I made two prominent changes in this Research Question. I listed examples of academic curriculums that could have music incorporated into them and I also described how this incorporation of music into academics could specifically impact the students (academically and socially).
Some prominent changes that I made when revising this research question were specifying what type of music by changing it to songwriting techniques. This also made the "incorporation of music" more specific as it indicated how I would be using music within the classroom: not by having students listen to music, but by having them create it. The addition of "songwriting techniques" into my research question also identifies a gap that other research does not address. Other research has specifically addressed music within the classroom, but not the creation of music within an ELA classroom.
To what extent do the incorporation of songwriting techniques into a New York City 9th grade ELA class improve students’ ability to recall and understand characterization?
The main change that I made to the research question was to change "the understanding of writing skills" to "students' ability to recall and understand characterization." By choosing a specific ELA skill to focus on, my research is more specific and thus, easier to understand and potentially recreate in the future. Additionally, it makes my own research more specific and different from other research that prior researchers have conducted. Furthermore, instead of just understanding characterization or an ELA writing skill, I specified in this iteration of my Research Question that I will be measuring how students are able to recall or remember lessons relating to characterization, which will expand my research further. By working to answer this research question, there is a potential for people to believe that music should be further incorporated into classrooms and extremely benefit the learning of students.
To what extent does the incorporation of songwriting into a ninth-grade ELA class impact students’ ability to engage with and understand indirect characterization?
This is the final iteration of my research question. The biggest difference between this question and the prior one was changing "recall" to "engage with." I realized that recollection of characterization would only make sense for students who had already extensively learned about characterization, which the ninth-graders I had planned to teach had not. Additionally, I wanted to measure beyond just if students could understand an arts-based curriculum, but if they would engage with the material as I had hypothesized. Another change in this iteration of the research question was changing "characterization" to focus on "indirect characterization." I realized that I was already mostly focusing on indirect characterization within my research, so it made the most sense for me to change the term being used in my research question as well.