggusd.k12.ca.us/.../GRADUALRELEASEOFRESPONSIBILITYquestions.pdf

http://www.centerforcsri.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=626&Itemi

http://www.centerforcsri.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=626&Itemi


AppendicesAppendix

Charts from Section 1A: Comparing Individual Classroom Data

Teacher A (Literacy Lab)

Teacher B (Non Literacy Lab)


Teacher C (Literacy Lab)

Teacher D (Non Literacy Lab)


Charts from Section 1B: Comparing Overall Teachers and Students

Chart 1

Chart 2


Chart 3

Charts from Section 2

Teacher A


Teacher B (non Literacy Lab)

Teacher C (Literacy Lab)


Teacher D (Non Literacy Lab)

Chart from Section 3

action plan

Documents

workshop classroom

workshop model

action research plan

typical workshop class

literacy lab

traditional classroomsworkshop

classroom environment

class session