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..."