Data

I am proud to say that I reject the null hypothesis.  My t-value of 2.6284 is greater than my critical value of 1.812, making my data statistically significant and positive.

When Mary and I administered this test, we noticed a flaw in our materials right away.  The worksheets given to the students only provided three lines at the bottom of  the page for writing.  Even though we encouraged the boys to write as much as they could and use the back of the page if needed, I think, psychologically, the provided space had an impact on the length of their writing.  On some level the boys interpreted the three line space as the expectation and only a few ventured beyond that.  Some even struggled to squeeze their thoughts into this limited space.  I am fairly confident that if we made some changes to the worksheet, or perhaps the format for administering this assessment, the results would have been even more significant.

I was amazed at how much more some of the boys wrote this time around and how much their writing had improved.  Despite the space limitation constraint, some of the boys nearly doubled their word count.  Two students wrote exactly the same amount and only one student actually wrote less.  I remember thinking that this particular student seemed a little bit "checked out" throughout the entire class period, so I think this may have been a bit of a fluke for him.  He is usually a bit more diligent.

Even in the face of these constraints, the boys showed statistically significant improvement.  Just further proof of how valuable VTS can be.