Project 1: Analysis of Student Writing and Lesson Plan

Project 1: Analysis of Student Writing and Lesson Plan

Analysis

This analysis is inferred after reading two short writing samples of E’s (Pseudo-name) work in his class. He gave us a final draft of a writing that was assumingly from a prompt in class. He wrote about his feelings for various subjects in class. His rough draft writing piece that he supplied for use was about an adventure story where he searches for gold. The spelling analysis is based on the spelling in the writing then also the spelling inventory that we took from our student.

Meaning

E was happy to share his writing with us. He first gave us a final draft piece that is about his school work and shows his interest and skills from a personal, first hand view. In this, he explains clearly his struggles in writing are in brainstorming. His final draft shows he is a strong writer in all of the six traits, regardless of these struggles. E shared with us that his mother wants him to be a writer when he grows up because of his advanced skills so far. However, it was clear in conversation and in his writing that he does not favor it. Instead he favors math; he told us this right away in conversation and again in his writing, “I think math is really important even when you have a job!” He then showed us his rough draft pieces of writing. Some were about finding gold, animals, and other fantasy style stories. He was excited to show us his story about gold. This gave us a good look at his personal interest in fantasy and adventure. He repeatedly told us this was his favorite style of writing. He uses his personal creativity to shine in this story; you can tell he was really having fun with “The Adventure of Gold!”

Ownership

 E’s ownership is strong. He is proud of his adventure stories and enjoys showing off his creative work. His preferences are in fantasy and fiction writing. This is where he uses his creativity to grab his audience’s attention. While reading the first draft of his story “The Adventure of the Gold”, the reader can sense and feel that he is having fun trying out new possibilities with his writing.  E knows he writes well and experiments with this skill. In his final draft piece, he mentions that he gets frustrated with coming up with ideas for writing. The topics of the pieces I collected and looked through were exciting and attention grabbing. I’m wondering if he is focusing too much on picking the “perfect topic” which holds him up during brainstorming. He writes at home in journals too; there is a sense of enjoyment that he gets from doing well in his writing, even though he says it’s not his favorite.

6 Traits

                Ideas: In his final draft and rough draft work, the ideas are understandable and focused. As a reader, I am interested and able to comprehend his thoughts and ideas clearly and effortlessly. In the final draft piece, he writes of his personal strengths and struggles in school. The ideas keep me reading with anticipation and excitement. His sentence phrases are unique, and attention-grabbing, “My most serious gripe of all is when I discourage myself.” The rough draft piece was a detailed story of finding “Mt. Gold and Silver”; a treasure hunt.

                Organization: The organization of his final draft is concise and orderly. Transitions are present between paragraphs, but he could use more work with it. He writes in a controlled manner. In his rough draft, he could use work on his transitions and connections: Ex. “It made no sense to me. Then, I found myself packing for the trip there.” This part of the story was unclear to the reader, as he was switching the focus of his story. Also, pacing and sequencing make it a little more difficult to read. His creativity sometimes gets him into too much detail that can detract from the focus of the story.

                Voice: In both pieces, his writing is original and inviting. His ideas are detailed and stay focused on the writing topic. He is not afraid to take risks with what he reveals in his writing.  In the final draft he writes personally, for example, “I always take a really long time: just to make one juicy page like this.” He tries to connect with the audience with his use of voice.  In his rough draft piece, he writes with a more story telling sense, very step-by-step basis, “Then, I found myself packing for the trip there.”

                Word Choice: He uses word choice in a natural and effective way. The words are colorful and put in precise places to bring power in the piece. In both the rough draft and final, I was intrigued by his word choices: “gripe, discourage, mysterious, parchment”. They add personality, character, and interest.

                Sentence Fluency: In his final draft the sentence fluency flows well and is usually easy to follow. The sentence structure varies and is creative. Thought is put into the purpose of each sentence; for example, “All that preparing goes to waste when I get 4’s or 3’s on my not-to-good.” The effort is there, but it still comes out a bit choppy. In his rough drafts, the sentences are much more choppy and don’t always transition. There isn’t much variation in the structure, often they start with the standard, “then there was… It was… Then we…” etc. Simply telling “what happens next in the story”.

                Conventions:  Conventions in E’s final draft are used well and consistently. In the rough draft, punctuation varies. It is always correct at the end of sentences, and there is thought put into it to make it unique. There is need for more attention to punctuation within the sentence, i.e. commas and semicolons. He does attempt to manipulate conventions to use for style; however, his use is often confusing to the reader. I assume from this that he is confused about the proper places for them. Capitalizations skills need work. In the final draft it is appropriate, but in the rough draft, he struggles with capitalization of nouns; for example, “Juanita Beach and Pirate.”

Spelling

E’s Spelling is generally correct in both the final and rough drafts.  He is very advanced for a fourth grade student. The rough draft has more mistakes than the final, and it’s fair to assume he will put more effort into this during revision/editing. Spelling overall is very good. His mistakes are on complex words that show he is willing to take risks. During our spelling inventory he spelled all words correct until we got to the last four upper level words, confindnt, forutanate, civlize, oppopssion.  These spelling errors put him in the middle-late syllables and affixes spelling stage. These mistakes were close to the correct spelling, and he used knowledge of his previous experiences with prefixes and suffixes to help his spelling. He would benefit from practice with syllable junctures, consonant doubling, inflected endings, prefixes and suffixes (Bear & Barone 1989). E was on the independent level on the Examiner spelling lists for our spelling inventory up to the sixth grade word list. This shows his spelling strengths well. Even on the upper middle school and high school word lists he scored in the instructional level.

In his writing work that we collected he misspelled “unfourtulay” and “mysteryous”. These spelling mistakes are on higher level words and again show his placement in the syllable stage of the spelling development (Templeton & Morris 1999).  They also show that he is willing to take risks in order to improve his writing.

                During our conversations E had mentioned how uses the meaning of words to figure out the spelling. In the middle of our spelling inventory, he stopped to tell us how he had used the meaning of the word in our example sentences to know what spelling to use. The word was “celler” and he said at first when he heard the word he started to write “seller”, but after hearing it in the sentence he knew the meaning changed the word. This was striking to hear that he was so aware of his knowledge that spelling represents both sound and meaning (Templeton & Morris 1999).

Lesson Plan

Objectives

Students will be able to use their timeline of events as a tool for brainstorming ideas in their pre-writing of non-fiction, realistic-fiction, or fiction stories.

Standards

GLE: 1.1: Prewrites to generate ideas and plan writing.

GLE: 2.3: Writes in a variety of forms/genres.

GLE: 3.1: Develops ideas and organizes writing.

Materials

Ruler (to make straight lines)

Large paper (Construction or legal size document)

Pencil and pen or marker

Instructional Strategies

Teacher will explain to students that she is providing them with another pre-writing  tool to use while brainstorming for stories.

Teacher will model for the students how to create a timeline of events and moments in his/her life that can be plotted in order. Then transferred and modified to make into a story.

Teacher will draw a horizontal line across the paper, starting with your birth year, to present (using the pen or marker as the line for different colors).

Teacher will use short fragments to label the moments. These will be just enough information to remind him/her of the event or moment, including the year. Talk through how one could use this idea for a potential story. Be sure to expand on how they could use it for different genres of writing. The main focus is to take an event and find ways to transfer it into a story/writing.

Model at least five events.

Have students get their papers out and draw their lines. Guide the class through the first few. Give the students time to work on ideas. Ask a few to share how they remembered that and how they would use it in a story. Have them give examples of different genres.

Give students 15-20 minutes to create as many ideas as possible on their brainstorming timeline. At least ten.

To wrap up ask a handful of students to share what helped them come up with more ideas when they were stuck and what strategies they used to keep finding more ideas.

Explain your thought process when you try to get out of the moments when you feel stuck and can’t think of other ideas.

Assessment

Teacher will assess by listening to students ideas to use their memories to create plots for new stories, during whole group share and conversations with other students. Teacher will also assess by looking for at least ten events on the brainstorming timeline that could possibly be used for a fiction, non-fiction, and/or realistic-fiction story.