StAIR: Project Report
Learning Need:
This StAIR is designed to help students understand MLA style for citations in a research paper.
HSCE’s:
1.1Understand and practice writing as a recursive process.
1.4Develop and use the tools and practices of inquiry and research.
Instructional Strategies:
The StAIR begins by employing a short inductive strategy where I pose a question to the student about whether citation is necessary if you change the words from the original text. After answering, students will see the rule that ideas must be cited just like direct quotations.
Next, I transition into a didactic strategy where I give the students the 4 main rules for using parenthetical citations, followed by an example on how to properly make one using a works cited entry. A quiz question is used to assess the understanding of this information.
A final didactic strategy is used next to teach the student when an author’s name can be left out from a parenthetical citation. Again, a quiz question is included to assess understanding.
In addition, I have designed this StAIR to be mathetic in its entirety. After the student has completed the entire kiosk mode StAIR, the student is prompted to take a quiz in a word document. This quiz can be printed, completed, and turned in to show overall understanding of the lesson in full and demonstrate the scaffolding learning growth.
Input:
There are 3 quiz questions ingrained in the StAIR itself which must be answered correctly for the student to move on. There is feedback on the incorrect answer choices that help the student understand why that option is wrong. In addition, as explained above, I have included a final 12 question master quiz for use after the StAIR has been completed.
Assessment:
I used this StAIR as a classroom instruction tool just to see how it would go over and it went well. I am confident that a student that missed class would be able to use this to catch up on what we covered. A weakness would be that if students come into this StAIR without a strong background on what a works cited page is, they may get lost or frustrated.
Creating a StAIR is time consuming, but there is no doubt that what is created will be useful many times over. I like the idea of a final quiz at the end so that I can gauge the overall understanding of the material. Upon return of the quiz, they will have a quality study guide for reference as they make their own citations in their own research.