Analysis
The piece of writing that I have from my student is a prompt that was about the day that animals could talk. “My Dog is Chatty” is about the day she woke up and found that her dog could talk. She vividly painted a picture of her dog, going about its daily life and being able to talk.
Since all I have so far from my student is a rough draft, I am going to focus on a few parts of the six traits. For most of these she would fit a 5 rubric. She has strong organization skills. She had a creative, visual introduction with a strong conclusion. She takes us to a morning when the sun is in her eyes and she realizes that her dog just spoke to her. At the end of her story she leaves us with: “I would never forget the day that animals could talk.” Each page is one paragraph which contains one idea/moment that supports the main point with examples. Her transitions move the story along with words such as: within seconds, after, when and instead. She goes through the day, from morning until night which shows a sequencing of logical event. On the other hand, I would like her to elaborate on the day and the activities of the dog. I would like to see her add more dialogue between her and the dog. And, since the title of the story is “My Dog is Chatty” the dog should say more than just three sentences. She has strong ideas which are narrow and manageable; she brought the dog to life by having him talk, sing and laugh; the dog did normal dog things like going outside, jumping on the couch and eating from a bowl; but she never told us why the dog could only talk for one day. Her voice and personality come through in this short story. She describes the dog but needs to speak more about how she feels. Was she shocked that her dog could speak? How does she feel about the situation?
Realizing that this is a draft, I still think she could work on her word choice. She does write clearly and speaks with a natural effective voice, but she needs to add more descriptive words, more adverbs and different verbs (thesaurus). She used jumped and yelled multiple times. Also, she didn’t name her dog. Her sentence fluency is very strong. She uses varied sentence length, began sentences with different words, used good transitions and created sentences that enhanced the meaning of the text. Her conventions need a little work. Once she learns to write for a valued reader, she will understand that conventions are necessary for a text to be readable (Routman, 2005). She misspelled common words such as tired, stopped and grabbed which she spelled: tyrd, stoped and grabed. It could be that she isn’t familiar with the pattern of doubling the final consonant before adding the inflectional ending –ed (Templeton & Morris, 1999). For the most part, she used punctuation correctly, putting a common before a quote and capitalized I and the first letter of the first word in the sentences. She uses subject verb agreement and her ideas are split into paragraphs by page. There is some editing to do to make for a good final.
When speaking with my student, she is very enthusiastic about reading and writing. She likes to be challenged in both areas and likes to stretch her thinking. When working on her revisions, she instinctively knows ways to make her writing more vibrant – to use “juicy words”. For example, she wrote the sentence, “The chipmunk ran into the bushes”. She then added juicy words and turned the sentence into, “The small brown chipmunk scurried into the dark, green bushes”. Since the writing I have is only a first draft of a prompt, I will need to get more writing samples from her. I am interested in seeing a piece that she chose and created on her own.
The only word that she got wrong on the spelling test was opposition. She spelled it opizition. Due to this one spelling error, I would place her in the early to middle derivational relations level. She has mastered high frequency words and makes errors on low frequency multisyllabic words derived from Latin and Greek combining forms (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 1995). Her technique during the test was that if she wasn’t sure how the word was spelled, she would write out the word two times and see which one “looked” right. The one thing I did notice was her spelling errors in her first draft. It could be that the students are to write for as long as they can or guess and go because the students know that they have the opportunity to revise. If that isn’t the case, her spelling activities should focus on the doubling of consonants (stopped and grabbed).
My student has a real enthusiasm for writing that can been seen in both her writing and in speaking with her. Her creativity in the writing that I saw helped me visualize the day her dog spoke. I am looking forward to reading more of her stories and see how her final drafts turn out. Did she make any changes to add more juicy words? Did her dog talk more? Did she name him? My recommendation would be to have her work on using “juicy words” and adding more feelings (shocked/scared/angry) into her texts.
Lesson Plan
I. Objectives
To utilize descriptive language and emotion in her writing
II. Standards
3.2.2 Uses language appropriate for a specific audience and purpose. Uses precise words (e.g., vivid verbs —screeched, hovered, absorbed; specific nouns — granite, longhouse, cedar).
1.1.1 Applies more than one strategy for generating ideas and planning writing.
III. Materials
Notecards
Pencil
Thesarus
IV. Instructional Strategies
1. Teacher will explain the purpose and meaning of descriptive vocabulary including the utilization of the five senses.
2. Have student brainstorm ten each of: sights, sounds, objects, emotions, and creepy names that could be associated with a scary Halloween situation. Teacher will encourage the use of concrete words and descriptive adjectives. Student will write the words on index cards and sort into appropriate piles (i.e. emotions, adjectives, etc.)
3. Give the story prompt of: One dark, stormy night I walked down the street and saw... (or she can create her own).
4. Student needs to use 20 words from the index cards in her story and can only use the common words of said, yelled, scared, and spooky once.
V. Assessment: At the end of the activity she will write a story using one of the prompts from the brainstorm. She can use the words: said, yelled, scared, and spooky only once in her story. She will have to use 20 words from the word bank (juicy words) to portray emotions and add descriptive language.
Sam,
ReplyDeleteAs you and I have the same student, all of this information was familiar. I thought you had a good analysis of Amanda and I believe the lesson plan that we chose for her will be beneficial.
Be sure to make it clear in your analysis that when she wrote about her chipmunk sentence and added juicy details it was not in the context of her writing prompt response, but it was a conversation that we had with her during work time. She definitely understands what "juicy words" are and that they make a difference in writing. Because of this I think the lesson plan would drive home this point to her and give her a wider vocabulary to work from.
I like how you made the point that it would be interesting to know if when the students are writing their first drafts they are told to write out as much as they can in a short amount of time. If so, this would explain a lot of her careless spelling errors and grammar. I would definitely expect them in any student's work if we are just asking them to write everything out on paper and go back and edit later.
Great Job!
Gretchen
So, I am going to try and make this comment a little different than the comment I left on Gretchen's blog!
ReplyDeleteIt is great that Amanda loves to write. After reading your analysis I could tell you have a great understanding of where Amanda is excelling and where she needs a little bit of help. I was a tad bit confused about Amanda’s word choice, but after e-mailing you and reading Gretchen’s response I understand where Amanda is. As Gretchen has already said, be sure to make it clear in your analysis that when prompting Amanda about the chipmunk story it was not in the context of her writing sample; as that was what I originally thought when I first read that paragraph. Having this clarification and given Amanda weakness with word choice in her writing I think your lesson plan will work very nicely for Amanda. It looks like Amanda could use a lesson about word choices to really help her hammer in those skills.
You objective matches the major points in your analysis and your lesson plan for Amanda fits perfectly. Looking at the Optimal Learning Model, are you going to do a demonstration(give an example) and shared demonstration and/or guided demonstration(work with students to have them come up with an example) before the students do independent practice(working on the note cards independently)?
I really like the lesson; it sounds like fun!
Ps. Sorry for the confusion!!!
Tessa
After reading your analysis, it appears that your buddy has a lot of different writing skills. Her performance in spelling seems to correlate with her writing as an above standard student. From the analysis, it appears that your buddy enjoys writing, which makes this a great opportunity for the encouragement of engaging writing activities. Based off your analysis of the six traits of writing, you stated that your buddy landed on the grading rubric most often in the 5 category. Based on this assessment it seems appropriate to implement the lesson plan that you chose, working on descriptive writing. I appreciated the fact that it is challenging to make an analysis based on one piece of writing, especially a piece that was written from a prompt; but based on the information that you have gathered the direction you are headed appears to be appropriate.
ReplyDeleteQuestions: If you decided not to work on descriptive writing with your buddy, what other area would you focus? Would you choose spelling based on the fact that she made errors on low frequency multisyllabic words derived from Latin and Greek combining forms? Just curious.
Jamie
Final Response:
ReplyDeleteMy group members made some good points and asked some great questions. Gretchen made the point that I should clarify one of my paragraphs. In the 4th paragraph where I am talking about my student’s knowledge of juicy words, I would add in the first sentence that this conversation took place before I got to look at her writing.
Tessa’s point about the lesson plan was to use the Optimal Learning Model. For this lesson, I don’t think that there is a need for modeling. The point of the exercise is for the student to come up with different words independently (something she’ll need to do while writing). She is to come up with words, then write a story. Both of which are things she knows how to do. If she isn’t sure of a word, she can look it up in the thesaurus. Then she can use the prompt or create her own beginning sentence for her scary Halloween experience.
Jamie had asked what other area I would focus on if I didn’t work on word choice. I would pick spelling and would focus on Latin and Greek bases and roots (Templeton & Morris, 1999). I would also want her to individualize her weekly list to include the words she wants to learn how to spell (Templeton & Morris, 1999).
Lastly, I would also like to add that I didn’t have an opportunity to see another one of her stories, but she said that her writing in her folder is all prompted. She does like writing fiction stories and is working on one for one of her friends. Hopefully, I will be able to read some unprompted work and see what she does there.