Shanda Veatch EdTech 512 Design Document Introduction to Middle School Journalism: A WBI Problem Analysis Problem Lagging

test scores in writing and reading, and the lack of defined middle school Journalism curricular standards indicate a need for a standards based approach to Journalism instruction. The Washington State Journalism Education Association has identified standards for Journalism by bringing together multiple content area Essential Academic Learning Standards under one umbrella. These standards are focused on grades 9/10. The states Career and Technology Education standards do not specifically provide guidance to Journalism teachers at the middle school level as well. The Educational Technology standards are written to be combined with specific core content areas, and also, while they do provide some guidelines for instructors of middle school Journalism, these guidelines are general in their application, and meant to be adapted to any content area. At this point in time, there are no standards specifically written for Journalism, and there are no standards for middle school level journalism. This had led to lack of curriculum alignment for Journalism students at the middle school level. While the WJEA has identified the Essential Academic Learning Standards as they can be applied to high school Journalism programs, these same standards need to be adapted for middle school aspiring writers. According to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction website, students who met the writing standards for the 2010 MSP test is at 71%. In addition, the 7th grade state reading scores are lower, at 64%. Vancouver School Districts scores reflect the state trend coming in at 68.3% and 66.1% respectively. Gaiser Middle Schools 7th grade population, on the other hand, has turned in a poor report this year which places this school significantly below the state trend with only 60.7% of 7th grade students meeting the writing standard and 49% of 7th graders meeting the reading standard. This become a crisis for this particular population of students, and a concerted effort on behalf of these students is necessary to help them to improve both their reading and writing scores. Journalism, while not a core content area, has the ability to assist students in meeting and exceeding the state standards in both writing and reading. Aligning curriculum to meet standards will not only improve performance levels of students at Gaiser Middle School, but will provide all middle schools in the state the ability to address falling scores through Journalistic writing and reading. The root cause of this problem is a lack of an aligned Journalism curriculum for the state of Washington. If WBI curriculum is provided to instructors and advisors of this

course, there will more time for teachers to work with individual students to improve their skill sets while still meeting newspaper publishing deadlines. Washington State is currently phasing in standards for Educational Technology in all K12 classrooms. Beginning September of this year, OSPI is field testing drafts of educational technology assessments. The final versions of the educational technology assessments will be available to Washington teachers in July of 2011. There is a need to create more WBI opportunities for students in order to comply with the standards that are being put into place in the very near future. Journalism teachers and advisors are provided no standards based curriculum at the middle school level. This creates inconsistent practices among different buildings. Providing a WBI introduction to middle school Journalism curriculum that is directly aligned with current Language Arts and Educational Technology standards will give students the ability to work through a program that, while maintaining the integrity of a project based curriculum, will give students the time and opportunity to review and build on the reading and writing skills they have already mastered, while introducing new ones at an individual pace. Often, the need for remediation in writing and reading is overlooked in Journalism classes. Static content delivery will assist students with remedial activities that are not necessarily available in a classroom that is centered on production deadlines. Preliminary Goal Statement Upon completing the WBI Introduction to Middle School Journalism course, students will be able to recognize, write and evaluate various journalistic styles, including the 5 Ws and H, direct and indirect quotations, news and feature stories, sports articles, editorials, reviews, headlines and captions. Context This program will be specifically written to meet the needs of Journalism students at Gaiser Middle School in Vancouver, Washington. The class takes place in a dedicated computer lab on campus with 2003 Windows platforms on each computer. All computers have internet access, and Microsoft Office 2003 (word, PowerPoint, Publisher and Photoshop). 28 computers are licensed with Adobe InDesign2. The initial design of this course will be intended for blended delivery. This will allow the students and the teacher to work through the material together while continuing with a publication schedule. The teacher will be will be comfortable working with the content, become familiar with the standards and the learning management system, as well as with the tools necessary for working on the publication itself (ie: InDesign, Publisher, Photoshop, Word). The instructional design will created by the teacher of this course. There is district provided administrative and technical support for the teacher. There is one technology coordinator dedicated part time to the building. All design and implementation will rest on the teacher/facilitator of this program.

Audience Students taking Journalism at Gaiser Middle School come from diverse backgrounds, and cross many cultural and socioeconomic divides. There are currently approximately 960 students at Gaiser grades 6-8. These numbers have been increasing annually. The population is up from 846 the close of last school year. 71% of students are Caucasian, the remaining being from varied ethnic backgrounds. In May of 2010 Gaiser reported that 55.7% of students qualified for free and reduced lunches. Journalism is an elective course and is available to 7th and 8th graders, the majority of whom have met the state standards for reading and writing. Most students have had some experience with computers and technology, but the skill level varies from student to student. Some are entering the course with a desire to learn how to create layouts; some have selected this course in order to improve their writing skills, while others are interested primarily in photography. There is a broad range of learning styles in this population as a result of these varied interests. Motivation levels also vary amongst these students. Some have entered the course due to a strong interest in publications, while others are participating in what is considered to be a non-conventional classroom in order to simply explore new curricular options.