The Last Summary

Tuesday, July 28th

The last day of CAWP begin with Ruie returning personal narratives to everyone and stating that we could continue working on those narratives instead of the adolescent memory. Next week completed two surveys for National Writing Project. One survey was completed and sent to Paige. The other was completed and submitted online for the National Writing Project. We will complete a follow up survey in the spring. More than likely the follow up will test to see if we completed professional development in our schools. I’m sure it will also ask questions that seek to see if we implement the writing strategies that we learned during the Capital Area Writing Project. After handing in our CAWP implementation plans we completed our focus area post-test with consensograms. There was some debate about why fellows rated their ability to conduct a professional development session so high. Individuals who present often stated that they did not rate themselves as a ten. Perhaps delivering professional development is more difficult than it looks. After using the consensograms to rate ourselves Ruie gave me a breakdown of pre and post test data. Below is the pre and post test data for self-evaluation. I have posted the percentages of fellow who rated themselves between an 8 and 10. The data shows that after attending CAWP fellows feel much better about their ability to teach writing, to present writing teaching strategies to other teaches, and to write themselves.

Charts Pre Post
I feel that I know the research on the teaching of writing 12% 78%
I am confident about my abilities to teach writing 42% 88%
I am confident about my abilities to integrate technology and writing 18% 81%
I am confident about my own abilities as a writer 53% 82%
I am confident that I could deliver professional development of teaching writing 48% 81%


Next we were given time to read different sections from the class position paper. Each section was posted to the CAWP Pbworks wiki. Some fellows commented on the wiki while they read each of the sections their classmates posted. It was neat to see the multimodal products created by our classmates. Our wiki also provides ideas for how fellows can use wikis in their own classrooms. The last activity of CAWP was one of the best. Fellows finally revealed the person they spied on during the last few weeks. A variety of gifts and writing pieces were presented. We shared laughs and memories of a great summer. A few people even shed a few tears. All in a few weeks work at North Carolina State University’s annual Capital Area Writing Project.