Moving from assessment to instruction

My buddy is a strong reader. During one of our meetings she informed me that her teacher told her mom at conferences that she's reading at a sixth grade level. She can pronounce challenging words with little difficulty and her comprehension is excellent; she can recount many details of the story that I myself would have trouble remembering (such as Amelia Earhart flying over 40 hours).

My buddy, A, likes to read  but admits she doesn't have much time for free choice reading at home.  When she is able to choose her reading material, A prefers fantasy novels that allow her to use her imagination.  A also typically goes for books in a series that she knows is good or is recommended by a friend or teacher.

A has many strengths as a reader but there are a couple of areas where I see room for improvement.  For starters, when A reads aloud to me she rarely uses expression regardless of how challenging the material is for her. Additionally, A commonly substitutes words that look alike and doe not often catch her mistake, even when the substitution changes the meaning.  I think one or both of these areas will be excellent focus points for a lesson in reading with A.

Analysis of Student Writing and Lesson Plan- Rough Draft

    I only obtained one writing sample from A.  The writing sample was constructed after a prompt of what the students would do if they woke up one day and suddenly realized that animals could talk.  A was particularly fond of this prompt because she loves animals and enjoys writing about them.  The main animal character in the story is a hamster called Oreo who is modeled after her real life pet.  She informed me that imagining that Oreo could talk was good inspiration for her on this piece.

    In terms of the six traits this paper is overall very strong.  Her topic is very focused and the idea is well developed which can be partially credited due to the specific prompt she was given for this piece.  She provides adequate details to give the reader a thorough picture of the events that unfold and doesn't leave any loose ends.  The story is fairly short (just a few pages), and she chose a fairly short time frame during which the events take place (one night) so it doesn't feel rushed or vague at all.

    The story is very well organized.  If I was judging Alexis' writing solely off this piece I would say organization is one of her strongest skills.  She has a clear beginning, middle, and end and the sequence of events is very logical and linear.  I think she may have been actually focusing too closely on sequence of events and perhaps should have put a little more thought into developing her ideas first.

    While organization is As' strong area, voice is perhaps her weakest.  It was clear from our discussion that the topic was interesting and exciting for her and she even made is personal by including her real life pet in the story.  Despite the connections to her interests this piece is lacking in voice.  She tells a story with all of the details I'm sure the teacher requires of them but I didn't really hear her in the piece at all.  It felt a little cut and dry and a lot of the colorful adjectives were ones added after the teacher's corrections.  The story was a little predictable and could have been more engaging.

    As' word choice in this piece was adequate.  Like I mentioned previously, her teacher crossed out and replaced many of her  words with more colorful or descriptive ones.  Some examples include referring to the hamster by it's name instead or merely calling it "my hamster," or replacing "said" (which was the only verb used with dialogue) with "demanded."  A also used some inappropriate word choice for the beginning of sentences (but).

    Sentence fluency on this piece was decent.  A got the job done but she started many of her sentences in a similar manner and the flow was not always smooth.  Her conventions were similar.  Her spelling is strong, I only noted a few minor errors (all most, wonnderd, hungrey, and considently- consistently).  Her punctuation was spot on and every sentence started with a capital.  Her grammar was often off however, I noticed she mixed up tenses quite a bit and these were among the most common corrections by her teacher.

Lesson Outline

Objectives
To analyze her writing and to discover more colorful words to include in her revision of "The Day the Animals Could Talk"

Standards
GLE 1.3.1:  Revises text, including changing words, sentences, paragraphs, and ideas


Materials
Pencil, paper, thesaurus

Instructional strategies
This lesson will occur in a writing-conference context.

I will discuss word choice with Alexis and how word choice can make a piece more exciting and enjoyable for the reader. 

I will then have Alexis read the first page of her draft and we will brainstorm some words that could be replaced with more interesting ones. 

Initialy,  I will give Alexis some suggestions for more interesting words and ways to find alternatives (such as using the thesaurus).

After I feel Alexis has an understanding of the task I will select a dozen or so words for her to replace and leave her to complete the task.  I will also ask her to come up with some words on her own that she thinks could be improved.

Alexis will have 25 minutes to work on the revisions and then we will meet back to discuss her work.

Assessment
I will assess her understanding of the concept of word choice by noting the words she chooses to replace and the words she substitutes in, checking to make sure the replacement words make sense and are an improvement upon her previous selections.


   

You have to care.

You have to care.  It's something we've heard over and over again in our teacher prep courses.  It always seemed like common sense to me, I mean who would go through all this effort to become a teacher- a job which has historically been undervalued and underpaid- if they didn't really care about kids?  Yet how many articles have we read that stressed the importance of kids genuinely feeling that their teacher cares about them.  I always found it somewhat tiring to read this same thing over and over again.

This week I read these words in a different context.  In Lamott's Bird by Bird there is one simple quote I underlined that seems like it should be just as much common sense as my former example but somehow has seemingly been forgotten in light of NCLB and the increasing pressure of standardized tests.  The quote is, "To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care." (107).  Such a simple quote, nothing flashy or poetic about it but yet it pretty much sums up what is missing from the education of many young writers.

With standards to meet and cirriculum materials to follow I fear that students free choice in writing is being greatly diminished and I think that's such a shame.  If we don't give students the opportunity to choose what they write about how can we expect them to care about it?  If they don't care they will not grow.  We have to teach them to love writing and to see the power in it first and foremost and worry about the details later.

Raising Expectations

The Routman reading for this week really got me thinking about performance expectations and my preconceived notions about what children can and can not do at a given age.  This has always been something I've struggled with because I know there is a fine line between expecting too much of a student and causing them to loose confidence and not challenging them enough and causing them to loose interest.  Lean either way too far and you are going to be seriously impacting their learning in a negative way.  To add to that every student is going to be at a different place and the teacher is responsible for finding out where that place is, monitoring it and adjusting expectations accordingly.  It seems like a huge responsibility.

I have a connection to this reading that is pertinent to address here.  Last year I took part in America Reads, America Counts, a work study program where college students can earn financial aid by going into classrooms that are identified as having high need for additional support and tutoring students in reading/writing/math.  I worked in a learning support room at a title 1 school that had a high proportion of minority students.  The learning support classroom was set up in learning centers that groups based on ability would rotate to at given intervals.  I manned the writing table where students worked on "perfect papers" which were essentially just answering questions based on a short non-fiction reading and including appropriate punctuation and spacing.  I quickly noticed that many of the kids had hand writing that was almost illegible and several other mechanical errors that were being overlooked.  At first I went along with this because I assumed there was a bigger picture focus and didn't want to step on any toes.  After some time I started challenging the students to write better, write slower, and fix their mistakes.  The boy who probably had the worst hand writing changed over night.  He started writing on the lines, his letters were suddenly recognizable.  His teachers and the other aides in the room were astonished by his sudden and unexplainable improvement.  I didn't accept anything less after that.

Bird By Bird

I just finished the reading in Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and I have to say I think it caused a bit of anxiety in me.  That woman comes off a little neurotic for sure.  Still, I can somewhat relate to some of the things she is saying.  Although I don't know why anyone would ever want to write after listening to her.

Still, some of her points are very valid and her advice is sound.  I think this reading is important in the context of teaching literacy because I think some students get so worked up over what to write or get overly concerned about getting everything right that they can't write at all.  I think we need to teach students  how to write by teaching them to enjoy writing and not think of it as a daunting task to be performed to meet certain ends.  If we place too much emphasis on spelling, punctuation and other semantics of writing we will be increasing childrens anxiety of writing and clearly that is counter productive to the creative process.

In some sick way, Lamott's book makes me want to pick up recreational writing again (not that it is something I have time for at the moment).  I am curious to try her strategies as I have experienced many of the same struggles.  Even sitting down to write this blog is a challenge each week because I know it's accessible to anyone and I have a much harder time then when I am writing a journal for the professor's eyes only.

I've got nothing creative ;)

I want to start my blog out this week by addressing the ROC article.  Thinking about racism and sexism has been prominent in my education here as a undergrad at UWB, especially in the courses I took for my ed minor.  This kind of critical thinking is not new to me but it is something I still grapple with.  I want to expose my kids to fair and diverse materials that represent a multitude of people in a positive light but I am overwhelmed by the many considerations that go into such an undertaking.  Whenever I read something about the prominent racism and/or sexism in media I am familiar with and had not previously noticed I feel discouraged.  I question whether I am fit to be making the decisions on what materials to bring into the classroom or teach.  For example, I read an article a while back addressing the issue of stereotyping in Disney movies.  Now I get how the princess movies can be sexist, that much is obvious but the Lion King as a racist movie?  It makes me wonder if people are just apt to over analyze things these days or if there really is something there and I just am to blinded by my white privilege?  On the other side of the coin, does everything have to fit these guidelines?  Can we never use materials that have a white, male protagonist for fear of reinforcing stereotypes?  I know they will see an abundance of this in the media they are exposed to at home so it probably wouldn't be a bad thing to over emphasize minority groups in the classroom but there are some great classic stories out there and I would hate to  dismiss them.  I have to admit, if I have kids of my own someday they will probably watch Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty but maybe I'll balance it out with Mulan or something of that nature.  Maybe that's the answer, its just about learning to find the right balance.

And the introduction to phonics begins

I just finally finished the reading for the week and what can I say- I'm a bit overwhelmed.  I am fairly certain that I was not taught to read using phonics so it is pretty foreign to me.  I am thankful for Fox's book because she outlines everything in a very clear way and her activity suggestions are fantastic.  I've seen phonics being taught in the classroom but I've never really understood more than the very basic concepts like letter sounds.  There is so much to it and I kind of feel like I am learning to read all over again.  The hardest part for me will be the terminology they use like blending for instance.  I need to get these terms down so I can take better notes when I am working with kids on literacy.  I also feel the need to get all the different strategies down so I have all the tools in my belt to really help my students.  Like Fox so aptly puts it, "When you, the teacher, are familiar with the stages and understand the knowledge and abilities that underpin the use of strategies in the different stages, you can make decisions that will help children move from one stage to the next." (20).  I feel like I need to have all the terminology and strategies down immediately but I know that is unrealistic and it will come to me as I work with my students and utilize them daily.