When looking at the results of my students writing assessments, I had two major takeaways. 1. When looking at their handwritten narratives, it was obvious that students started running out of gas when they reached the middle of their story. Most of the narratives started strong, setting up the characters and the setting of their story. When students made it to the middle, their stories started falling apart. Another commonality with their narratives, students started losing their stories when they tried adding the dialog. Many times the dialog would just keep going with no other details. All stories needed work with their story closings as well, I believe it is because the middle of the story was lost and they just wanted to finish the story. My takeaway from this assessment is that students need instruction on how to use dialog in stories and we need practice with completing stories and writing strong endings. 2. Looking at the students CAASPP interim assessments (IAB) narratives, was depressing. They were asked to write a paragraph or more to finish a story. Most students wrote one or two sentences. They were also asked to include dialog with details to finish the story. Most students (even some of the better writers in the class) seriously failed this assessment. I believe this is mostly because these students have not had enough experience typing out stories, let alone creating stories and typing them right away. My biggest takeaway is that students need to start practicing typing out complete works of writing. I plan on beginning this practice as soon as we come back from winter break. I plan on having their published writings be typed out and put on the wall for display. From this first round of research and data results, I see the need for direct instruction, the need for typing practice, and the need for students to continue having designated writing time in the classroom. These are three steps that I am going to continue or begin for the next round of research.
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After reading papers, articles, and websites, my research has confirmed the need for explicit writing instruction in the classroom at the elementary level. As long as writing continues to get pushed to the side for "more" important subjects, students will not perform proficiently in all subjects as we expect them too. My research questions have been around what writing strategies I can implement to teach writing. I have read about many different ways teachers have created writing environments in their classroom. What seems to be common throughout them all is simply giving students time to write. However there are many ways to boost this designated time. This designated writing time can be explicit instruction, collaboration time, practice physically writing, anything that gives writing a purpose and makes it important to the student. As I continue my research and begin implementing different strategies and practices into my classroom, I will be looking for progress in my students. Is giving more collaboration time more important than something else or do I need to give more explicit instruction? As I continue this study, I will be looking at where I need to adjust to meet my students needs. While I am focusing on narrative writing, almost all strategies and core teaching can be applied to all genres. As a result of my research I have begun implementing a core 20-30 minutes that is designated to writing. This includes instruction, time for student collaboration and writing. At first, simply finding the time to devote to writing was the hardest part of this study. However, I was able to do it and I'm excited to see how my students progress.
I will be collecting student writing using CAASPP TOMS website. Through this source I will be able to assess student writing progress using CAASPP designed rubrics that are national common core standard aligned. These rubrics are on a scale of No score - 4. I have changed my essential question from focusing on writing prompts to teaching students how to produce a narrative writing that is CAASPP aligned, which is also aligned with the national common core standards. By doing this I will have a more concrete focus and will be able to collect specific data on student progress. While I changed my essential question to focusing on narrative writing, I believe that the strategies I put in place will also provide progress for students in all genres. I will also be collecting student writing through their writing journals that they write in weekly.
Both of these collections of data will allow me to track progress and assess my students at the end of the project to determine if students have met the common core standard for third grade writing. The student writing journals will allow me to track student progress by the week and the IAB's will allow me to formally assess student progress towards the national common core standards and allow me to see if students will be prepared to take the CAASPP at the end of the school year. How can I support students to write and collaborate effectively when responding to writing prompts?11/5/2019 A large portion of writing that students need to learn is responding to writing prompts. For the entirety of a students academic life, students will be required to write to prompts accordingly, in all genres and formats. During the primary years of school, students seem to be taught the foundation of writing. They learn sentence structure, how to write a paragraph, and write according to a specific genre: informational, narrative, and opinion. It seems as though learning the foundation of genre writing has been pushed to the side after the primary school years and having students learn how to write to prompts has become more important in today’s educational system. In California starting in third grade, students are required to take a state test where their ability to write to a prompt will be tested for the rest of their academic lives. Janet Angelillo wrote a book called Writing to the Prompt When Students Don't Have a Choice. In this book she explores the importance of continuing to build the foundation of writing by using writing workshops. "In the workshops is where they learn the foundation of writing. They learn how to manipulate their own writing and how to write appropriately for the genre of writing that they choose" (Angelillo, 2005). Not only is writing to prompts important for school, it is also important for life and the workforce. People need to be able to respond to other people, we do this through social media, emails, letters, and advertisement. Writing is essential to communication. Now, today's educational system gets stuck teaching to writing prompts exclusively rather than reinforcing and building off of the fundamental reading and writing skills needed to be successful when responding to those prompts. Dombey says, "But only through the ability to write as well as read can children become full members of a literate society, able to contribute their experiences and ideas to those remote from them in time and place. And only through writing can they learn to work out those ideas and reflect on those experiences in ways that carry their thinking forward" (Dombey, 2013). In other words, without continuing the development of the necessary skills writing to a prompt will yield little growth for students. Furthermore, students need explicit instruction on how to respond to prompts and other pieces of writing. They also need a complete understanding of the different genres and what is expected to meet the writing requirements for those specific genres. Teacher's also need to include in their writing instruction methods of dissecting writing prompts in order to further the student's comprehension and their ability to transfer their skills from one prompt to the next.
I will be focusing on writing instruction by giving 20 -30 minutes of direct instruction of writing daily. These lessons will be structured to model how to dissect writing prompts and respond to the prompts accurately. These lessons will model reflection and editing within the writing process. Lessons will also include grammar instruction within the writing lessons. Students will be given multiple chances to collaborate on their writing throughout a four week period. At the end of every four weeks, students will have the chance to publish one piece of writing that they were able to collaborate on with a peer and edit as necessary. All research will be conducted in my general education classroom with 26 third grade students. The lessons are embedded into the regular school day during their language arts period. Progress will be assessed in their writing according to the success criteria for their genre of writing. This success criteria has been created by using third grade standards and requirements for the specific genre that the writing prompt is asking the students to write: informational, opinion, and narrative writing. Students will be given a score between 1-3, 1 - surface level, 2 - deep level, and 3 - transfer level. If a student is at the transfer level, that means they are able to take their skills from one prompt and respond to another prompt adequately. I will be collecting writing journals, online writing tests, and writing organizers throughout the study to track student progress. As I continue to find articles to help my research paper, I am finding more and more of the same information. Writing is difficult and a demanding task for students. Students have to bring in many skills at once in order to be successful writers. As I am finding new articles, every single one talks about the importance of modeling, collaborating, and giving students strategies to be successful. Sylvia Read implemented the IMSCI model (Inquiry, Modeling, Shared reading, Collaborative, and Independent). What I love from this model of teaching writing is the collaborative part. Giving students a chance to read their peers work and learn from one another makes their writing important to them by giving it purpose. Knowing that someone else will read their writing often helps motivate students to do their best. I also love the idea of having students write together, this often takes away some of the pressure and daunting task of putting words to paper because you can strategically place students together to help build on those students strengths. Collaboration during writing is also a great tool for ELD students because they benefit from the oral rehearsal of ideas before having to write those ideas down onto paper.
After reading the new articles I am taking the collaboration piece more important. I am going to implement a time for students to collaborate more often. I have started doing this and I instantly saw students more engaged with their writing. I saw more students editing their paper and putting more ideas down on paper than previously when I didn't give collaboration time. As the year continues, I can't wait to make this time more strategic and see how my students progress. These articles go with my essential question because at the heart of my question is getting students writing. My essential question is how can I support my students to write and collaborate effectively when responding to writing prompts. As I continue to research this topic, I am looking for strategies that I can implement and help build my students writing progress. These new articles have been helpful in giving me new ideas and confirming strategies that I have already found. I have been really digging into Janet Angelillo's book Writing to the Prompt, When Students Don't Have a Choice. It is one of very few writings that I have been able to find specifically on my topic. I have been extremely interested in every chapter of this book because of her thoughts and ideas. Chapter 3 talks about the importance of having students talk with one another. "Practicing conversational skills helps everyone develop a bank of things to say. It also gives people a chance to throw ideas around and to stretch them out". I thought this was a great idea because more often than not I have seen from observations of other teachers and my own classroom, students are often sent to brainstorm on their own in their own writing journal before ever getting a chance to talk with their peers. In this chapter it also talks about the struggle of good conversation between students. She suggests using the fishbowl strategy to teach students how to have those deep and meaningful conversations to really help with their writing.
Along with Angelillo, I have seen common threads throughout all my research on writing in the elementary classroom setting. A quote that I love from one dissertation What We Know About Writing by Henrietta Dombey says, "But Only through the ability to write as well as read can children become full members of a literate society, able to contribute their experiences and ideas to those remote from them in time and place. And only through writing can they learn to work out those ideas and reflect on those experiences in ways that carry their thinking forward." Every article that I have read expresses this same main idea, writing is key to students success. However, every article also talks about how our educational system is lacking in teaching students to be successful writers. I think students aren't scoring well because while many teachers are teaching the foundations of writing and making sure their students know how to write an informational text, narrative text, and an opinion text, many students are missing how to write to a writing prompt, which is using a different skill set that also needs to be taught. Students are missing the skills necessary to transfer their specific genre writing and morph it as necessary to write to a prompt. However, if students don't have the foundation of writing a genre, they won't be ready to write to a prompt either. I believe this is where it gets tricky and where differentiation inside the classroom comes in and is necessary to meet students needs. After reading the different writings and taking in the different ideas being written about writing instruction in the classroom, I have created a list of four key takeaways. 1. Student focused 2. Teacher lessons are strategic with many opportunities to model good writing
4. Multiple chances to write, edit, and publish writing Writing is one physical way people are able to express themselves. We use writing on a daily basis, whether it is through text message, social media, email, etc. Writing whether formal or informal is a necessity to be successful in the 21st century. "But only through the ability to write as well as read can children become full members of a literate society, able to contribute their experiences and ideas to those remote from them in time and place. And only through writing can they learn to work out those ideas and reflect on those experiences in ways that carry their thinking forward." What We Know About Teaching Writing by Harrietta Dombey. Writing is critical to success and yet it is what I find to be the hardest to teach and assess.
At the district level, there has been a committee of educators that have created a district writing test to assess the districts K-2nd grade students on their writing skills. This district writing test has been going on for years before I started teaching and was just redone in the last year to be a more accurate tool of assessing students writing skills. The new test will be administered this 2019-2020 school year. Starting at 3rd grade, statewide, students are given the CAASP test, which assesses math skills, reading skills, and writing skills all at once. While I have not administered this test yet, I am a little nervous for it based off rumors of what other teachers have said about how hard it is, especially for third graders. During my time at this site, we have never focused on writing in particular. My site has been more concerned about math scores in the past few years. This year our site has become more concerned about designated ELD instruction and boosting CAASP scores (which you could technically include writing in boosting CAASP scores). While looking at my own classroom and what I have been working on the past four years, I have noticed growth in all areas except writing. I don't see a full year's worth of growth in my students and I feel like I haven't been able to push them to their full potential in writing to this point. I know the importance of writing, and I have started making steps in order to help students grow such as visuals, success criteria's, and more genre focused writing lessons. While I am concerned about the writing instruction in my class, I am encouraged as I read different articles on how to teach and incorporate writing into the classroom. Almost every article has expressed that writing is the most difficult subject to teach and the hardest to assess. What I find interesting is how many schools are "doing it right" and how other schools are struggling immensely. Why? I don't understand how there is such a great divide in teaching writing. After reading several articles it seems to come down to getting students engaged. Finding a way to teach a love for writing. When students don't like writing they don't want to do it. So I guess my next question is how can I build a love for writing in the classroom to help build students writing skills? For the past two years I have been focusing on having my kids set goals and be aware of where they are individually in their learning, specifically in math. As I was trying to decide on an essential question, I wanted to continue exploring this in the classroom. However, I know that I needed to go beyond math specifically. I started thinking about my teaching practice and where I've seen the least progress over the past few years. The first subject that came to mind was writing. I have not seen significant progress in my students writing, other than the natural progress that comes with students attending school. Last year, I began creating success criteria for each genre of writing. I noticed at the end of the school year that students were using the checklists and examples and it started making a difference in their writing. I am looking forward to the continued use of this success criteria, however I am hoping to expand my lessons and student collaboration in this area of teaching. My biggest concern about expanding my writing lessons is time constraints. The curriculum my school uses has writing lessons implemented into the daily schedule, however our time slot for Language Arts does not give a lot of time to hit all aspects in the curriculum. I think I will have to find another slot during the day to really expand on writing or change the workshops (individual student work time while I work with small groups) that I have in place. I currently have students writing on their own in workshops, but I think it is too early in the year for them to be responding to a prompt. I feel it is necessary to do more restructuring in order for my students to be more successful writers.
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