Analysis of S's Writing and Lesson Plan

Analysis

My analysis of S’s writing is based on a final draft to a writing prompt entitled “The Real S”, a first draft of a story, conversations we’ve had, and a spelling inventory that I did with her.

Ownership and Meaning
From the sparkle in her eyes when she shyly describes and reads her writing, I sense that S feels ownership of and enjoys her self-expression in her writing. While she is trying to follow all of the rules and guidelines of writing, her voice and ideas are budding. In her piece about herself, she surprises me with some personal details: “it makes me feel as clean as soap”; “I need to be by myself”; and “the insects tickle my hand.” Her story, however, tries to move her meandering plot along without as much interesting detail.

Six Traits Assessment
When looking at S’s ideas I found them to be reasonably clear and working toward developing more details and personalization. She is beginning to learn how to move from general observations to specifics; experimenting with ways to draw the reader into her ideas and story (use of simile and words like “suddenly”); and stays on topic fairly well. If I were to pick one thing for her to focus on in ideas, it would be to flesh out more details in the story line.

S’s organization was better in her self-portrait than her story; perhaps because it was a final draft. She demonstrated logical and effective sequencing, decent transitions and an inviting introduction. The structure was predictable and the conclusion was recognizable, but repetitive. In her story, transitions were unclear, the sequencing had a few problems that detracted from the story, and sometimes the pacing felt awkward.

I have a sense of voice emerging from S’s work – shy and wanting to do things right. As described in Ownership above, she does add a few personal details that offer some personal insight and playful description. She is earnest and attempting to connect with her audience – “Just ask my third-grade teacher!” Finally, she is aware of her purpose and does attempt to use content to support it.

Her teacher tells me that she was in ELL until last year which may explain her why her verbs are often misused and mostly passive. Overall, her word choice lacks originality and refinement. Words and phrases are functional with a few shining moments. Words are adequate in a general sense. In our conversations she uses more interesting adjectives. I suspect that her writing will blossom in this area this year.

In the area of sentence fluency S has much work to do. Sentences are sometimes choppy, incomplete or awkward. Many sentences begin the same way, although some interesting variety is attempted. Mostly her sentences are functional; she has not yet developed creativity or fluidity in their flow, individually and together. I would encourage her to read her work aloud and think about how it sounds, flows and entices the reader to keep reading.

Conventions on her rough draft reveal a student with some sense of punctuation: periods, commas and quotation marks are attempted, and often are correct. Her grammar is challenged most in her use of verbs – knowing how to phrase a verb and in what tense. She knows to indent a paragraph, but not when to start a new one. She also knows to capitalize some words, but has some confusion over which ones. In her final draft there are only a few mistakes showing that she paid good attention to her edits. The presentation of her final draft is neat and organized.

Spelling
In her final draft S misspells the following: “finnaly,” “my self,” and “shoulded.” I did notice that “finally” and “myself” were misspelled on the rough draft of her other story and remained uncorrected, so perhaps they have not yet been brought to her attention. Also in the rough draft of her story were some different errors: “squrill,” “chating,” “scearmed,” and “knok.” Not bad for 6 pages of writing that included words like: kitchen, suddenly, mouth, chicken, jealous, heartbreaking, and curious. She is facile with consonants, vowel patterns, most diagraphs and blends. She uses but confuses double consonants and could learn the milk truck trick for “ck.” Overall, S appears to me to be in the middle of learning “Syllables and affixes,” as confirmed on the Bear & Barone Spelling Inventory(1989), especially with unfamiliar words like pleasure, fortunate, and civilize (spelled plesher, forjenit, and sevleise) . Because LWSD uses the Wordly Wise books for spelling and word work (which does great things with prefixes, suffixes, bases, roots and meaning) I would add one or two frequently misspelled words to her list each week. The reading from Cambourne has impressed me to the point that I would like mostly to encourage her to keep writing and editing, only then adding my edits, which, so far, she pays close attention to. Through this process she will naturally acquire the skills she needs.

Lesson Plan

I will demonstrate moving from first-draft writing to second-draft, concluding with an opportunity for students to practice the skills.

Objectives

Students will be able to think about their reader(s) and how they want to communicate the information to them. Using a rubric like Routman’s “What a Good Writer Does” (Writing Essentials, 2005, page 151) students will be able to read, and reread, their first draft to make edits: moving parts around to provide more clarity and keep ideas together; providing more details in places that are lacking; and adding more interesting ways to say things.

Standards
EALR: 3 The student writes clearly and effectively.

3.1. Develops ideas and organizes writing.

3.2. Uses appropriate style.

3.3. Knows and applies writing conventions appropriate for the grade level.

Materials
Lined paper and pencils.

Instructional Strategies

Depending on time, this may be a two or even three-part lesson.

I will start the lesson by writing in front of the class demonstrating my thinking and edits as I read and reread along the way. I will pay particular attention to my intended readers, brainstorming and then moving like ideas together, thinking about details my reader may need to know, and writing in a way that draws my reader into the topic. When finished, I will check the rubric and reread again checking things off as I go.

We will then do one together entitled: “What a Substitute Teacher Needs to Know about this Class.” I will have them contribute edits along the way, and checking the rubric at the end.

They will then work on a piece by themselves entitled “What New Students Need to Know about this Class,” going through the same process.

Assessment
I will do mini-conferences with students while they work checking for organization of ideas, paragraphs centered on one idea, clarity of information for the “new student,” interesting descriptions.

Afterwards I will check their drafts for editing marks showing that they changed things to make them better: organization, word choice, and meaning/clarity of information. Specifically, I am looking for evidence of edits: things crossed out, circled and moved, inserts, etc.