Moving from Assessment to Instruction

My buddy, E, is a gregarious 4th grader.  He enjoys reading and writing fantasy stories.  In particular, he seems to be quite interested in futuristic fantasy stories.  He is a strong reader - both fluent and accurate.  On both of the 4th grade level reading passages he scored in the 75th percentile, while only making 1 or 2 miscues per passage.  He did well with comprehension questions using explicit recall.  However, he struggled a bit with implicit questions.  He was able to find clues in the text with a look-back, but he had trouble self-generating his replies to the implicit questions when first asked.

Based on E's results from his assessments and his interest in futuristic stories, I am thinking about creating a lesson designed to help his comprehension around implicit recall questions using a text he would find interesting.  I'd like to work with him on using strategies to identify important information in the text, while activating his background knowledge to help make inferences.  The lesson would satisfy GLE 2.1.5 -Apply comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading: predict and infer from grade level informational/expository text and/or literary/narrative text.

Literacy Project 1

Analysis

This analysis is based off of two short writing samples provided by E (shortened to protect student identity).  The first sample is half a page of a final draft he wrote about his feelings towards various academic subjects.  The second sample is the first two pages of a rough draft about a mysterious adventure.  I believe that this piece was written in response to a classroom prompt.  The spelling analysis is taken from both the written samples and from the student's spelling inventory.

Ownership and Meaning

When I sat down with E to share his writing, the first piece he shared was his final draft.  It is more of an essay than a story - it details his feelings towards the various academic subjects in school.  Still, he was much more excited to talk about some of the fantasy stories he has written.  He happily shared his piece about a talking fish, as well as the piece I have about the adventure he takes to discover long-lost pirate treasure.  He repeatedly stated that his favorite type of story to write is a "make-believe, fantasy story."  I wonder if he first offered the essay because it was a completed piece, and he believed that it was what I would want to see.

E shared that his mom often tells him that he should be a writer when he grows up.  However, in his essay, he describes his relationship with writing as a "battle."  He feels that he "always take[s] forever just to come up with one idea!"  He also shared that he becomes discouraged when his grades in writing do not reflect the effort that he put into it.

Six Traits

Ideas

E's ideas in his final draft draw upon his own feelings and experiences in school.  He explains that he thinks "math is really important even when you have a job," and goes on to explain the difficulties in his relationship with writing.  In his rough draft, he sets the stage by discussing the circumstances in which he found a message in a bottle.  He then jumps to his "long trip to Mt. Gold and Silver."  As I only have the first two pages of this draft, I assume that the rest of the draft details his trip to find the treasure.

Organization

For the most part, organization in the two writing samples is strong.  E breaks up his stories nicely with clear paragraphing.  There is an attempt made at transitioning; however, this is typically done simply through use of the word "Then, ...".  At one point in his rough draft, there seems to be a large gap in his story.  He details the message he found in a bottle - it essentially gives him coded directions to buried treasure.  He writes that "it made no sense to me."  However, he immediately jumps to, "Then, I found myself packing for the trip."  There is a missed connection between these two statements; additional work here would benefit his story by making it clearer to his reader.

Voice 

Voice varies between the two pieces.  In his essay, his voice is very personal and clear.  He explains that he always tries his best at math, while writing can be a struggle for him.  He shares his discouragement at his writing grades.  In his rough draft, the voice is more mechanical and choppy.  At times he states, "This is what happened next when I found a strange message in a bottle."  From these statements, I infer that he views this piece of writing as one that must be completed step-by-step.  I wonder also if he had a requirement sheet (physical or mental) that he saw himself moving down as he wrote this piece.

Word Choice

E successfully uses colorful language in both of his pieces.  In his final draft, he uses words like "discourage, juicy, and gripe."  Words like "mysterious, unfortunately, and parchment" are found in his rough draft.  Overall, E infuses strong words into his writing to make it more interesting to his reader.  Additional experience and work could help him to add even more juicy words to his writing.

Sentence Fluency

E's sentence fluency is solid, though not necessarily strong.  Some of his sentences are choppy and have a bit of a staccato feel to them.  Additionally, his writing would benefit from stronger use of transitions.

Conventions

E successfully used conventions in his final draft.  I do not know if the piece originally looked as polished as the copy I have because I did not have access to his rough draft.  In the rough draft piece that I do have, there is some errors with punctuation.  He seems to be "using but confusing" where to place commas.  Additionally, he tends to capitalize words that do not need capitalizing - "Pirate."

Spelling

I believe that E's spelling is advanced for his age.  He missed the final four words on the inventory (forutanate, civlize, confindant, and oppossion).  Still, his approximations were close.  He needs work on syllable junctures, consonant doubling, inflected endings, and prefixes and suffixes (Bear et al, 2004).  Additionally, E remained at the independent level on the Examiner spelling lists up through the sixth grade words.  He reached the instructional level for the upper middle school and high school level words.  E misspelled a couple of words in his writing, though they were more challenging words.  He spelled "unfourtlulay" and "mysteryous."  Again, these misspellings represent that he is in the syllable stage of spelling development (Templeton & Morris, 1999).  Though misspelled, I appreciate his effort at including these words in his writing as they enhance his story.

E made an interesting statement during administration of the spelling inventory.  After being given the word "cellar" and hearing it used in a sentence, he said, "I usually just start spelling a word as soon as I hear it.  I started to spell 'seller,' but after I listened to the sentence I knew it was 'cellar.'"  He demonstrated his knowledge that spelling represents both sound and meaning (Templeton & Morris, 1999). 

Lesson Plan

Objectives

Student will be able to "chunk" words into syllables for use as both a reading and a spelling strategy.

Standards

GLE 1.1 Use word recognition skills and strategies to read and comprehend text.

GLE 3.3.2 Spells words appropriate for grade level accurately.

Materials

List of multisyllabic words
Small whiteboard
Dry erase marker
Sock eraser

Instruction


Teacher will show student list of multisyllabic words and explain what it is.  Teacher will explain that student will be writing words on his whiteboard (one at a time), and then he will chunk them into individual syllables.  The act of writing the word on the whiteboard will serve as reinforcement of correct spelling of word.  If necessary, a discussion about syllables will be included.  Teacher explains that this process of breaking words down helps both in figuring out new words when reading, as well as listening for sounds and word parts when spelling longer words.


Teacher models activity by writing the first word on the whiteboard.  Teacher then breaks the word into chunks with marker (ex: steth-o-scope).  Teacher models reading the word by reading each chunk and then blending the word together.


Teacher assists student as he tries on this process with the second word.


Teacher releases student to independent practice with the rest of the words.  Teacher continues to monitor that student is correctly breaking words into syllables and blending word back together.


The lesson is closed with a discussion on how the student can employ this strategy both when reading new words in a text, as well as accurately spelling multisyllabic words for use in his writing.

Assessment


Teacher will assess student's ability to decode multisyllabic words in text by monitoring him as he completes the exercise on the whiteboard.  Teacher will continue to assess student's ability throughout the year as he reads, as well as through administration of running records and other reading assessments.


Teacher will also assess student's ability to accurately spell multisyllabic words by looking for their correct spelling in his writing and on spelling tests.

***Idea for follow-up lesson***


Teacher would verbally give multisyllabic words to student for him to write down on his whiteboard using the chunking strategy to decode the word.

Conferencing

As I read Routman's Chapter 9 yesterday, I was immediately reminded of both my mentor teachers. In my dyad, my teacher's last two periods of the day are a reading/writing block. The students have a task most nights that involve them writing in their writer's notebook (the task usually aligns with the novel they're reading at the time). For the first thirty minutes of class, the students work on MSP stems and complete AR reading while my teacher goes around the room and assesses their writer's notebooks. She often uses this time to talk with the students about their writing. Sometimes, a student is on the computers taking an AR test, and she will ask, "Suzy, when you finish up the test will you come back to your desk so that we can have a conference?" Conferencing about writing is a norm in this class, and I feel that many students look forward to the opportunity to work with her.

Conferencing is also done by my mentor teacher in my main placement. As she hands out the stories that the students are currently working on, she will talk with them about what they've written so far, what she is excited to read about, etc. The students recently began working on developing stories with beginning, middle, and endings. I was blown away by some of the work when I went back this week for conferences. First graders are completely capable of engaging in the writing process. If established norms are set in place, the students will live up to them.

It's been exciting for me to see some of the practices Routman describes in "real life," out in classrooms.

Looking Around

Reading Lamott again this week has been a treat. As usual, her wit and humor captivated me (this time on my four hour plane ride to Austin for a friend's wedding). I often find her advice on writing to be profound - easily applicable to life, not just writing. I was particularly struck by her chapter, Looking Around. Too often, we become caught up in our lives and the daily grind (myself included!), and fail to see and recognize the world going on around us. Lamott's point about not only seeing the world, but stepping outside of ourselves to view ourselves with "compassionate detachment" was particularly powerful. She goes on to state, "I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?"

What a great question. I want to work on reverence. Personal goal for the year.

Do I have meningitis?

Reading Anne Lamott this week has been refreshing.  I appreciate her sarcastic and dry sense of humor.  I've caught myself actually laughing out loud as I've been reading it.  In addition to enjoying her sarcasm, I've been struck by her description of the writing process.  I was hung up when she began to describe the writing process and went on to talk about staring at the computer screen, listening to voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt, and severe hypochondria (p. 7).  She goes on to write, "You hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.  There is a vague pain at the base of your neck.  It crosses your mind that you have meningitis" (p. 7).  As I read this passage, I thought to myself, "Holy cow, it's like she's inside my head and knows exactly how I feel when I'm asked to write a paper."  It was powerful for me to read that and know it's a common experience, even for those who make their living by writing.



As I was reading through Routman's Writing Essentials, I was struck by how much of her advice for strong writing aligns with advice for strong teaching in general.  Simplifying your teaching, not only for writing but all subjects, will make the material more accessible to students.  Celebrating your students, for academic abilities, personal strengths, etc. makes for a richer classroom community.  Similarly, sharing your life with your students makes you more accessible to them and helps strengthen your community.  I appreciated Routman's tips for helping create a classroom that is full of celebrated writers, but I ultimately feel that her advice chould be applied outside writing to teaching in general.

Reading

As I read through the first couple chapters of Fox this afternoon, I was transported back to my job as a Title I reading para.  I flashed back to my reading groups and our work on phonemic awareness - practicing phoneme segmentation and blending the word.  I thought of my first graders practicing words on their whiteboards and "boxing the blend" or "underlining the digraph."  I really enjoy working with students at this stage in their literacy development as they're starting to make connections between letters and sounds and seeing word parts repeated in words.

As I read through Chapter 3, I was struck by the line "the pictures in storybooks are an avenue to meaning that does not call for phonemic awareness, understanding the alphabetic principle, recognizing specific words, remembering the letters, or knowing letter-sound associations" (p. 70).  I immediately thought of my September experience in my main placement.  I listened to a student read the book David Goes to School! by David Shannon.  She read the entire book by looking at the pictures and making up a story that made sense with it.  For instance, on the page with David staring out the window with the written text stating, "Pay Attention!", she read, "Stop looking out the window, David!"  She understood that the book is filled with instances of the teacher correcting David's behavior in some form or another, so her story had to match this premise.  While she was not reading the text, she was reading the pictures and filling in an appropriate story.

Food for thought:  How can I best assist this student in growing her literacy skills and helping her make the jump to looking at the text, in addition to the pictures?

Real Life Application

As I was reading through the Sulzby & Teale article, I was struck by the idea that literacy starts to develop from use of real life application and use of reading and writing to achieve goals.  This idea makes perfect sense after reflection, yet I had never really considered it exactly that way before.

This premise leaped off the page for me in relation to what I'm currently learning about teaching middle schoolers.  In class this past Wednesday, my small group focused on the cognitive changes that adolescents go through:  one change is increased boredom/frustration with material that doesn't connect to their own lives.  Relevant, meaningful curriculum is best practice for students K-12, but I'm really fascinated with the idea that it develops much earlier than that: with children even younger than 14 months, in relation to their emerging literacy.

While thinking further through this idea and what it might look like in a classroom, I thought of the writing curriculum used in my main placement classroom.  I am student teaching in a first grade classroom, in a public school district, somewhere in the state of Washington, with a really, really wonderful master teacher (MT).  In MT's classroom, students use "Small Moments" where they write about experiences from their own lives.  The real life connection is obvious - students use their own experiences to shape the stories they tell.  The work is engaging - they have the choice on what to share and when.  Additionally, it helps strengthen classroom community as students learn about each other in meaningful ways.