Writing Attitude Survey

Monday, I administered the Writing Attitude Survey to my focal group for more baseline data about their attitudes toward writing. This survey had 28 questions, but had a lot of questions that did not relate really to what I would be able to measure through my research or were repetitive. Therefore, I chose seven of the best fitting questions for my research. Since it is difficult to see what each color represents, I am listing it here: Blue-Happiest Garfield; Red-Slightly smiling Garfield; Green-Mildly upset Garfield; Purple-Very upset Garfield. All of my focal group students were very happy about becoming a better writer and keeping a journal for class. Most of them also felt very good about writing about something they have heard/seen or something that has happened to them. Most of the students were also very upset about not writing as much in school. The question about how they would feel if they could write more in school was more varied. There were two students at each happiest, slightly smiling, and mildly upset, and then one student at very upset. This is some very important information because even though the other questions tend to lean toward the fact they have positive attitudes toward writing now, about half of these students would have less positive attitudes if they wrote more. Asking the group how they would feel if a classmate read something they wrote also had varied answers. Most of the student felt very happy or happy about this, but two were very upset. This is also very interesting to me because one of the portions of the Writing Daily 5 is a part where they can write in a class themed journal and then have other students read what they wrote. Overall, I have collected some great baseline data about attitudes. I have also done some interviews with students this week, collected student work/made interpretations of their work, and made some notes about their engagement in The Daily Five. I will post more on this later in the week.