I apologize folks again for my jump into school thoughts and ideas. My Literacy class requires a brain dump of thoughts about an assignment and that is what you will read if you wish to continue. And BTW, if you are a Steelers fan....booooo!!
My thoughts about my 4th grade student and his writing sample:
My thoughts about my 4th grade student and his writing sample:
The first thing I notice about my student’s writing is the penmanship. It isn’t perfect, in fact many teachers might say he needs a lot of work on it, but it is easily legible and very artsy. You feel like you are reading graffiti on a New York
1) He is tremendously creative
2) He loves art and is a good drawer
3) He gets nervous when others look at his drawings
4) Other teachers will tell you how good he is!
He begins and ends his sample with the line “Talk to (3rd grade teacher) about me” and “You better talk to (3rd grade teacher)”. His entire writing sample is surrounded by a defense mechanism installed in case the reader doesn’t believe him. We are told the 3rd grade teacher will back up the story. He wrote that he gets nervous when people see his drawings, but that “it doesn’t bother me”. I’m not so sure he believes that quite yet.
His ideas and content are limited, but adequate for a sample about 150 words long. He was able to hit the four main points above without any examples. Therefore I shall not focus much on this trait. Organization wise it is tough not to notice he writes on his page as if he is writing a poem. Five stanzas, four to five lines each make up the page. Each paragraph focuses on one of the main points, with the last one offering a summary. His motivation for this writing sample seems to come from his love for art. I look at some of his other writing and it all is neatly organized on the page. The penmanship is legible, although uncontrolled. His organized chaos is easy on the eyes as it seems to all have a place on the page.
His voice does seem sincere, but his claims have nothing to back them up. I want to know what he is working on, what his interests are, what his reason is for enjoying the drawing. His writing isn’t compelling as it does not allow a distinct perspective on the topic.
His word choice is limited to the basic words of “drawing, creative, and art”. He misspells words here and there, such as “stuf” and “grops”. The pattern of missing double consonants and leaving out a vowel in a long vowel sound is consistent throughout his writing. This might be an area I could focus on during the lesson plan as he seems to fit in the middle to late within-word pattern level (Templeton and Morris, 1999). I have not been able to see other writing samples in depth so I am not able to see if these spelling miscues are consistent across the board.
***UPDATE***
He arrived for school during the third week and I was able to gain a plethora of information from him in a 30 minute period of time, including several writing samples. My first glance proved that he is a chronic misspeller. The piece I had from him last last wasn't only a prompt, but a final draft that had already been revised several times. The fact that he still misspelled two words in this one shows that his writing style is quite a bit hurried. I described it as artsy earlier and I'll stick to that, but I do want to add hurried to that definition. He writes like he is in a hurry. To test this idea I had him write a paragraph for me about something he wants to do when he grows up. He SLOWLY wrote "I want to dizine cars". I noticed this was in cursive so I asked him to write another sentence normally, here he QUICKLY wrote "My naber helps a lot whith that". I think I'm onto something here. It seems obvious that if he slows down his writing he might be able to improve his handwriting and possible give himself a chance to think through more of the word conventions. On a first draft of a short story about a dog, he misspelled about 15% of the words on the 10 pages of text. I will have to enter this into the lesson plan.
His ability to read words placed him well into the 6th grade level. I brought the book "The Little Prince" for him to read as it started with a young artist trying to make a point with his drawing. He read three pages in about 8 minutes and answered all the comprehension questions sufficiently enough to prove he understood what he had read.
I want to dump a little more of my mind on the short story about the talking animals. He expressed some incredible creativity in his writing about a flock of birds coming to life, talking to other animals, while incorporating a magic bottle into the story. Unfortunately a lot of his sentences were choppy and riddled with grammar issues. I went back to check his "Error Guide Spelling Inventory" he performed two weeks prior and confirmed that he fell in the "Late Word Within" pattern which means he is "approaching fluency". Maybe, but when he writes his brain goes into creative mode and forgets the grammar part. This will be very much added to my lesson plan. ***End Update***
His language is basic. His writing looks artsy but his words leave you standing in a gray field with no landscape around you. In other words, they leave little to the imagination, which seems backwards for someone who loves to draw and be creative. His sentence fluency is choppy as about half of the sentences begin with “I”. It is tough for the reader to get into a flow. I am torn wondering if he found any motivation for this prompt assignment or if he found so much that he didn’t know how to write it all down on paper.
***UPDATE***
He arrived for school during the third week and I was able to gain a plethora of information from him in a 30 minute period of time, including several writing samples. My first glance proved that he is a chronic misspeller. The piece I had from him last last wasn't only a prompt, but a final draft that had already been revised several times. The fact that he still misspelled two words in this one shows that his writing style is quite a bit hurried. I described it as artsy earlier and I'll stick to that, but I do want to add hurried to that definition. He writes like he is in a hurry. To test this idea I had him write a paragraph for me about something he wants to do when he grows up. He SLOWLY wrote "I want to dizine cars". I noticed this was in cursive so I asked him to write another sentence normally, here he QUICKLY wrote "My naber helps a lot whith that". I think I'm onto something here. It seems obvious that if he slows down his writing he might be able to improve his handwriting and possible give himself a chance to think through more of the word conventions. On a first draft of a short story about a dog, he misspelled about 15% of the words on the 10 pages of text. I will have to enter this into the lesson plan.
His ability to read words placed him well into the 6th grade level. I brought the book "The Little Prince" for him to read as it started with a young artist trying to make a point with his drawing. He read three pages in about 8 minutes and answered all the comprehension questions sufficiently enough to prove he understood what he had read.
I want to dump a little more of my mind on the short story about the talking animals. He expressed some incredible creativity in his writing about a flock of birds coming to life, talking to other animals, while incorporating a magic bottle into the story. Unfortunately a lot of his sentences were choppy and riddled with grammar issues. I went back to check his "Error Guide Spelling Inventory" he performed two weeks prior and confirmed that he fell in the "Late Word Within" pattern which means he is "approaching fluency". Maybe, but when he writes his brain goes into creative mode and forgets the grammar part. This will be very much added to my lesson plan. ***End Update***
His language is basic. His writing looks artsy but his words leave you standing in a gray field with no landscape around you. In other words, they leave little to the imagination, which seems backwards for someone who loves to draw and be creative. His sentence fluency is choppy as about half of the sentences begin with “I”. It is tough for the reader to get into a flow. I am torn wondering if he found any motivation for this prompt assignment or if he found so much that he didn’t know how to write it all down on paper.
If I could attempt to pull this all together I would state that he seems to be motivated to write about himself in some way shape or form. I would want to ask more questions concerning his abilities in drawing and creativity. “In what ways are you creative?” I want to expand upon his ideas about himself that he began to discuss in this writing sample. Maybe, just maybe, we can get him to burst open and express all of his thoughts about himself. Even if he doesn’t though, I can just get the answers from the 3rd grade teacher!!
Lesson Plan Rough Draft
Lesson Plan Rough Draft
When it comes time to write up an official lesson plan for my student I will want to get more information from him in terms of writing samples as well as more face time. ***Update*** I did get time with him on Tuesday of this past week and was able to gather enough information to update the below lesson plan to account for his "hurried artsy" writing.
Objective:
- Students will be able to write out main ideas onto paper
- Students will explain the main ideas using an example to illustrate the story
- Students will be able to write a compelling story for the reader.
- Student will be able to learn to read over his finished writing to check for grammar errors
EALR’s used:
- 1.1 Student pre-writes to generate ideas and plan writing.
- 3.1 Student develops ideas and organizes writing
Materials Used:
Notebook with a page for ideas, a page for examples, and a page for why it is important to the student the idea be in the piece.
§ Paper
§ Pencil
- A list of 25 fourth grade level words
What the Teacher Will Do (Instructional Responsibilities):
The teacher will start by informing the students that they will be writing a short story. The teacher will hand out a list of 25 fourth grade level words that are commonly misspelled (although the students won't know that). The story will be confirmed to two written pages and must incorporate all 25 words in a creative fashion. The creative nature of the assignment will lead to several unique ideas formulated from the same 25 word list. The goal for our student will be to slow him down in his writing and allow him to see the words written correctly on his paper.
The teacher will then ask the students to reread their stories to check specifically for grammar issues and flow of story.
The teacher will then ask the students to reread their stories to check specifically for grammar issues and flow of story.
Assessment:
The teacher will assess the student’s ability to write outlines of their storyline looking specifically for a well organized sentence with correct spelling and grammar. The teacher will also assess the student’s ability to write down examples that back up the ideas written on the page, again looking for spelling miscues.
It is really exciting to me that you recognized this student's artistic creativity in his actual physical writing. Because of the importance he seemed to place on the fact that his third grade teacher appreciated his artistic talents, I would guess that he would strongly value and be encouraged by your own explicit and direct appreciation of the art the structure of his writing shows. Even though the meaning expressed by his written words don't shine with creativity yet, maybe he could really benefit from seeing the potential with the artistic glimmers his handwriting and text layout convey. I wonder if he is even conscious of the art you noticed in his writing.
ReplyDeleteThe lesson plan idea you presented does seem to provide the scaffolded support that could benefit this student, especially with the idea of incorporating a word list to use and an emphasis to slow down a little, not to change handwriting, but to improve spelling and grammar. Do you think you might be able to incorporate Routman's Optimum Learning Model in this lesson? Maybe you could start by demonstrating an outline and the beginning of a story using the word list yourself with lots of thinking aloud followed by a large-group shared writing of an outline and story writing with the word list?
Possibly your lesson in addition to the encouragement the student would feel in artistic creativeness being recognized in his writing already, along with the scaffolding of the Optimum Learning model, would give the student the confidence to really strive for personal progress in his writing development.
I can tell that you are excited about the abilities of this writer! I think it is great that you can see beyond his misspellings to see the person behind the writing. I also like the lesson idea - what a fun way to practice with commonly misspelled words.
ReplyDeleteMy MT believes that teachers should tell students why they are doing a certain lesson. You might want to consider actually telling the students what the list is and why it's important to learn to spell these words. That way they will be more aware of these words when they encounter them later on.
You mention that he is a creative guy. Do you mean his ideas are creative as well as his artistic ability? You might want to consider including examples from his writing right where you mention that he is tremendously creative.
Routman specifically mentions the importance of focusing on content before editing. You might want to emphasize his strengths with content as a rationale for focusing on his spelling.
I agree with Awave that using Routman's Optimum Learning model would help scaffold his writing. Specifically, Routman talks a lot about the importance of shared writing so you might want to consider adding a shared writing segment to you lesson.
It sounds like a fun lesson for him and a great way to let his creativity shine!
It seems obvious that you believe in his creativity as an artist, but that doesn't seem to be reflected in his writing--other than his penmanship. I wondered why there was such a disconnect between creative art and creative writing, but I realized that your original sample did not give him much room to express himself. It appears that your updated writing sample (with the talking animals) gave him more to write about. Do you feel this writing piece accurately reflects him as a writer? Did he take more ownership of the talking animal piece? I think that you are right that he needs the right kind of nudging to learn how to apply his natural creativity to his writing.
ReplyDeleteThe second writing sample also showed you what kind of speller he is on his first drafts. I wonder what kind of balance needs to be struck between Lamott's idea that anything goes on the first draft and Routman's philosophy of high expectations and the importance of learning conventions to make it readable.
I think you came up with a creative idea of using the commonly misspelled words to make a story. Have you thought of how you can scaffold the "well organized sentence" and using "main ideas to illustrate the story"? I think Routman's Optimal Learning Model might be a helpful teaching tool.
I can tell you put a lot of thought into this! You might need to find some good puddle-jumping to celebrate. :)