The area on which I decided to focus my inquiry is methods I can use to help my EL students become better writers using oral language.
This is important to me because we have a large EL population at my school, and the common trend for our students is to learn listening and speaking skills earlier than reading and writing skills. While this is a natural sequence some students never bring reading and writing up to the fluent level. This leaves them ill equipped to participate in the academic language required for middle and high school.
The context in which I teach is a Title 1, public school in program improvement. Our English population is about 135 students, 33% of the school, two thirds of which are Spanish speaking. I teach small RTI groups. For this study I have focused on a group of 5th grade students who scored Intermediate in writing on the 2010 CELDT.
The data I have collected is writing samples, oral recordings and student surveys.
As a result of my inquiry I have realized that the most motivating factor for my students is their own success. I am organizing the lesson material into very small discrete units that students can practice and master. Another improvement is increased emphasis on practicing oral language in class before writing. There is no such thing as too much talking. We use sentence frames for almost everything and practice them aloud repeatedly with variations before writing.
As a result of my inquiry I have observed the following changes in my focal students.
1. increased understanding and use of sentence structure
2. increased editing and revising skills.
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