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How do you collect data?

Megan Nelson You should collect data in the way that works best for you. You may need to try a couple of different tools to record your observations in the classroom before you find the one that works the best. You may choose to use Post-It notes to write down what is happening in the classroom. Then, you can put the Post-It notes in a notebook or journal and expand on them later. Additionally, you can write narratives about your students in your journal. Teacher researchers keep notes in order to plan and reflect, reread, rethink, and analyze.

Elyce Rickerl How do you teach students to discover their writing voices? As discussed in an earlier question, students can find their writing voices by delving deeply into the discovery of their writing territories. By using such brainstorming methods as listing, hand mapping, and heart mapping, students can be supported in their ability to choose and narrow a topic. Part of developing a writer’s voice is helping them develop an understanding of the point of writing as opposed to merely a topic for writing. The development of writing voices can be supported a great deal with the use of poetry. Mentor texts should exhibit many different types of poetic form, showing students that poems do not always just have to rhyme. Teachers should encourage students to examine the structure and word choice used to convey a particular emotion or appeal to our senses in the poem. Students can be supported in their ability to do this themselves with assignments like found poetry, where they borrow words from another text and arrange them into a poetic format. Students can then work on developing their own unique writer’s voice by evaluating their decisions with emotion and word choice in poetry. Just as students recognize a friend on the phone by his or her voice, so can they incorporate their own unique voice into their writing. -Elyce Rickerl