In order to assess Lucy’s progress in writing, I analyzed a sample piece of her opinion writing worksheets. Each student in Mrs. McDonald’s kindergarten listened to Mrs. McDonald read them the book, “ The Mixed Up Alphabet” by Steve Metzger. The students were guided through a worksheet that outlined who to write to, what their opinion was, a reason why, and whom it was from. This writing piece was given during a single writing period, which consists of 30 minutes of individual work time. I was able to conference with Lucy during her writing process. She was able to tell me what her opinion was on the book they read and why. She was able to initially decide what she was writing without a prompt from me. To assess her writing, I collected the outlined sheet of her writing. Findings: At the end of this document, Lucy’s piece of …show more content…
She is able to represent letters for some sounds and spells words the way they sound. Some examples of this would be: “W for Why”, “Woz for Was”, and “Becuz for Because”. I was able to conference with Lucy once during this writing piece to help further her reasons why she loved the book. She only wrote down one reason, but she stated other reasons aloud, but thought she was complete with her writing piece. According to Routman’s text, “Writing Essentials”, teachers should not give the students answers while conference, but to help guide them. I believe that I helped Lucy come up with more reasons on her own, but she was unable to connect that she could use them to make her opinion letter stronger. Overall, the writing piece was complete and acceptable for a kindergarten class. Lucy is an average writer. Although Lucy should be given instruction on brainstorming multiple ideas of her own to support her opinions. She understands opinions, but lacks detail to support
Claudette changed during the transition from stage 1 of Lycanthropic Culture Shock through stage 5. In stage 1 Claudette was almost fully a wolf. At St. Lucy’s over time she changed fully into a human. Claudette was one of the more advanced girls in her pack during her time at St. Lucy’s. Claudette assimilated well into the human culture by the end of the story.
Murray is insightful not only to instructors but also to learners. Murray argues that the challenge facing writing is the fact that teachers have treated it as a product rather than a process and the same concept passed on to students. The author holds that the main problem with this view is that students get to receive irrelevant criticisms that are not related to their learning goals. While I tend to agree with the author based on the arguments presented, it is notable that Murray has paid little attention to the idea of education in the contemporary world. In most learning institutions, the outcome of the writing is considered more than the process. As a teacher paying attention to the process of writing but not be consistent with the students, who are mostly driven by
I have used the “D” variation of looking at individuals Student Writing from Katherine Bomer’s Hidden Gems to analyze and evaluate Melody’s writing. My first reactions to Melody’s writing are that her structure and conventions are strong and detailed and organized. Bomer and the list of “qualitative features of writing checklist” located in Hidden Gems, helped me analyze Melody’s work in a positive aspect located things such as the student “communicates thoughts and ideas, the story has a logical organizational structure of sequence, the story has an effective strategies for organizing information and the story has a sentence – to – sentence and word – to – word relationship” (Bomer, 2010, p. 83). All of these ideas that Bomer has listed
Given these points, Claudette’s exposure to St. Lucy has made her confined on the way she talked and acted unlike before when she was wild, exuberant and carefree. She changed from overturning dresser drawers to the point that her own mother couldn’t even recognize her. As a end result, she cared more about her appearance and she started to filter her actions and words. Therefore, St. Lucy had stripped away Claudette’s personality and her culture identity, replacing both of them with set expectations that were placed onto her.
Teachers, who are aware of children becoming emergent writers, can better understand the amount of effort and concentration required. Teachers can appreciate the value of observing children’s early writing for evidence of children’s developing phonological knowledge of written language.
Shamia learned to read and write before school. She taught herself by watching her older brother learn to read and write since he’s two years older than her. She picked up on grammar rules and simple writing processes such as pre-writing, proof reading, and processing simple sentences. When she wasn’t learning from her older brother, she sometimes went to school with her mother. Dorothy, her mother, worked in the day time and went to school at night. When Shamia would go with her mother to class at the University of Memphis, she would copy down the notes on the board about English literature. Her experience in the University of Memphis classroom advanced her maturity in a classroom setting early on. Her behavior in the classroom was so mature she
The curriculum initiative I chose to actively engage in is our third grade’s Writing Workshop: Four Square Model. The Writing Workshop: Four Square Model initiative is currently in the evaluation phase. The most important aspect of this initiative is provide students with the opportunity to expand upon their writing, add details, and stay organized. So many young writers struggle to develop well-written stories, essays, and descriptions. This method utilizes a simple graphical organizer to take students step by step through the writing process. It can be used for any type of writing project from a simple paragraph to a story or even a persuasive essay. During the project I worked to analyze student data and researched the Four Square Model for school-wide usage.
Kelly Gallagher discusses how to promote students’ writing in chapter four of Teaching Adolescent Writers. Gallagher assesses his students’ writing from the beginning to know where his classroom stands: “Each of my thirty-eight freshman students completed a timed writing piece on the second day of school and turned them in without their names on the papers” (73). This allowed Gallagher to assess his classroom as a whole instead of as individuals. He took this writing and sorted into piles he assumed were “heavy readers (defined as those who frequently read for fun),… moderate readers, and… light readers” (73). Gallagher based these predictions on the diction, sentence structure and variety, essay development, craft, and punctuation and editing skills (74). As Gallagher asserts, these predictions are not entirely accurate, but they allowed him to understand that the majority of heavy readers are skilled writers because they have an underlying foundation for their writing in their reading. This does not mean that all good readers are good writers. Gallagher asserts, “Reading alone does not explain why some of my readers write well and others don’t” (75). He goes on to create a formula explaining that reading paired with an “exposure to intensive hands-on writing instruction” lead to students becoming better
As part of students IEP resource program and RtI services, I provide instruction for the development of written expression, as evidenced by my Professional Growth Experience #2. My methodology for writing instruction has evolved dramatically. Now I see each student as an individual somewhere on the path to independent “author.” I work to meet each student’s learning need at their level. Currently, students work at their own level and I provide individual or small group mini-lessons to support weaker skills. I learned from experience to create quality, high interest prompts that address a real audience to teach “voice.” My format support Common Core’s informative/explanatory writing standard and engages critical thinking and motivation. To
Now looking back, Brittany feels that her past teachers never allowed her to read or write that really excites her or something that amazes her, only stuck to the old black and white planbook, causing her to slowly construct the idea to only put half the blood and sweat into the work and could care less about the grade. For example, when she was in the eighth grade or the eleventh grade, there was a mandatory Writing Assessment for every student in that was in either those grades. “I can remember getting prepared and prepped up for weeks, and was reminded every day to make at least a four or higher to pass the Writing Assessment. The teacher would give us instructions on how to construct a three idea essay and how to construct a “hook” sentence and how to construct a strong thesis statement” Brittany stated. But for Brittany the Writing Assessment consist more than just the main three ideas or the “hook” sentence or a strong thesis statement, to Brittany it had more to do with taking those three ideas and have the ability to argue those ideas and stating what she needed the readers to
Graham et al. (2012) explores a meta-examination of the written work intercession writing, centering our endeavors on genuine and semi tests with an end goal to distinguish powerful instructional practices for instructing written work to elementary students (Graham et al., 2012). The article focused on meta-investigation of test and semi exploratory written work studies directed with elementary students (Graham et al., 2012). The authors contributed tables which displayed the effect sizes and results for written treatment. Graham et al. (2012) distribute several strategies that educators can implement in their classrooms. Some strategies included strategy instruction, grammar instruction, scaffolding, assessing writing, prewriting, and peer
Students are instructed on how to develop and organize their writing by developing a plan or out line to follow. Teachers should discuss with their students how to effectively plan out their writing strategy. Students need to be taught to question themselves about the purpose of their writing. Questions like; “Who am I writing for?” or “How will I organize my thoughts?” are two general examples. Gersten mentions the importance and purpose of the first draft and how it provides a concrete reminder for where the writing is going. The plan and its draft provide a common language for teacher and students to share making communication easier. He also speaks of the strengths of the revision process. Gersten illustrates how peer-editing can be a useful tool to employ during writing.
Another article by Robin M. Bright takes the stance that children are often taught to fear writing. He states that it happens too often that assignments and enormous online tests that hinge on a writing capability likely not taught in the lower grades causes an inherent hatred for the subject. He goes on to say that this is why many adults regard writing as a chore that is necessary to the workplace, and avoid it at all other costs. This article is about how giving younger children fun and engaging writing prompts eases some of that fear and disdain when writing is reintroduced with greater weight years down the road. In rebuttal to Ms. Coffman’s statements, one can argue that the stats do not truly matter in a case against whether or not traditional writing should be eagerly enforced in Elementary school systems. Her statistics proved that honors and standard level children alike did better in high-technology learning environments, but she also failed to see that not only were these high school level children who were used to using today’s technology to its fullest, but she did not factor in what types of learning the children were even being exposed too, and her research fails to give any insight to how the children were taught at smaller ages, which in this argument is truly
Teachers and researchers are constantly changing and adjusting how writing is taught. I surveyed ten respondents of students, faculty, and others at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor to see their opinions on writing education. Although, all respondents answered in their own words, there were many similarities in their answers. The information gathered through these surveys may be used to support or defend certain arguments about writing education.
Analysing children’s writing is critically important because it allows teachers to have an understanding of what the child knows already, and what he/she needs to build on with their writing (Stewart, 2012). In the paragraphs ahead, two samples have been chosen and have been analysed using the Victorian Essential Learning Standards and the Western Australia First Steps Developmental Continuum.