12/6

My inquiry question, today, is how can I motivate these kids to care about learning to write in English? My latest attempt is using their science curriculum as our content. Many of them are much more engaged in conversations about real things than literature.

The learning goal for my students is to be able to write grammatically correct English sentences.

The indicator that this goal has been reached will be when they can score a 3 or 4 on the CELDT sentence, writing rubric. They will use our five-point sentence rubric to self edit and revise their writing.

My focal students are Hector, Rinzen, and Maricela.

The data sources that will be collected are sentences written in class using the five-point rubric, CELDT like sentence writing samples, and their mechanics scores on the regular district, writing assessments.

Thoughts from our last meeting 11/15/10

At this moment in time my question is:
How can I teach these 7 kids (one new student) to write standard English sentences?

Being as specific as I can be right now, I want them to be able to write a grammatically sound sentence on any given topic. And yes, I want them to score a 3 or 4 on the CELDT sentence writing rubric. Yes that maybe teaching to the test. Ugh, but that’s my mandate for this group. This RTI group was formed because they are all 5th graders and scoring a three or below on the writing portion of the CELDT test. and it’s my goal for them.

I could find out what they’re learning if I was to collect their writing in this small group everyday. I might also look at their writer’s workshop writing periodically to see if there is any transfer of skills.

But now we need some content to work with. Something that will engage a varyied group of students. Motivation? What do they care about?

I’m so happy to have this group of minds helping me. How can I focus this class for learning to write is my question now? What structure can I hang this on? Teaching from literature has not been successful so far. At least half of them literally start yawning when I read aloud to them. I may just need to work harder on book choice, but maybe there are other possibilities. One idea is using a language experience approach where we do something together weekly or for five minutes at the start of each lesson. I don’t know enough about what motivates these kids. I hardly know them. What are their strengths?

Also we discussed sentence frames. Could I teach sentence structure by choosing 5 sentence frames and using them all year. One for description, one for sequencing, comparison, and so on.

These kids control a lot

Given a simple 4-picture narrative, illustration, these students had much to say in their writing. They all understood the assignment, and wrote on topic. Some were able to add details enhancing their version of the story. Most of them used advanced, relevant vocabulary such as searched, project, librarian, and assignment. In conclusion all 6 students had control over many aspects of the writing process.

The places where more work is needed are in the mechanics of writing. They all wrote one long run-on sentence and made many mistakes in spelling and grammar.

Oh, right, what do they control now?

Hi Claire,
Oh, yes, how Marie Clay of you.
What do they control now???
Thanks, I needed that input.
They do control a lot. I will look again and post more.

Sat. 10/2/10
Looking at the small group set of writing samples, I learned that I need to back up and teach sentence structure. Each student wrote a short response to a  CELDT released four-picture narrative prompt. We discussed the story orally in class and practiced telling the narrative with partners. We used the CELDT rubric to inform our oral practice. Then each student wrote. There was no teaching of writing. This was our first meeting together.

The oral practice improved their narratives. The data showed evidence of this, each student included all four major events, and details that weren't in their first oral renditions. However looking at the data I saw that these students have little sense of sentence structure or spelling. Even though they each had much to say, the errors in grammar, spelling and letter formation interfered with communication. The papers were mostly one long run on sentence.

What is preventing these 6 kids from learning to write in English? They are all 5th graders who are CELDT 1s or 2s. They have all been in our school for 3 or more years, except one, who came 20 months ago. I teach this group for 30 min. 4 times a week in addition to their 30 min. daily ELD class.