Survey...1!

My homeroom comes to me at the end of the day and I needed to give them the survey. So I found a great way to get them motivated! :) I let them use highlighters, just a little side note in case you are ever wondering what makes kids excited. It's the little things. I explained how important this was for my study and it was so endearing to see how much time they spent picking an answer and at times asking me to elaborate on what I was asking. With that being said, there were a few students rushing through highlighting whichever they felt like at the time.

There was one student in particular. As the year has progressed he has become a better writer in all aspects of writing. One thing he struggles with is just sitting still. It is difficult for him to sit still during an activity. As he did the survey he listened VERY carefully and wanted to pick the right answer. I loved seeing how serious he took it.

There were 16 survey questions. 15 of those were closed and one was an open question where students were asked to write (some of those were interesting!)I have not had calculated the results but have not yet had the time to actually go through and group them according to the question. I plan to do that in the next couple of days. Overall, I feel from adding up the numbers that a majority of my students are somewhat OK with writing depending on the setting and the expectations. The majority of students in my classroom have a difficult time deciding what to write about. I have noticed that as I walk around the room but it was nice to have some validity in my assumption. Even with all of the mixed feelings towards writing, half of the class said they would like more time to write at school and 63% feel they are good writers. Very interesting data so far!

sickness!

Well!! We have had a rough couple weeks in Ms. Plummer's class with sickness! If it's not the students it's me. I have been sick and unable to blog for a couple days. Last week it wasn't uncommon for 8 of my 21 babies to be out sick, some with the flu others with upper respiratory infections!! I am hoping we are all on the mend. Aside for the day to day things my students are missing, they are also missing some of the interactive writing instruction. I am hoping this doesn't put a huge damper on my data. We will keep on trucking this week and hope to get everyone back!! Now to what I did this week...

There were a couple things that struck me...
One student in particular can't stand writing. In her interview she told me there was nothing she liked about it and she really only liked to color. She clarified she only liked coloring in coloring books because she didn't really like to draw either! So it was very surprising to me to see her sit down and write her opinion piece with EASE. I was so proud of her! She normally will come to me a thousand times (exaggerated) and ask me what to write about because she doesn't have any ideas. Not this time!! I have seen such a change in my students as writers. I see my homeroom class doing much better with writing as opposed to my morning class. I don't know if I can give all the credit to the interactive writing but I do believe it plays a role!

This is one of my student's individual white board.

Friday we went to the carpet again and did some interactive writing with our easel and students had their individual boards. Students would help come up with sentences and bring their marker to the easel to write a sentence. I sat back and watched what happened. Students were saying things such as, "don't forget your capital letter!" "you need punctuation!" "does that sentence make sense?" "I think it would sound better if we wrote ______"..it was AMAZING to watch. This week I am going to set up a camera or at least get some audio of this experience. I was a proud teacher for sure.

Thick Desription...1

It’s 12:30, forty minutes until specials. This time of the afternoon is always a little hectic. Students have had lunch and are a bit squirrely. The past interactive writing lessons have gone well but I kept thinking they could be better. I read in a study done with a group of students, the teacher gave each student a white board to write independently, waiting to be called up to share their wriitng with the whole class, (Craig, S., 2006).This time, I called one student at a time to come to the carpet and get an individual white board, marker, and eraser. The look on their faces was full of excitement. They didn’t expect this for their interactive writing time. I looked around and saw all five tables with their heads down waiting for their name to be called. Students one by one got their board and sat quietly waiting for directions. I saw a girl in the front look back at another student and smile. They were very intrigued. Two students took their pen and started drawing on their white board, I had to take them away and have them sit at their seats with notebook paper and a pencil. One of the boys started to cry. The other couldn’t care less; he was spinning around in his chair. As the lesson progressed most students were writing on their board using the techniques we had talked about. One student in particular was forgetting his spaces, I was able to go to him and have him fix from that point on—it got a lot better. When time was up and it was specials time, one student refused to stop writing until she got done, I let her finish up while the rest of us lined up (pictured below). Overall very successful!

 

 

Craig, S. (2006). The effects of an adapted interactive writing intervention on kindergarten children's phonological awareness, spelling, and early reading development: A contextualized approach to instruction. Journal of Educaional Psychology, 98 (4).

Questions!

I continue to be successful with the teaching of my interactive writing. What I am lacking is finding the time to do interviews and surveys and take meaningful field notes. I have my initial survey but intended giving multiple surveys throughout the process. This next week I am going to really buckle down to achieve this. Another thing I feel I have plenty of is students' writing samples. I have been able to incorporate writing a lot more. One thing I have noticed is my afternoon class, which I am conducting the interactive writing lessons with, seems to be "out-writing" my morning class. One reason I am unable to do interactive writing lessons with my morning class is the tight schedule I have. There are reading teachers that come in and work with certain groups of students and students being pulled out for ESL and other services. I am trying to decide if I think the success is because of interactive writing or because the students in the afternoon are just, by nature, a little higher. I want to start squeezing in a little time with the morning class to incorporate some of this though!!!

I was going to observe for my "thick description" Friday but there was a variety of things that got in the way of this. I am going to look back through all of my notes I have taken and see if I have by come chance got some information I can use. If not, I will not be able to post that to my blog until Monday. I will do that ASAP.

I am nervous about everyone talking about all the data they have collected.I can't help but worry I am way behind on this. Do you guys have any suggestions? What are the different kinds of data you have? Have you started coding it? What are you coding? Sorry! tons of questions--just a small freak out moment on my part. I just want everything done right!!!

This past week went well. I was able to squeeze in two interactive writing sessions in for the week. I had intended on three, but the hour delay put us on a tighter schedule. I am very happy with how this is all fitting in with the schools expectations. They have really started coming down on our writing and students producing drafts independently. I use the interactive writing lessons to model how to think out sentences and compose ideas for writing. A lot of times students would come up to me and say, "I have three sentences!" but only have three words on their paper.

With that being said, I was very happy with the progress I have seen so far! Students are taking more time with their writing and using their writing time to be "authors", like we have discussed. The writing sample I collected on Friday showed me some next steps for my lessons. Some students need work with spacing. I have noticed in his independent writing he spaces his letters instead of whole words. One student started writing in the middle of the page instead of starting at the correct spot on their paper. These things can easily be fixed during our writing time together, I can't wait to see if it transfers.

I look forward to more writing lessons and independent writing!

Take One!

Last week I was feeling slightly overwhelmed and not so sure of the inquiry I had chosen!! I am happy to report this week I am feeling MUCH better! With the snow day Friday, I was unable to get the pictures I had taken to upload. I taught my first few interactive writing lessons last week. With my hectic schedule I am lucky to get two or three lessons in each week.


First Lesson:

We had just finished working on our informative writing pieces as a class and needed something to write about for our first interactive writing lesson. The day before our cafeteria gave us star fruit as a snack but we didn't have time to eat them so we decided to save them. The next day, the starfruit was missing. I told the kids, lets write about it!! Williams, C. & Lundstrom, R. (2007) stated, "Interactive writing is an approach to beginning writing instruction in which a teacher and group of children co-construct an oral message and then 'share the pen' to get that message into print." (p. 205) Using that information on interactive writing, we collectively wrote our piece together. They are always concerned with what to write. If there is free write they often times sit and stare. Interactive writing is a great way to show kids how to explore different topics to write about!!
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Students were SO excited to "share the pen"!! Below you will find pictures of our process. It was an excellent way to differentiate instruction because I knew which students needed what skill.

Our Finished product!!

 

Once we finished, students went back to their seats to finish the prompt. I collected this as a writing sample to compare future writing.

 

 

Williams, C. & Lundstrom, R. (2007). Strategy instruction during word study and interactive writing activities. The Reading Teacher, 61 (3).