The Cambridge University Press Teacher Research Programme was launched in 2014 with the aim of inspiring and supporting English language teachers worldwide to better understand their own practice and foster learning among their students and fellow teachers. In this 3-part series of short blogposts, Cindy James, a teacher in the 2015 programme, explains how she got started on her project, what she learned and how she adapted her research plans along the way, and how she finally drew together her findings and learnings from the whole project.
Part 2: The Middle
This project aimed to determine to what extent the use of technology tools can improve my students’ story-writing skills. To do this, I planned to use tools that my students were already familiar with. My students loved smart phones and they used WhatsApp as well as photo and video-editing software a lot. My intervention strategies included using these tools to create prompts for story-writing. I also wanted to see whether technology tools can be used effectively as a platform for students to share their works and receive interactive feedback from their peers.
In the first stage of the project, I conducted a few lesson activities that incorporated the use of these technology tools in the classroom, so that my students would have some ideas on how to go about the project. I brought digital stimuli like images, videos and audio files into the classroom. I showed the students how the digital stimuli can be used to brainstorm ideas for a story. The stimuli can be used to help students in providing interesting descriptions for the setting or the characters of a story. They can also use the stimuli to prompt ideas for the beginning or the ending of a story.
In the second stage, the students worked in small groups to create stimuli for story-writing using technology tools. The students captured images, videos or sounds using their smart phones and used editing software to put the files together. These stimuli served as prompts for story-writing. The students shared their prompts with their friends and tried to create stories based on the prompts. In the third stage, the students shared their stories with their classmates. A WhatsApp group and a class blog were set up as platforms for the students to share their stories. The WhatsApp group and the blog had also enabled students to interact and discuss their works with each other. The students used these platforms to improve their story-writing skills based on the interactive feedback that they received from their peers.
To measure my students’ performance and examine the technology tools’ impact on their story-writing skills, I had initially planned to use the standard examination scoring guidelines which students would be assessed by at the end of the year. However, as the project progressed, I discovered that by doing so I was making it about examination. This totally defeated my earlier purpose. What I wanted was for my students to develop a joy in writing, and not just to write for an examination. I realised that I needed to change my focus. I still used the examination scoring guidelines to keep track of my students’ progress, but in addition to that I also asked my students to write reflections based on their experiences with the project. I wanted to see whether the project had impacted the students’ feelings towards story-writing specifically, and learning in general. What I found out at this stage was that the more the students love writing, the better they become at it.
To view part one of Cindy’s research, please click here. Information about the Teacher Research Programme can be found here.