1. The Adventures of Weather Girl
and Cloud Man: What Pre-
service Teachers Taught Us
about Teaching
Erin E Margarella
Matthew Ulyesses Blankenship
Jenifer J Schneider

2. Overview
 Original Study Context
 Theoretical Stance
 Data Source
 Methods
 Results
 Weather Girl
 Cloud Man
 Conclusion

3. Original Study Context
 Research Assistants for a Study
involving writing instruction through
iPad infusion.
 Tasked with observing pre-service
teacher and student interactions for
two small groups at a medium sized
catholic school.
 Met once weekly for four hours and
then the research team met to discuss
observations.

4. Theoretical Stance
 Social Constructive Lens – the
idea of how meaning is created
through interactions (Rosenblatt,
1994; Bandura, 1977)
 There must be social interaction
between two or more people to
create meaning.
 In this case, it was the group of
students, preservice teachers,
professor and each other.

5. Data Sources
 Field notes from original study
 Reflective notes from original
study
 Researcher reflective journal
 Notes from our discussions
 Researcher memory (confirmed
by other sources)
 Output from Original Study

6. Methods
 Reviewing, interacting
and discussing data
 Read and reread notes
looking for themes
 Composed individual
narratives and then
compared

7. Weather Girl
 Previous Thought- Teacher led
instruction
 Teacher modeling
 Shift in perception
 Intellectual freedom for students
 Fewer academic limitations
 Focused attention on student
interest
 High interest  increased
achievement

8. Cloud Man
 Previous Thought – Social
Construction
 Environmental Shift:
Rows to Groups
 Student Generated vs.
Teacher Generated
 Nice Looking vs. Nice
Learning
 Enduring Observation

9. Conclusion
 Extended observation has
transformative power for
novice to experienced teachers.
 Perceived social construction
to true socially constructed
experiences in the classroom.
 Increased academic freedom
for students leads to an
increase in student
achievement

10. References
 Bandura, A. (1977) Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
 Clay, M. (1975). What did I write? Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.
 Coker, D. (2007). Writing instruction for young children. In S.
Graham, C.A. MacArthur,
 & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Best Practices in Writing Instruction (pp.
101-118). New York, NY: Guilford.
 Dewey, J. (2005). Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Trade.
 Fitzgerald, J. (2005). Multilingual writing in preschool through
twelfth grade: The last 15

11. References
 Fitzgerald, J. (2005). Multilingual writing in preschool
through twelfth grade: The last 15 years. In C.A.
MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook
of writing research (pp. 337-354). New York, NY:
Guilford Press
 Hayes, J. (1996). A new framework for understanding
cognition and affect in writing. In
 C.M. Levy & S. Ransdell (Eds.), The science of writing:
Theories, methods, individual differences, and
applications (pp. 1-27). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
 Merriam, S.B. (2009). Qualitative research: a guide to design
and implementation.San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

12. References
 Mertns, D. M. (2003). Mixed methods and the politics of
human research. The transformative-emancipatory
perspective. In A. Tashakkori& C. Teddlie (Eds.),
Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research
(pp. 135-164). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
 Moje, E. (2002). Re-framing adolescent literacy research
for new times: Studying youth as a resource. Reading
Research and Instruction, 41, 211-228.
 Pressley, M., Mohan, L., Fingeret, L., Reffitt, K., Raphael-
Bogaert, R. (2007). Writing instruction in engaging and
effective elementary settings. In S. Graham, C.A.
MacArthur, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Best Practices in
Writing Instruction (pp. 13-27). New York, NY: Guilford.

13. References
 Rosenblatt, L.M. (1994). The transactional theory of
reading and writing. In Theoretical Models and
Processes of Reading (pp. 1363-1398). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
 Schlagal, B. (2002). Classroom spelling instruction:
History, research, and practice. Reading Research
and Instruction 42, 44-57.
 Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Boston:
MIT Press.

14. Questions?
The Adventures of
Weather Girl and
Cloud Man: What Pre-
service Teachers
Taught Us about
Teaching
Erin E Margarella - Erin Margarellaerinmargarel@usf.edu
Matthew Ulyesses Blankenship – mublanke@usf.edu
Jenifer J Schneider