Preparing Students to Hear Feedback

www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ857136&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ857136:

"Because music is an inherently social activity, the music classroom is an ideal place to help students develop or improve vital social skills." Again, this is where I can be useful in the school-wide goal of improving writing. Once students are comfortable assessing themselves and others in such a social subject, hopefully they will feel as comfortable across the curriculum.

The Mystery of Talent

http://www.musickit.com/resources/forumart2.html

"That problem is the mystery and esoteric reputation surrounding music notation and indeed music itself. The overwhelming consensus among non-musicians out there is that you must have "talent" or a secret key or something in order to take part in music." Truly, writing and music notation are so similar in this regard. People who’ve had little exposure or limited practice with writing or music notation seem to assume they have no talent for it. That it can’t be learned. My hope is to take some of the mystery out of notation and as a related result, writing.

Greater Expectations

Dweck's work was further supported in another article in the same journal. Our attempts to make kids feel good about themselves and their academic potential has backfired and students are actually questioning their potential. This article showed similar findings in lower income African-American and Native American communities. There is a vicious cycle of poor performance and low expecations. But, research like Dweck's suggests that this cycle can be broken by communicating with students about their ability to improve their performance.

Peres Elementary in Richmond, California, has 100% of its students receiving free or reduced lunch. All of the students are minorities, either African-American or Native American. The mantra of the school is, "Work hard. Get smart." Efficacy training has led to State Academic Performance Index scores improving more than 300 points. And students and teachers don't just "talk the talk." Data is shared in grade-level training sessions and with students. Poor scores are seen as an opportunity to find out what went wrong and fix it.

The bottom line of these articles and studies is that educators (and parents!) need to provide specific, constructive feedback that transparently identifies what students did well so that it can be duplicated in subsequent tasks. Also, we should point out what areas the student can improve upon and provide ample opportunities for students to apply that learning in a similar situation. Without the follow-up practice, no true learning can occur.

The Praise Paradox 3

Wulf-Uwe Meyer, psychologist, conducted another study that focused on the reactions of children when they hear other students receive praise. Meyer found that by the age of 12, children view other students who receive praise from teachers as being less capable students. Teacher praise is seen as a way to boost up those kids. They stated that students who received the most praise were the kids who were the lowest performing. Teens even concluded that those students who were criticized by their teachers, were the ones who the teachers believed had the most academic potential. Empty praise is certainly transparent to our kids. This emphasizes the need for specific feedback, rather than general praise.

Other negative side-effects of over-praising students is the resulting changes in motivation. Students start to perform merely to receive praise, rather than for the intrinsic benefit of learning for the sake of learning. Reed College and Stanford researchers followed over 150 praise studied and concluded that overly praised students will not take academic risks and do not view themselves as autonomous. These students exhibit more frequent eye-checking with teachers and speak to teachers in a way which intones question. They require praise to feel confident in their efforts and/or performance. We all know the kids who read that way, asking for confirmation from the adult who is listening. These students are also less able to attend to tasks for a more sustained period of time. This was very enlightening for me. Whether the over-praising is coming from home, school, or both, I can easily identify many students I have who fall into this category. I will have to watch myself to make sure that I am not adding to this problem.

My favorite part of this interesting article was a quote from one suburban New Jersey English teacher. She described a mother of one of her students who had complained that she was destroying the boy's self-esteem after giving him a C. The teacher's response was, "Your child is capable of better work. I'm not here to make them feel better. I'm here to make them do better." What a great message that so many parents need. But, it's a hard message to give, without offending someone.

Another important quote from the end of the article is, "A child deprived of the opportunity to discuss mistakes can't learn from them." This year, I really strove to provide timely, specific feedback to my students on ways to improve their work. I returned math tests to all of the students and had them go through and correct any of the mistakes they had made. I then met with any of them who were unable to correct the mistakes on their own. Similarly, I utilized editing checklists with my students. The conventions/grammar that they had learned were listed and they were accountable for correcting any of their errors. Checklists were personalized, depending on skills that students were on the cusp of mastering.

The Praise Paradox 2

Dr. Lisa Blackwell and Carol Dweck also published a report in an academic journal entitled, "Child Development." In this piece, Dweck and Blackwell discussed a study conducted at East Harlem's Life Science Secondary School. 700 low-achieving, minority students received semester-long interventions designed to improve their math scores. Students were separated into two random groups for an eight-session workshop. One group of students was taught study skills. In addition to study skills, the second group of students also received information about how intelligence is not innate. In two 25-minute lessons they read, studied slides, and acted about skits about how the brain actually grows new neutrons when challenged. The message they got was, "The brain is a muscle. Giving it a hard workout makes you smarter."

Teachers, who were not told which group students were assigned to, were able to identify the students who were in the "intelligence can be developed" group. They showed improved study habits and grades. Providing biological proof that intelligence can be developed by challenging one's brain was all it took to put these students on the road to improving their mathematical performance. I would like to find evidence of this online to show my students. I think that seeing the brain at work, growing, would be fascinating and motivating to them. It's one thing to say it, and completely another to be able to show it!

The Praise Paradox

I found the article, "The Praise Paradox, Are We Smothering Kids in Kind Words?", by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (neatoday, March/April 2011), very interesting. The article discusses research conducted by Dr. Carol Dweck, Columbia University. Dweck and her colleagues have studied the effect of student praise in 20 New York schools. 400 fifth-grade student, over a ten-year period, were given a series of puzzles, designed to test their IQ. The first test in the series was simple enough that all students did fairly well. Following the test, students were randomly divided into two groups and given one line of praise. Feedback on their performance positively reflected either their intelligence or their effort.

Students were then given a second test. They were offered a choice of a more difficult test, in which they would learn a lot, or an easy test, similar to the first one they had taken. Researchers found that 90% of the students who had received feedback praising their effort chose to take the more difficult of the tests. Most of the students who had been commended for their intelligence, chose the easier test. Dweck concluded that the group of students who felt that they were "smart", wanted to maintain the appearance of intelligence, rather than risking lower performance on the more difficult test.

The same students were then tested again, but were not given a choice for difficulty. The test was designed to be far more difficult than either of the first two. Everyone failed. The students who had received praise for their effort, appeared to try harder to solve the difficult puzzles, finally crediting their failure to a "lack of focus." The "smart" group visibly struggled during the testing and attributed their lack of success to the fact that they weren't so smart, after all.

Finally, a fourth round of testing, using puzzles with the same level of difficulty as the first, was administered. Students who had been originally provided with positive feedback about their effort showed 30% improvement on their scores, while the students who received praise for the intelligence performed 20% poorer than they had on the initial round of testing.

The implications of the study are that providing students with information about their effort provides them with variables that they can control. Students who are only told how smart they are, lack control. Children can adjust how much effort they choose to exert, but view their level of intelligence as a predetermined factor.

This article provided me with information that I can use right now. I will work to comment about specific details of students' work, not just make general statements that don't communicate what they did to earn the praise in the first place. However, it did generate some questions in my mind as well. What about the student who is working very hard, but not making progress? Sometimes I struggle to find a specific, positive comment to make because the student is struggling so much. I can certainly continue to praise their effort, but at some point, that's got to wear thin. It must feel like "spinning their wheels", but not really getting anywhere. Also, I wonder what to do about students who are highly intelligent, but give very little effort. I can think of one student in particular who is very bright and highly capable of achieving far more than he is. He is not interested in hearing or applying the constructive feedback that his peers and I are providing. He thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and therefore doesn't have to try very hard.

Teaching Summary Writing

I am a third grade teacher, new to the grade level and to the wonderful world of CSAP. In planning and preparing for administering the tests, I realized that my students would be asked to summarize the passage they read. I thought about the difference between retelling and summarizing. I had a lot of experience with having students retell what they read on the DRA…enough to know that they need to tell me the whole story—every little detail. The more the better! From looking at the model responses shown in prep books and online at the CDE website, I realized that summarizing was quite different. I went out and purchased a book of writing lessons, complete with ideas about teaching the skill of summarizing.

The book provided texts for the students to read and walked them through steps that would lead to a well-written summary. I was pleased with my find and dove right in to teaching my students how to do it. I was so disappointed in the result! What I had thought would be a simple, helpful set of lessons was a disaster. Some students just melted down and couldn't even being to understand what to do. My higher readers and writers simply copied the information, almost entirely from the passages. I was so frustrated! I shared my concerns with my teammate, who lent me the book Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling, Skills for Better Reading, Writing, and Test Taking, by Emily Kissner . This book made me feel slightly better because it stated that students do not truly master the skill of summary writing until around the 7^th grade. As 3^rd graders, my students and I (AND the creators of my writing instruction book!) had very different ideas about what were the most important parts of each passage. To them, the most important parts were the same as the parts that they found the most interesting. They wanted to include their favorite parts, which were the extra details that really should be left out of a summary. While the information in the book helped me feel better about lowering my expectations for my students summaries, I am still frustrated because they have to do so many of them on CSAP and on the DPS Interim Exams.

Next year I will be teaching 4^th grade. I will have to give two more rounds of CSAPs before the replacement goes into effect. I will spend time over the summer investigating ways to help my students write age-appropriate summaries.

Corey Wagner's 1st Grade Writer's Workshop

In this Video (15 minutes total but broken into four parts for uploading purposes), Corey emphasizes pre-writing/planning, stretching writing, and staying on topic.  He gives specific verbal feedback to students and responds individually to student writing.

Here is the link to Corey's video in one clip.
http://youtu.be/niZ-5GacenE

Corey Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2K86XTqvFw
Corey Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r6DrtX4_iw
Corey Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLICf4ba784
Corey Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtosHuSKmRQ

Response to Barb's Spiraling Post

I could not find a comment button on Barb's post titled, "Spiraling", so I just added a new post.

As Barb stated, we have had many conversations on our timing of the Poetry unit. 1st grade has our poetry study during the middle of the year, which is detrimental to the children’s development as writers. One of the 1^st grade objectives is to teach the children correct usage of punctuation. By the time we reach the poetry unit, many children are very close to understanding the usage. It seems like after the poetry unit my children are back to ground zero and I have to re-instruct.

Next year, no matter what grade I am teaching, I will either have the poetry unit at the beginning of the year or the end. I am leaning towards the beginning because I feel it would help all genres of writing. We could focus on word choice and figurative language, which would transfer to all writing.

In response to Barbs comment, “that writing is truly developmental and must spiral through the curriculum each year. Similar to math, it must be revisited on a regular basis and built upon previous learning”, I feel that they spiral of our curriculum is too slow. Each year the children have four enormous genre studies and it doesn’t spiral back until the following year. During these genre studies we are engulfed in the genre and I feel the children lose sight of all we have learned in previous studies. One could compare the spiraling to our math program in that it does spiral, but by no means does the spiral happen on a regular basis. Everyday Math spirals on a daily and unit basis, therefore the children are constantly revisiting old skills and concepts. I feel that this is something that we need to look at when planning this summer and agree with Barb, in that we need to restructure some of our writing curriculum for next year to incorporate a more frequent spiraling of the genres and change the location of our poetry unit.

"The Praise Paradox: Are We Smothering Kids in Kind Words?"

Last weekend I read, ""The Praise Paradox: Are We Smothering Kids in Kind Words?" by Po Bronson and Ashely Merryman, kindly given to me by Cherri. The article examined the negative effects of praise. It determined that we have become a society that over praises children to the point that it is detrimental to the child. We shower children with positive feedback for tasks and behaviors that are expected. To our own defense, we do this because we feel that the child will have a higher self-esteem and “won’t be intimidated by new academic challenges. The effect is actually the opposite; these children who are showered with praise are timid to encounter a task that they know they will struggle with. Disproportionate praise also distorts the child’s motivation and reasoning for working; “they begin doing things merely to hear the praise”.

The overarching theme was the importance of hard work and effort. The development of a hard work ethic and perseverance in a rigorous task is far more important than a child’s IQ. One thing that I pride myself on is my work ethic. I might not be as smart as many of my co-workers, but I know there are not many that will out work me. I truly believe that instilling a hard work ethic in a child will help them far more than anything else, especially a struggling student.

A struggling student is going to have to work ten times harder than an average student to make the same growth. I have work with several children with reading disorders that have worked on a nightly basis, on top of their schoolwork, and throughout the summer, to make marginal gains towards grade level. That child may not be reading at grade level, but they have developed a work ethic that no gifted child will ever develop at such a young age.

I bring up the gifted child in the previous paragraph because I feel this article relates to our gifted children. One of the hardest things to teach a gifted child is failure. Most gifted children have heard how smart they are throughout their whole lives, and also have never been given a task that they either did not solve instantly or with little effort. This is one of the reasons I have advocated to push our gifted children at such a young age and tried to differentiate for those in my classroom. These children need to be challenged with rigorous tasks, multi-step problems, and differentiated work. Each child should be growing a year’s growth during one school year, no matter where they came into the classroom.

That being said, I know how hard it is to differentiate for all your students and such a wide spectrum of children. By not attempting this we our robbing our gifted children of a hard work ethic and perseverance.

This article was a great, quick read. If you have not read it yet, I would suggest you do!

A kid makes a book

We have been working on books for Moms and Muffins which is coming up in May. The books have about 10 pages. Some examples: It bugs my mom when ______________. My mom likes to_____________________. My mom is smart. She knows all about______________. Each kid is making a book. So we work on a couple pages per day. Then they get bound and the kids will present them to their moms on Moms and Muffins Day. The moms love them.

Today, during Choice Time, a girl went to Art. She cut several pieces of paper into rectangles and stapled them together. After writing about 5 pages of her very own Mother's Day book she came to read it to me. Some examples: I love my mom. I am going to get my mom a present on Mother's Day. Then we had to clean up. She said, "I'll just finish up at home."

It never ceases to amaze me when kids take learning into their own hands and work on and produce such neat things. I have to constantly remind myself to step out of the way and let the learning happen.

A Progressing Kindergarten Writer

I have been watching one boy's progress, recently, during Writer's Workshop. He has grown into quite a good kindergarten writer.

He is a good artist as well. At first all of his emphasis was on his pictures in his journal. His pictures are full of detail and colors.

But the focus has shifted just a little and his writing really shines. There was one day recently where he wrote to the bottom of his journal page and he didn't draw a picture at all. He wrote about a trip to Target and riding his bike. He has so many sight words spelled correctly, other words he has sounded out and he consistently uses spaces. He is experimenting with periods and just throws them in anywhere he wants to!

When Writer's Workshop is over he always comes over to me because he wants to share.

Article: Getting Studetns to Think

In this article, a professor from the University of Hawaii sought out some help from his colleagues for a better understanding on how to make his students’ writing more engaging rather than superficial. The responses and activities he received were varied yet all promoted deeper thinking and provided a scaffold for students to gain a better insight to their beliefs and understandings before writing.

Although this article was written with university students in mind, I was definitely able to apply some of the ideas and practices to my second grade students. I remember once reading that Donald Graves believed that writing was the ultimate form of synthesis. If this is true, than understanding how to get writers to be more critical thinkers before actually writing or finalizing their writing, is essential.

Two of the suggested ideas were focused on having students appreciate other people’s perspective. I believe this is a transferable skill and can be built from a very early age. I have ongoing conversations with my students regarding this and use every opportunity to reinforce the idea that it is OK to have different views. I encourage listening to the other person’s ideas or beliefs and trying to back up their own opinions with clear examples. This sort of dialogue I think will later help them when they have to put their thinking and beliefs into writing. Developing critical thinking skills is developmental and needs to be ongoing for life.

Spiraling

I was rather disappointed with my students writing this week and have been reflecting on why and what I can take away from it. We have been doing writing prompts off and on all year. In February, our homework centered around prompt writing and receiving feedback. The students were doing really well and I was proud of their growth. So, when I looked through their writing this week, I was shocked to see that only 7 out of 53 students remembered to have an opening sentence and 5 out of the entire group had a closing. I even had one child use only one period for a two page writing piece. I was so disappointed. I read many of the opening sentences to the students and had them give a thumbs up if it was an opening sentence. They could do this rather well but it was not transferring to their writing.

One thought is that we have been doing poetry for the past several weeks which follows a different structure and does not require typical correct punctuation and capitalization. Corey and I have had several conversations around switching our poetry units to either the beginning of the year or end. I am not sure how much this affects their narrative writing.

Another thought, is that writing is truly developmental and must spiral through the curriculum each year. Similar to math, it must be revisited on a regular basis and built upon previous learning. I will continue to contemplate this as I think through a restructuring of my writing curriculum for next year.

Science Writing Resources

My membership to NSTA (National Science Teacher Association) was up for renewal last week. I don’t usually go to the NSTA website, but after renewing I started looking around and found out that I can download copies (PDFs) of past articles for free, and I can search by topic and grade level. I did a search on “Writing” for the topic, several articles came up, which I proceeded to download. I haven’t had time to read them yet, but here is a list of some of the articles, in case anyone else would like to see them. Science and Children is the elementary level NSTA publication, Science Scope is the middle school level one and my search results also included chapters to some NSTA books.

• “Comments on Students’ Writing” by Inez Fugate Liftig, Science Scope, April 2000.


• Handbook of College Science Teaching, Chapter 19:“Mating Darwin with Dickinson: How Writing Creative Poetry in Biology Helps Students Think Critically and Build Personal Connections to the Course Content” by Jerry A. Waldvogel, copyright 2006, NSTA.


• Help, I’m Teaching Middle School Science, Chapter 6: Writing for Science, by C. Jill Swango and Sally Boles Steward, copyright 2003, NSTA.


• “Learning Logs: Writing to Learn, Reading to Access” by Daniel Heuser, Science and Children November/December 2005.


• “Making Thinking Visible, a method to encourage science writing in upper elementary grades” by Roxanne Greitz Miller and Robert C. Calfee, Science and Children, November/December 2004.


• “Science 101, Q: What writing represents what scientists actually do?” Science and Children, November/December 2005.


• “Science the “Write” Way” by Valeria L. Akerson and Terrell A. Young, Science and Children, November/December 2005.


• “Writing to Learn” by Brian Hand, Vaughan Prain, and Keith Vance, Science Scope, October 1999.

After four days of assessing research papers, I've now finished. I've found that reading each one of them 3 times gives me a good perspective on the total writing style of each one of my students. Like all long-term assignments, I wonder if all of the work is totally theirs in some cases. The writing seems more organized and more polished for some of them than what they produce on a weekly basis.
From the "Feedback" book we've read this year, I have chosen two different ways of responding to student writing: 1) writing my expectations when I correct their papers, and 2) using a rubric. My reason was that I wanted to see if my feedback really would change the way students write in Social Studies. I've used these methods before, but in using them more extensively, I thought I could determine the results more clearly than in years past. So, did my feedback change the way students write?

My conclusion: I don't know.

It seems to me that in the analysis of student writing, the purpose for their writing is the determining factor. On their writing assignments when they have to give reasons for the actions of history, I point out the difference between stating opinion and stating fact with reliable research. In this way I had hoped to change their thinking and see it translate to their writing. What I have noticed is that the week-to-week assignments have become clearer, but this long-term assignment still showed a lack of understanding in 36 out of 54 papers. In those 36 papers there were 11 students who glaringly did not apply the "rules of writing for Social Studies". The other 25 students did try to use research as evidence for their thesis, but still used "I" and "you" in their explanations to some extent. All in all, this number of 36 is ten students better than when the process began in October.

The rubric was constructed to lead students to a better understanding of writing with an organized purpose. According to the rubric, many students were able to "Meet Expectations" or "Exceed Expectations" for this first attempt as formal research. I wanted them to have the experience before High School because High School teachers have requested that this be one writing experience that 8th graders have before entering 9th grade.

The Research Essay: My Observations - Part I

Every year, Kathy Degi and I assign a research project. The best part of it is that students choose their own subject. It helps them take ownership and I receive an amazing variety of subjects. From the beginning, students choose subjects that must relate to American History. Any event is acceptable, but biographies are not, neither are generalized topics. i.e. Pearl Harbor. They are required to formulate a thesis statement in their introductory paragraph and build 5 - 7 paragraphs around it. Of course, it ends with a conclusion. Sometimes the conclusion contridicts their thesis. When this happens students usually approach me in a bit of an alarmed state. "Is this okay?" "It didn't really end up like I thought it would." As far as I am concerned, contridicting ones own thesis statement shows thought and considerable research, not failure. I am concerned that they connect the research to the thesis statement in one way or another. In addition to the writing, student must have a chart or graph, or table of some kind. It must be properly labeled. I wait for it every year, and someone always comes through. It goes something like this: "Hey, wait. This is like what we do in Math! I get it. That's why they put that kind of stuff in our books."

I don't know about you, but I love that light bulb!

Now, that they've given their research presentation, I begin to read and read and read and....

The rubrics were given to each class and explained well within the time limit for finishing it. So in the next few weeks, I'll read and give feedback and score. I can't even speculate right now to their progress. If the titles of their papers are any indication, I should have a good time over spring break reading and seeing the progress. Wish me professional luck!

Goals revisted

About a month ago, I had students set their academic goals for Social Studies. In order to cement those goals, I began to provide extensive feedback to every assignment, short or long, in class or out of class, because so many students indicated that they would follow my feedback as they went forward in our study of history. So, what happened in the last month?

The classroom writing of 8th graders is more back on track with what I know they can do. Before they were just wandering with no energy to write. While I would like to think that my prompting (and warnings) might have influenced them, I tend to think they were just tested out and tired. An 8th grader's thinking becomes lax in the winter. One good grade and CSAP and their personal lives and the work for other classes, lulls them into a false sense of security.

The last two assignments that have required their writing to show what they know in how they are problem solving for the Slavery unit, have come alive. I believe that the timeline work we've done helps to solidify the events of the past, so that nothing is in isolation. Knowing that the cause and effect relationships in history can be analyzed, is a wonderful writing tool when students truly discover it and apply it.

Book Review: Nonfiction Matters

Last Saturday, I finally finished Nonfiction Matters, Reading, Writing, and Research in Grades 3-8 by Stephanie Harvey (1998, Stenhouse Publishers). I had a difficult time getting through it because it should have been titled Literary Nonfiction for Grades 3-6. This was the book I told Marcy that I would read for this PDU, but I did not find it as informative as some of the other books I have been reading.

The author wants to make nonfiction writing more entertaining so that it is not so boring to grade. Toward the end of her book she used the word “literary nonfiction” and I finally understood what she wanted. Literary nonfiction is not what I teach my science students to write, I do not want them to include their persona (voice) in their writing. Her bias toward literary writing was present throughout the book. She had many ideas that would work well for social studies, but not many for science.

It did not seem like Ms Harvey had much experience with middle school students, except for being the parent of one. She wrote that middle school students are usually too shy to ask questions – this is definitely not my experience. Most of her suggestions were for a self- contained classroom that taught all subjects, another indication that she has not taught middle school. With “No Child Left Behind” there are very few secondary teachers who are highly qualified to teach all subjects. We also do not have the flexibility to spend two hours a day on reading and writing, which is something that she proposes.

Harvey did have some strategies and ideas that I found helpful. She cited a project by an elementary teacher who collected editorials for students to read before they begin writing their own editorials, which is an idea I am expanding into a science magazine for my 8th graders. She has a good general outline / timeline for research projects (1st teacher gets the proper resources, 2nd teacher builds background information, 3rd students commit to a topic, 4th students conduct research and take notes, 5th students spend time writing, 6th students finalize their papers and work on visual aids, 7th students present their projects). She had interesting insights to writing with clarity and other topics.

Overall, I would not recommend this book to middle school teachers, especially science or math teachers, I think it would have more value to elementary teachers and secondary social studies teachers.

Writing and math

In trying to push my kids to write more during math, I decided to take one small step and use an idea from the Everyday Math Teacher's Manual. The kid's always have review math boxes to do with almost every lesson. On some lesson's they have writing and reasoning prompts with one of the boxes. For example the box will have the kids finding the perimeter of a shape, and then simply put the answer. I noticed that Gretel typed up a small square of paper to put over the boxes, and for this box...I would write, Describe how you determined the perimeter of the rectangle in problem 4. I plan on modeling how I want this to look for the kids and will then make copies of both great and not so great examples from the students to share and evaluate together.
Special thanks to Gretel who sent me a template to get me started.

wrin

Writing and Science

I have spent years writing for science related projects, mostly on the job when I worked as a geologist (for over 10 years), as lab tech in the synchronous belt test lab at Gates Rubber, and as an aquarium hobbyist. I am published in both the oil and gas industry and in the aquarium hobbyist world and have written many in house reports for several of my former employers. I have been reading science related magazines and professional journals since I was in junior high and have been reading and writing about science for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees in geology, as well as for the many education related classes that I have taken. I believe I have a solid understanding of what good science writing looks like.

My struggle in teaching writing in my science classes is that I have not had any coursework in teaching language arts – so I don’t have the vocabulary and background information that allows me to communicate effectively with my language art’s peers and to use the same language that my students learn in their language arts classes. My students do a substantial amount of writing in science class, but I am just beginning to know what to call the different types of writing assignments I use (in the language arts vernacular). I have never been trained in “the writing process” and until recently did not know what steps that term referred to. According to my research, teachers usually mean that the student should use the following steps before undertaking a written assignment: invention / draft / sharing and responding / revising / editing / publishing. I should help my students use the writing process when they are working on research papers or projects. These longer term science assignments should be scored on grammar, spelling, etc. in addition to the science.

Last year I learned the term “quick write” which describes the type of writing assignments I often use after watching a video, doing an activity, or holding a discussion. I give students a few minutes to write a paragraph or so about what they learned, which is then their exit ticket as they leave my class. I like this type of quick written assessment because it gives me a snapshot of what the students got from the lesson, what they found interesting and important, and what they are thinking about. These assignments are graded on effort, not “language arts skills” since they are written under the pressure of a short time constraint. Many of the books and articles I have been reading support my position of not grading these types of assignments for grammar, spelling, etc.

I have students write in their learning journal when we begin a unit or topic and again when we have finished with it. These entries are based on written prompts that students are expected to respond to, and may include drawings, graphic organizers and diagrams in addition to written text. The books and articles I have been reading on how the brain works when it learns call these types of assignments either “priming” for introducing the topic, or “writing to learn” when students summarize their thoughts. Again, what I read says these types of assignments should not be graded for grammar, spelling, etc., doing so inhibits the learning that is taking place as students ponder the material being covered.

This past Saturday I read the book, Teaching Adolescent Writers, by Kelly Gallagher (2006, Stenhouse Publishers). It gave me much food for thought (enough to keeping posting blog entries for some time!!!). The newest term to add to my writing vocabulary is “on demand writing”, which is much of what we do in science (and CSAP). According to Gallagher, this type of writing uses a different process than the “writing process” as it is traditionally taught; instead he suggests teaching the “ABCD”’s; which stands for Attack the prompt, Brainstorm possible answers, Choose the order of your response, and Detect errors before turning in your draft/work. I do expect students to write complete thoughts, but usually grade on the science that was included, not the “language arts”.

I must admit, I often read about writing and the teaching of writing from a self-defense position so that I am able to justify what I do and how I do it and not because I am interested in learning about the craft of writing. I have been told by language arts teachers in my building that I should be grading every piece of writing that is turned in to me for grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc., but when I look at the building’s writing rubric that is to be used in all content areas, I don’t know what several of the terms mean – so how am I supposed to scores student writing on these mystery items? As I read more and more about the teaching of writing, assessment, and brain research, I feel that I am on the right track in how I teach, use, and assess writing in my classroom. By building my own background knowledge and vocabulary for writing, I can now explain why I do not grade every piece of writing done in science class for grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word usage, etc. and I am learning how to do a better job of teaching students to write in science class.

Collaborative Writing discussed in Corey's post--Write Arounds,Read Arounds,focused Peer Interaction, WTL/LTW

Even though, as Kurt pointed out, the studies in Corey's post refer to adolescents and not elementary students, I believe there is tremendous value in peer interaction as it relates to the teaching of writing even at the elementary level.  At the Southeast Regional Principal Meeting in-service I attended with Kurt in January, the facilitator had principals reflect on the use of a schoolwide  RACE (Restate, Answer, Cite, Explain) strategy and questions they had about it. In a write-around activity, principals were given only a few minutes to respond, they wrote a question/reflection and then passed their paper to the person next to them  and had to respond quickly in writing to the other person's comment. This continued until all four people seated at the table had responded to one another. This activity had high engagement and could be used in a class to help build writing fluency.  For example, a teacher could seat students in groups of 4, ask a guiding question, have students respond in a sentence of two and then pass their paper to the next person and respond to their writing until each student has 3 responses to their original paper.  Even with younger students with emerging literacy skills, this could be valuable. It is not an editing activity, but a fluency building activity that also helps strengthen content knowledge (WTL--Writing to Learn/LTW-- Learning to Write movement).  It could also be used for creative writing activities, etc.

How many times in a day do we ask students questions, have them raise their hands for responses and only a few students are selected to be called on? How much more effective might it be to ask a question, have them write a quick response, then have a few share their written responses. Some students don't process so quickly and need more time to reflect before responding.  In guided reading, when students are looking at pictures and predicting what will happen in a story or if you are using a word splash for students to predict what might happen in a text prior to reading, instead of having them respond orally, have them do a quick write. WTL has great implications not only for improving writing fluency but for also strengthening content knowledge.

Read-arounds are also great ways of building student engagement, particularly when students are trained on a rubric ahead of time so they know what they are looking for in a paper. Again, in first grade, second, etc. this may be a very simple rubric and a very short writing piece, nevertheless, it engages students (they love to read each other's writing) and employs higher order thinking skills of applying, synthesizing, and evaluating (Bloom's taxonomy).  Just as adults do a practice read and eval training for inter-rater reliability before they score papers, it is important that students do a teacher-led practice evaluation  to establish inter-rater reliability prior to peer scoring of writing.

Video of article discussion

pdu session 1 feb 23

I met with all our 7th and 8th graders on Wednesday during classes. The purpose of the meeting was to bring each one of them up to speed with their grades at the end of the this trimester. I was distressed at the number of students who were PP or U at this stage of the year. During my feedback conferences, there were a lot blank looks and many shrugged shoulders. One part of the conference was to have students set one goal for their writing improvement in the next 3 weeks. In Social Studies we work on formulating specific answers. (Generalized statements usually don't accomplish much when students are writing in a content specific area.) I was getting answers such as, "Uh, study more?" from 7th graders and "Wow, I guess I'll try to turn in more of my stuff." from 8th graders.

Needless to say, we have work yet to do.

All in all, the students, when really given time to think about it, can give me feedback on what has to happen this last 8th weeks of the year. Today, they will write this goal, I'll sign it. And they will choose a classroom buddy for accountability. So, in 3 weeks, we'll see. They've done it before and I know they will come through.

Science Writing Rubric

Below is a general science writing rubric that I have used for the last few years. I usually modify this for specific assignments, but this is the one that the students get a copy of their first day of school along with the other general information for my class. I could not get the table to copy into this blogformat, so I redid it in list format.

7th and 8th Grade Science Writing Rubric
4 = Advanced Meets “3” criteria plus:
3 = Proficient
2 = Part. Prof.
1 = Unsatisfactory

Content and Organization
4 = Advanced Meets “3” criteria plus:
*Intro is a summary
*Body covers topic above and beyond expectations with enriching details
*Conclusion summarizes content
*More references are supplied than required.
3 = Proficient
*Meets assignment requirements for content, format & references
*Stays focused
*Content is organized and easy for the reader to follow & understand
2 = Part. Prof.
*Meets some requirements for content and format
*Some info is not relevant
Info is sometimes hard to understand
*Connections are not always clear
1 = Unsatisfactory
*Meets few requirements
*Ideas not supported and/or are not connected
*Confusing

Style and Fluency
4 = Advanced Meets “3” criteria plus:
*Written in third person
*Uses some advanced scientific vocabulary
*Uses consistent style
*Is very interesting and engaging to reader
3 = Proficient
*Uses appropriate science terminology
*Communicates clearly
*Reads smoothly
*Statements are supported with data when possible
2 = Part. Prof.
*Sentences may be repetitive or choppy or have abrupt shifts
*Word choice is general, bland, or not scientific
*Statements are not supported with data
1 = Unsatisfactory
*Sentences may ramble or contain incomplete ideas
*Uses vague language
*Word choice is poor and/or not scientific

Conventions
4 = Advanced Meets “3” criteria plus:
No spelling or punctuation errors
3 = Proficient
Very few spelling errors and /or punctuation errors (1 to 3)
2 = Part. Prof.
Several spelling and/orpunctuation errors (more than 3)
1 = Unsatisfactory
So many spelling and/or punctuation errors that writing is hard to read

Neatness
4 = Advanced Meets “3” criteria plus:
and Typed; and writer went above and beyond the assignment expectations.
3 = Proficient
Neat, evident that the writer took adequate time to complete
2 = Part. Prof.
Sometimes hard to read.
1 = Unsatisfactory
Very hard to read

Subtotals
Total = ______ /4 =

PLEASE NOTE – PLAGERIZED CONTENT IS AN AUTOMATIC "0"

Little Girls Can Be Mean Presnetation

The presentation by Dr. Michelle Anthony on February 22 based on her book Little Girls Can Be Mean offered many ideas for getting students to write. Before giving suggestions for student writing, she talked about the fact that there is an underlying motive that is good even when we see bullying. She indicated that this can stem from a desire of students to be powerful and/ or connect with friends and talked about how this serves an important purpose even though at times this comes across as meanness. She described a 4 step process in dealing with bullying: 1)Observe, 2)Connect, 3)Guide, 4)Support to Act. What she emphasized was the idea that students can respond in each of these areas with writing. Examples include acting some feelings out-- comparing kind vs unkind, safe vs unsafe, welcoming vs unwelcoming behavior and then describing in writing what it would look like if someone was feeling a certain way. She talked about using books like Amazing Grace and then having students put themselves in the emotional perspective of one of the characters and write about what these emotions mean. She gave an example for students to write about Utopia with questions that expand their thinking: "So, what does this mean that everything would be perfect?" "What would you do that day if you had no school?" She also spoke to the idea of getting students to hypothesize about a situation and then write: "If you were listening to your strong side or were courageous in this situation, what would you do?" I thought it was interesting that she connected Reader's Theater or acting something out (active movement that we've talked about last year) to the writing that students could do. I'd be interested to hear if you are able to use some of the writing activities she suggested in her presentation.

Resource for educational journals

Hello fellow bloggers,

I found a useful resource to search for educational journals that I would like to share with all of you. Education Resource Information Center, ERIC, is a government website. I found it to be a very useful website to search for any research on any topic pertaining to education. Below is the websites description of what ERIC provides:

ERIC provides unlimited access to more than 1.3 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials, with hundreds of new records added multiple times per week. If available, links to full text are included.

Within the ERIC Collection, you will find records for:

• journal articles
• books
• research syntheses
• conference papers
• technical reports
• policy papers
• other education-related materials

This morning I searched "writing interventions" and found the research article "With What Frequency Are Teachers Employing Evidenced-Based Procedures in their Writing Classrooms?" by L. Karen Soiferman, Karen Boyd, and Stanley B. Straw. Their research looked at the frequency and effect of the following writing instructions: Planning Hand in A Plan Before Drafting, Revising, Revise After Teacher comments, Revise After, Writing summaries, Collaborative Writing, Specific Product Goals, Setting specific subgoals, Rubrics To Judge Writing, To write their own Papers To Evaluate Others, Word Processing, Sentence Combining Instruction, Prewriting – generate or organize ideas, Study of Models Expert Models Other Student Writing, Writing for Content Learning, Graphic Organizers, Journal Writing Free Writing/Discovery Writing, Formal Grammar Instruction Grammar & Usage Worksheets, Diagramming Sentences Parts of Speech, Specific Product Goals Rubrics To Judge Writing To write their own Papers, To Evaluate Others.

The research reported that teenagers report that they need additional instruction and focus on writing to improve their writing. The question is, Where do we find the time? I have a hard enough time trying instruct our genre writing studies, Fundations, Everyday Math, Tracks Science, etc.

The two writing instructional methods that I felt were underutilized in my own classroom were Collaborative Writing and the use of Word Processing. Below are some excerpts from the article about these two instructional methods:

Collaborative Writing
Graham and Perin (2007) found that having students engage in collaborative writing resulted in a strong average effect size, 0.75. The instructional arrangement involved “adolescents working together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions.” (p. 16). Students who participated in collaborative writing exceeded their peers who wrote independently by 27 percentile points.

In our research we found that approximately 1 in 7 teachers engage students in collaborative writing regularly (15%) while 43% say that they never engage students in collaborative writing at any time. Graham and Perin found that students who are allowed to work collaboratively on writing activities and who participate in peer responding activities help each other with all aspects of composition.

When teachers allow frequent collaboration in their classrooms, students learn how to read their papers with a more critical eye. Knowing that a peer will be reading and helping to revise the paper leads to more thoughtful word choices and a desire to make sure that the meaning is clear. Practicing collaborative writing often makes the process easier to use and students can get comfortable with the idea of sharing their work throughout the writing process and not just at the end of the process. Since collaborative writing improves student writing it makes sense to allow students to work collaboratively as much as possible. The need for employing collaborative writing in classrooms is supported by the work by Lunsford and Ede (1990) on the large frequency of collaborative writing that takes place in professional settings.

Word Processing
The use of word processing, whether used collaboratively or under teacher guidance, appears to be very effective in improving the quality of student writing. Word processing resulted in an average effect size of 0.55 meaning that students who engaged in writing with the word processor had scores that were 21 percentile points above the students who wrote their compositions by hand. The ability of the word processor to support writing allows students to “add, delete, and move text easily” while also allowing students to use such resources as grammar and spell checkers. The effects reported by Graham and Perin (2007) suggest that the effect for low-achieving students was even higher (effect size = 0.70).

Considering how important the use of technology has become in today‟s society, it is interesting to note that only 30% of the teachers in grades 4-12 frequently make use of computers and word processors as instructional supports for writing assignments. A further 34% indicated that they never use the word processor in their classrooms for writing. Using computers can be useful during each step in the writing process such as researching and using graphic organizing during prewriting, using cut and paste functions during the revising process to make changes to organization easier, and publishing a finished product is more efficient with a word processor.

I have found in my own classroom that the students love to write collaboratively. They become hyper engaged. Even after witnessing their engagement, I seldom allow the children to write collaboratively or have used this as an effective writing instruction. I am considering having my class write their "how-to" published pieces collaboratively. It is useful to have each child to have a finished product to publish, share, and assess. Although, what is more important, the product or the learning during the process? In my eyes it is the learning. I feel the children would learn more working collaboratively than working individually.

Writing Experiences in Our Classrooms

Click on the words below to see the videos.

pdu session 1
pdu session 2
Session 3 was corrupted by IC. Marcy has OKed (sorry Kathy Degi)it's absence.

Jeffra Frank's Peer Response Writing Conference Guidelines



 Here is a copy of Jeffra Frank's Peer Response Writing Conference guidelines that she uses to help guide students to respond to one another's writing/critical articles in a constructive way (it is scanned as a JPEG image not as a Word document).

A Good Read

I thought I would tell you all about a good writing book I read last weekend. It is called Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools by the National Writing Project and Carl Nagin.

The chapters are:
1. Improving Student Writing: Challenges and Expectations
2. Learning to Write
3. Writing to Learn
4. Professional Development
5. Standards and Assessments for Writing
6. What Administrators Can Do to Create Effective Writing Programs

The book addresses the importance of writing across the curriculum and how to take writing assignments to a deeper more meaningful and helpful level. One example was instead of assigning students to "Describe your bedroom; use specific details" which provides no guidelines for student to work with, it suggested a more specific wording.

For instance, "Describe your bedroom for a classmate who hasn't seen it. Your description should include enough detail so that when a classmates read it, she or he will be able to tell what you like, what your interest are, and what's important to you. In fact, from reading the description, classmates should be able to identify you as the resident of that room. Descriptions will be posted for your classmates to read."

I thought the 2nd assignment was so much more specific and really aided the writer through the process verses leaving it so open. Let me know if you have any questions.

I'm blogging now....

Okay folks here it is my first blog....



We wrote number stories in math today, and it was painful at first, but they were all getting the hang of it by the end of the lesson. I really just focused on Beginning capitols and ending marks. We also reread to make sure that our units matched and it made sense.

Feedback in a timely manner

Well, what can one do with a snow day! My answer was to continue reading the Feedback book. I was reading about the importance of giving feedback right away. I think I am suffering the a good case of the guilties. It is so difficult for me to get papers/projects back to students the very next day. With the types of products that I require, giving feedback to 54 papers and project overnight is not possible if I want it to be quality. It does remain my goal, however, to get simple constructed responses back to students within two days of completion. I have been better at achieving my goal in the last 3 months. Sometimes, I am just overwhelmed with the written work. In order to follow the standards and truly incorporate a differentiated teaching practice, I feel that cutting back doesn't do the students justice. Nevertheless, I'll keep trying to give feed back in a timely manner.

Slavens Staff: Writing Across the Curriculum: Article: Content Area Writing

Slavens Staff: Writing Across the Curriculum: Article: Content Area Writing: "Click on this link to post comments about this article."
I've just read the first 2 sections of this article and find it a good reminder. It makes the point to have kids practice test taking so it isn't such a new skill. The other reminder I found helpful was to use models of proficiencies. This ties in to some of the feedback strategies we heard about when we jigsawed the feedback book.

Article: Content Area Writing

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