Wicked project Part D: Findings and Implications

Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?

I do feel that my project did go as planned. I set out a timeline as to how the project would go knowing in my head that things usually take longer than projected and sure enough that happened. Here was my timeline:
-Teach about the fantasy genre during reading and writing workshop (1 week)
-Pre-assessment fantasy writing (1 day but it took 2 days)
-Coming up with idea for story and brainstorm of whole class (1 day)
-Writing of story (1 day but it took 2 days)
-Students editing writing (1 day)
-Storyboarding (1day)
-Students drawing and then I scanning all of work in together (1 day but it took 2 since all the files had to be saved separately)
-Students recording their voices (1 day)
-Students writing their post-assessment fantasy stories (1 day)


Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice.

My evidence was based upon writing samples from before the Digital Storytelling was implemented compared to writing samples after the intervention was used to help support clear ideas and organization in writing. My big "ah ha" after reading through all the writing samples that the use of Digital Storytelling helped my higher writers the most. My student that are at or below grade level continued to write with ideas that were not clear and stories that did not have a beginning, middle, and end. This shows me that they are not able to get what they need out of whole class lessons and more individual and small group instruction is needed. However, my higher writers did have a change in their writing after we created a whole class Digital Story. I looked at two student in particular that are good writers but in their pre-assessment one writer did not have a clear ending and just ended it with "they lived happily ever after" and the other writer skipped around in ideas so the organization was not clear. However, after we created the Digital Story together they both choose to write their post-assessment fantasy story based upon the ideas from the whole class one. They both then had clear beginning, middles, and ends and the idea was clear in both writing samples. I even noticed that they wrote longer this time and even spelling was better. I think that since we slowed down the writing process as a class as so much time was taken on each step as a model of how writers should think about each step it benefited the writers in my class that already have a pretty good knowledge base and this extra intervention seemed to then help with them taking their time on each step.

How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?

If I were to do this project again I would do Digital Storytelling with a small group first. Since I noticed the greatest improvement with my higher writers in a large group format I would then try writing a story with a small group of my middle writers since the format would be smaller and they could then get more individualized instruction than in a larger group. Since I was teaching a fantasy unit my writing instruction was in this genre but I would utilize the project that I did with the students in the writing genre of personal narratives since this is the area where the MEAP and test score shows where the most growth is needed. I would give students a specific topic to write about such as, "A time I collaborated with someone" for their pre-assessment. Then I think in the small group setting of using my middle writers we would take one of the student's samples to create the digital story from, retracing our steps to how you should brainstorm, use a storyboard to plan out the writing, write, edit, revise and finally publish. This way all students would be getting instruction but they could at the same be using Digital Storytelling. After I would give the students the same writing prompt to compare their writing before and after the use of iMovie for a digital story and that way using the same prompt I would have clear evidence of growth. I think that time continues to be the biggest issue as if I were doing this with a small group the rest of the students would have to be independently engaged.


What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?

1.) When scanning in files to then be uploaded into iMovie they need to be jpeg files and not pdf files. Each file was saved separately into iPhoto and then inputed into iMovie.
2.) There are tons of possible storyboards available on the Internet and you just need to find what works best for you whether that is printing it out and writing on it or editing it on the computer by typing into it.
3.) Input your images in iMovie first and don't worry about how long each are slotted to the playing time. Record each voice separately and then it shows how long that segment was so then you can click on the clock icon to match the time on the image to the time on the voice recording so they match up.
4.) Plan for more time that you originally think!

In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?

I would do this same project again as I saw the motivation of my student for the writing process increase as they are asking me to make another one and students are writing more chapters to the story that we created so then we can create more Digital Stories. As noted above I would do this project with a smaller group since it was overwhelming to have the whole class try to share their ideas so that all voices were heard. I was also the scribe in this process and next time would have the students write for the digital story so they could work on editing their own written work compared to a typed out story. This is a more authentic experience since writing on paper is what they are expected to do on the MEAP. Other than having a small group make a digital story about a personal narrative and using writing compared to tying ideas I would not change much else. I would continue to seek out different storyboards available to see what works best with my students.