Lessons This Week

Lessons I've done this week include the following:

• Sentence Fluency
• Top Ten and Above - Students discuss the importance of prepositional phrases within their sentences to strengthen sentence fluency.  Students used prepositions that showed movement (how), location (where) and time (when) when writing using sentence starters I provided them. 
  
  
  

• Word Choice
• Sounds Abound- Students discussed the significance of onomatopoeia and created sentences using sounds.
• Writing Road Signs- Students discussed the different uses of transitional words/phrases within writing.  We wrote a story together and then students were assigned one to write using at least five different "road signs" with a topic of their choice for homework.

 

• Conventions
• Commas for a Cause- Here, my participant reviewed the different functions of a comma and then chose three he felt he needed to work on most and wrote a sentence demonstrating each of the skills.

After I have the students apply their Trait skills they've learned, I am going to re-assess (on a smaller scale than the pre/post-assessments) and determine if groups need to be adjusted.

More Updates

Coding has not been difficult for me, as my study has a great deal of quantitative data that I'm collecting, but, this could be because I'm carrying this out completely wrong. Can anyone give me some pointers in this area?

 

 

 

 

Here is an update on the Sentence Fluency kiddos.  You can see that some students are empty and that is solely because they are not sentence fluency birds!  The highest they could score was a 3 and 12 of those 14 kiddos scored at least a 2, but, again, this was NOT applying these Traits holistically into a piece of writing.  This was simply a task requiring them to write using the Trait mentioned.  Had I given them a task and not mentioned the specific Trait lessons, I'm unsure of how they would perform.  Hence why I will be more formally assessing them after every two or three lessons.

 

 

 

Updates

Here is a sample of one of the Word Choice lessons, entitled "Go Figure."  You can see how simple the homework is.  The lesson follows a typical writer's workshop format, and includes gradual release of responsibility as well.  The student defines and discusses their learning target for the lesson, I model a few examples (until the students seem comfortable), we work together, they work in pairs, and then they have an independent assignment, wherein they're required to apply the skill.  However, I am giving the students application assignments after every few lessons, to ensure (or disprove) that students are applying the Trait lessons into actual writing situations (i.e., such as narrative, informative, reflective, or even argumentative). 

So you can see in this sample, that the student made a mistake on the "hyperbole" section.  Therefore, I knew I had to go back and re-teach this particular student.

I attempted "coding: for the first time not too long ago, and I am trying to apply the knowledge that Dr. C gave me.  However, I'm still unsure if I am doing this sufficiently or correctly.  Furthermore, the coding example here is from a word choice group member and this participant makes some strong connections with real-life writing.  I was surprised how honest the students have been so far with this interviewing aspect of the action research.

This is a sample of my sentence fluency group where the students were required to build sentences using compound subjects and compound predicates.  As a whole, the sentence fluency group did well with this, but, again, I'm curious as to whether they will apply these skills into their writing.









As I reflect on this journey so far, I can see that my students are responding well to the lessons.  They like the small focal group time, they enjoy the lessons as they are designed to be engaging, and they seem very excited to be helping me (which was a complete surprise).  I do need to mention that due to the discontinuity of these lessons, I am concerned this may pose as a negative for the kids.  We have had many snow days here and there, and I know this is affecting my entire instructional output, not simply my research project.  I am eager to determine whether or not my students are applying these Traits (without me right there saying, "Use your pumping up sentences strategy..."

Other Modes of Scoring

Although I am utilizing one rubric for the official scoring, these documents are also aligned with the 6 Traits and are kid friendly.  This is especially useful for when I am collecting student samples within focal groups, and much quicker as well.

Post-its are below as well.

 

 

Sample Pre Assessment

Because my students are in 5th grade, they are tested in the areas of math, reading, social studies, and On-Demand writing.  Therefore, many of their assessments are presented in a way that they may see on an assessment.  (This one was made up by my district's curriculum coordinator and mimics those same properties as the KDE released items do).

 

This prompt is accompanied with a short passage.  In this case, the passage included tips on how to save water and why it was so important.  Students should've gathered any tips they felt they needed to score well.

 

 

Above is what the students see when they receive their pre-assessments back.  I know it's kind of hard to make out specifics, however, you can see the Trait areas that this child is scoring lower in, as well as the Traits he/she is excelling within.

 

Clarification on Data Analysis

I am really struggling with organizing this data in a way that ensures I'm gathering the most accurate data to prove (or disprove) my research question.  At the same time, I am finding it difficult to post photos, documents, etc. using this particular blog and that's adding even more to my stress levels (on top of all of the snow-days).

I apologize for the graininess of this photo, but I had to snap a picture of my computer.  You can see that the majority of my students' lower areas are sentence fluency and word choice.  Voice is also the next lowest scoring Trait.  However, Traits such as organization, conventions, and even ideas are quite the high (or average) scorers.  So I am focusing on what each particular student needs. I do want to point out that six of these students are labeled as Gifted and Talented.  These students were also placed into our higher group based upon their MAP Reading and Math scores and KPREP Scores.  For reading and math, we also utilize common assessment data.  Moreover, before moving any child, my team and I discuss their classroom performance in ALL of our areas. 

As you can see, conventions is only an issue for a few of my higher birds.

Organization is quite average, but there are a few students that require instruction upon that and those lessons will be provided after their most needed areas are instructed.

You can see that Sentence Fluency is a struggle for many of my students.  As a whole school, our vocabulary awareness is low, so I was prepared to see this type of result.

 Concurrently, many of my students in this class have a good sense of voice.  However, you can still see a few students in need of improvement.

Word Choice was my other "focus" Trait for this time due it being quite a need!














Ideas is quite the high-scoring Trait for the majority of my students as well. 






I want to clarify that all of my students are not included within this study, but they will all be receiving instruction in their area of need. 

Trait Lesson Updates

Good morning all!  I am now on my 19th snow day.  (More like ice day).  We had a two hour delay due to the rain freezing the roads last night and early into this morning.  There were TONS of accidents this morning, however, it's warming up now and I'm wishing my kiddos were here.

The text that I am pulling the majority of my lessons from is called Getting to the Core of Writing. It is completely aligned with the Common Core Standards, as well as organized by the Traits.  Therefore, I can easily pull lessons that my kids need.

 For instance, I had many students that needed improvement in Word Choice.  Here is a lesson that I am using this week (when we have school) called "Go Figure," wherein students review the importance of similes and metaphors, and also hyperbole and idioms.  They practice recognizing these types of figurative language and then apply it into their writing.

Many of my students also needed lessons on sentence fluency, which I assumed even before I began grading their pre-assessments because I know this is an issue for basically all of my kids.  There were only a select few that actually didn't need assistance in the area of the Sentence Fluency Trait.  I chose these two lessons from the text above that involves instruction on utilizing complex sentences and then another involving "pumping up" sentences.  Each of these lessons involve guided examples, practice, and then application into a piece of writing.

 

This lesson involves students using compound subjects and predicates, so I will most likely instruct with this lesson prior to the complex sentences above. 

















 One of my students REALLY struggles with conventions. However, he scored quite well in other areas (including word choice and voice, which are typically areas that I know my kids are weak in).  So, I chose this lesson to start him off with.  You may think it's juvenile, but oftentimes, his lack of conventional awareness distracts his reader from understanding what he's trying to communicate. 

 

Thick Data Description

Because I'm not having much luck with the whole uploading of documents, I am going to try my best here with my description.

Currently, all I have are pre-assessment scores.  (We have had almost twenty snow days now and they've taken away most of our spring break- which is completely fine with me!).

If you look below, you will see the rubric that I am using for my scoring purposes.

Students that scored lowest in Ideas: 2 (N=20)
Students that scored lowest in Sentence Fluency: 14 (N=20)
Students that scored lowest in Organization: 8 (N=20)
Students that scored lowest in Word Choice: 19 (N=20)
Students that scored lowest in Voice: 4 (N=20)
Students that scored lowest in Conventions: 2 (N=20)

Please note here that when I say "lowest," this means that student scored a zero, 0.5 or 1 in that particular Trait category.  When I analyzed the rubric, those Traits stood out.  Most students had two overall Trait aspects they scored a 0, 0.5 or 1 within.  However, there were seven students that achieved this score in three or four Trait aspects.

Due to the sake of time, I will be focusing on the two lowest areas, as those are their areas of NEED.  These Trait scores are difficult to compare to the MAP Reading data and KPREP Language Arts scores because this measures something completely unrelated.  However, I am curious if there is a correlation.

Furthermore, I want to point out to you that I somewhat predicted Word Choice being one of the lowest scoring Traits simply because I know this is something my students need to work on.  When I introduced the students to the Traits, it was eerie because as I polled the kids, many of them identified their personal need right off the bat.

I am anxious to see where this goes.

Emily

PS- I am having a LOT of trouble posting documents and charts on here, so I will do my best to take care of that.  If anyone has tips, I would really appreciate it.

Descriptive Statistics Part 4

Descriptive Statistics Part 3

 

 

Descriptive Statistics Part 2

Descriptive Statistics

I realize that my statistics below are a hot mess, but this was the only way I could also get the charts uploaded as well. 
Again, I apologize.

 

Data Measures (Re-Visited)

So, girls, I happened to misunderstand the data assignment.  So I am making some adjustments to my previous post.

Mertler (2012) described polyangulation as collecting multiple data aspects to ensure the validity of research.  With these methods below, I want to achieve polyangulation, so I can have an effective action research process.

Pre-assessment
The first data form that I am utilizing for my Action Research process is a pre-assessment.  My students chose a piece of writing and I scored it with the rubric (this is attached as another post, as I was unable to upload a document).  Pre-assessments are not out of the ordinary for my writing classroom, as I always use these to determine where my instruction needs to go.  However, the scoring rubric that students are using is different from the ones that we typically use, as those are often directly related to the three modes of writing (narrative, informative and argumentative/opinion) within the Common Core Standards. 

Rationale: I wanted to use a pre-assessment to determine the particular Traits I needed to instruct each of my focal groups upon.  Furthermore, I used this pre-assessment to move my higher-achieving group into their specific focal groups, so this was a big part of my inquiry.  As I said above, my kids are used to pre-assessments in my classroom, so this wasn't something that I had to totally alter within my class.  Mertler (2012) described pre-assessments for one focal group (meaning I'm don't have another group to compare my results to).  He also described advantages and disadvantages for pre-assessments.  For instance, an advantage is that students are comfortable with the assessment itself if it's part of a regular routine.  However, a disadvantage is that the assessment itself may not be completely aligned with the inquiry question.  Therefore, I need to ensure I don't veer off track.

Post-lesson  participant interviews
Marshall & Rossman (2006) emphasized the significance of using interviews to further understand the participants' views.  That is what I wanted to accomplish here.  Because these groups were composed based up student pre-assessment scores, much like flexible grouping, I wanted to gain the student perspective of the Trait lessons.  I didn't want my personal biases to become involved, which could easily influence my outcome.  The interviews will be conducted after the lesson and the questions are listed below:

1. What does good writing look like to you?
2. What are your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing?
3. Do you feel this particular lesson has helped you in any way?  (Be honest and explain).
4. How could you apply this lesson/trait into your other modes of writing?  For instance, how could you use this for opinion/argumentative, narrative, or informative writing?  Explain.

Pappas & Tucker-Raymond (2011) explained the significance of interviews because they could easily lead to underlying questions, to help further inquiry.  I want to better understand how these lessons were going to correlate with the On Demand writing assessment that comes each year for my fifth graders and I am hoping these interviews will aid in my inquiry.

Student archives
Because I'm using writing, I wanted to have enough written student samples to deem efficacy (or lack of) of the Traits.  Student work samples will be collected throughout the research process, specifically, after three Trait aligned lessons.  These will involve the students applying the Trait knowledge they gained (or did not gain) from the instructional lessons.  Furthermore, students will be required to assess themselves, using the rubric above (the same one I'll use for scoring) to determine their awareness as a writer.  Please know that these pieces won't be lengthy, as students will need to complete them in a class setting (about an hour), and I don't want to torture them!  I will be collecting these every three instructional lessons.

Post Assessment
This will be given at the culmination of the research collection process to determine growth (or losses).  Scores will be compared with pre-assessments.  Furthermore, these scores will also determine common themes amongst the student samples as well.  After completing the test, students will be required to write a short reflection on how they changed (if they did) as a writer throughout the process.

Happy blogging,

Emily

Marshall, C. and Rossman, B.  (2006).  Designing qualitative research.  Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage Publications.

Mertler, C.  (2012).  Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators.  Thousand

Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Pappas, C. and Tucker-Raymond, E.  (2011).  Becoming a teacher researcher in literacy

teaching and learning: Strategies and tools for the inquiry process.  New York, NY: Routledge.

 

Weekly Reflection

So we are currently on my 6789 snow day and I am really trying not to freak out.  However, that is much easier said than done.  I have been unable to collect much data (I have the pre-assessment) and it's just so frustrating. 

One thing I wanted to ask you girls about was my class set up.  I now teach a 90 minute block, but I am required to teach social studies and writing within this block.  Does anyone already do this?  I'm just curious how you set things up. Often, administrators will say that content can easily be incorporated into literacy.  I agree completely, and I have done that since I've been teaching writing, but I haven't ever really had 100% responsibility of both content areas.  Does that even make sense?

Thanks for your support girls,

Emily

Data Collection

So, this is my 13th snowday.  Is anyone else having an anxiety attack about not collecting enough data for their action research project?  From what it sounds like, are we supposed to have all of our data collected by next week??  I am so confused girls.  I have a pre-assessment and a few work samples, but I have not been able to get much, as we haven't been back to school even a full week since before December.

Help!

Emily