Creativity in Children’s Writing
Abstract
In this master thesis the author tests three different story writing approaches to determine which best prompts students’ creativity. The three approaches include: tall tales, actual experiences, and suggested topics. Twenty 6th grade students wrote creative stories in one of the three approaches. The researcher made it clear that students’ stories not be graded, and would not impact their grade report in any way. Three different teachers independently scored each story for its creativity. The researcher found that writing about actual experiences seemed to stimulate the most creativity from students. Tall tales yielded the same level of creativity as suggested topics, however both yielded less than actual experiences. The study also suggests that lower-performing students tended to write the most creative stories, while high-performing students tended to write the least creative stories.Description
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A Comparative Study of Two Process Approaches to the Teaching of Writing to Third Grade StudentsThe purpose of this study was to determine if the quality of writing of third grade students instructed in a structured method of writing would vary from that of a similar group instructed in an unstructured method. The element of learning style that denoted a preference for structure or lack of preference for structure was considered to determine any significant relationship with writing achievement. This study was conducted over a ten-week period with twenty-four third-grade students. Pre-treatment and post-treatment writing samples were collected. One group of students, (Group I) was instructed using a structured approach to writing. The other group (Group II) was instructed in an unstructured approach to writing. The element of the Learning Styles Inventory: Primary Version that pertained to structure was administered to all subjects. Data comparing pre-treatment and post-treatment scores of Group I and Group II were analyzed using a dependent t test. Data comparing post-treatment scores of Group I and II were analyzed using an independent t test. Chi-square was used to determine any relationship between writing achievement and learning style. The analysis of the data revealed that Group I, the group using the structured method, showed a significant gain from pre-treatment to post-treatment samples. There was no significant difference between pre-treatment and post-treatment samples of Group II, but there was some gain. There was no significant difference between the post-treatment scores of Group I and Group II. There was no significant relationship between writing scores and learning style for Group I or Group II. Based on analysis of the data, the conclusion can be drawn that both groups improved using a process-based writing approach. The structured group demonstrated significant gains. Learning style did not seem to have any relationship to the writing achievement of this group of student over the ten-week treatment period. Interest in the writing process and the inter-relatedness of learning style and writing achievement reveals numerous areas for further research. This supports awareness of learning styles and use of a process approach to writing in the classroom.
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Do Students in the Fifth-Grade Benefit from the Writing Workshop with Regard to their Scores on the New York State Fifth-Grade Writing Test?There are two very different approaches being used in classrooms today with regards to teaching writing. A traditional approach to teaching writing might include using a grammar textbook and/or a workbook. A holistic approach to teaching writing believes that students learn to write by writing. Students move through the entire writing process, from prewriting to publishing, for each piece of work they create. This is called the Writing Workshop. More current research was needed to determine if one approach was more beneficial than the other. In this longitudinal study, both approaches were taught in separate classrooms for an entire school year. The scores on the end of the year writing test were compared with one another to see if there was a statistically significant difference between the two teaching methods. Computed t (2.44) was greater than Table t (2. 019) indicating a statistically significant difference between Group A and Group B. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. Statistically, then, the Writing Workshop seems to have positively affected the writing skills of the fifth-grade students. Those students participating in the intervention group demonstrated more growth in their writing by the end of the year than the control group showed.
