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.
Hi Kathleen,
ReplyDeleteI have to confess that, as a science teacher, I was excited to read that you are using science to motivate your students! I was once in a teacher inquiry group where a fourth grade teacher was using science content as the basis for teaching reading and writing, and the students loved it … these were not all English Language Learners, but the idea of using science as motivation for reading and writing is very powerful!
What popped into my head as another motivation idea, was to volunteer to be a scientist (my degree is a Bachelor’s, not a Ph.D., but I might serve as a scientist in a pinch!) whom your students could write to with questions about science. I don’t know if that would be helpful (or indeed if I would know the answers) but it would be fun for me … and it might provide an audience for their writing to make the writing feel more real to them. I don’t know … what do you think?
I am attaching a short and a long version of one of the Master’s papers from last spring – which is not about writing, but about reading – but the relevance is that it is about motivation. I don’t know if it will be helpful, but it might be … try out the short one (which is an excerpted version I did) and if it seems useful, look at the long one, particularly at the list of references.
-Claire
The CELDT sentence rubric is 0-3, so there is no four.
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