Final Product!!!!!

Here are just a couple of pictures of the student's final writing projects.


This picture is the "About the Author" page on the back cover of Kerrington's book.

This is a cover from Jasmine's book.

This is a page from Matthew's book.

This is another page from the inside of Jasmine's book.

I cannot even begin to express how proud I am of all the students in my class for the hard work they put into these projects! They truly do amazing work! :)

Wrapping it all up....

What a journey this has been!!! I have loved sharing each step with you all as I have worked through this crazy research study! I will forever be grateful for the comments, suggestions, and encouragement that has been given to me by an amazing group of Godly women! While my final project is not done and my friendships with you all will remain this blog is quickly coming to an end! Other than sharing some final projects with you all (which I will upload pictures of tomorrow) the next big thing I will do is share my presentation with you in our hangout next week.

These are my final steps before I am officially DONE!!!

1. Code for presentation
2. Put presentation together for Google Hangout session
3. FINISH FINAL PAPER!!!!

See you tomorrow with my final post!  :)

backtracking...

At different points in the blog I have mentioned what writing pieces the students were working on. This is a simple overview of the pieces I analyzed using the 6+1 rubric.

1. Initial on-demand "expert" book- This book was written independently at the beginning of the informational writing unit. It was written in one 45-minute setting.

2. Animal research book- This was the large writing project that was completed as a partnership. This book took approximately 4 weeks (give or take due to the never ending winter). The students worked in writing workshop for about 30 minutes daily.

3. Post on-demand "expert" book- This book was written independently as the final project of the informational writing unit. It was written in one 45-minute setting.

Here are some pictures of my "coding". The green sticky notes are sentence fluency and the purple are conventions. The pictures do not have the coding for presentation in them.

I am also including some of my narrative about what I found for sentence fluency and conventions in a few of my cases' work.

Skunks

Conventions:

Throughout the course of the study Matthew improved in the area of conventions. On the initial independent on-demand writing prompt Matthew had several sentences that were missing punctuation. He also had very large spacing in-between words that was not consistent, and was using a mix of lowercase and capital letters within words. There are some letters that Matthew does not form correctly.

As Matthew worked with his partner on his animal research book his conventions improved considerably. He improved with spacing, however there are still some large spaces, and he no longer used a mix of capital and lowercase letters. In his animal book he consistently ended all sentences with correct punctuation. Matthew continues to form some letters incorrectly.

Matthew completed a second independent on-demand writing prompt at the end of this study. On

this writing prompt Matthew used punctuation at the end of each of his sentences. He formed his “b” and “d” letters as capitals throughout this piece. I assume the reason for this was because he did not want to confuse them when writing them lowercase. On this writing piece Matthew’s spacing is large but is consistent between each word.

            On all three of Matthew’s writing pieces there were several words that could not easily be decoded. Matthew confuses some of his letter sounds and this prevents him from being able to phonetically spell lots of words. After Matthew wrote his on-demand text I had him reread it to me and I wrote down exactly what he said.  

Sentence Fluency:

            On the initial on-demand writing prompt Matthew wrote in a pattern format. He repeated the phrase “I can mac a …” (I can make a….). The only sentence in his book that broke from this pattern was the final sentence. Throughout his writing he also used only simple sentences and used no connective words.

            As Matthew wrote his animal research book with his partner he continued to write only in simple sentences and did not include connective words to combine sentences and phrases. He began using different sentence starters and his book did not follow a pattern format. He did have several sentences in his book that started with “Skunks…” which resulted in his writing being choppy and repetitive at several different places in his book.

            In Matthew’s post on-demand writing he carried over the variations of sentence starters. His writing continued to be simple sentences and there were no transitions or connective words in his writing. The lack of connective words caused the writing to still sound choppy and mechanical. 

Elephants

Conventions:

            Allison remained inconsistent with the use of correct conventions throughout the course of this study. In the beginning Allison completed the independent on-demand writing prompt. On this writing assignment she wrote one sentence only on most of the pages but was consistent in using end punctuation. Every sentence began with the word I and she capitalized it each time. Allison also used some additional capital letters in the middle of words. Throughout this book most of her words had less than a finger space between words.

            Allison completed the animal research book with a partner. Throughout her animal research book she was able to consistently use punctuation correctly in her writing, only missing it on one page. In her animal research book she continued to be inconsistent. Some words have one finger space between them but other words have very little to no spacing between them. Allison did correctly use capital and lowercase letters throughout this book.

            On the final on-demand prompt Allison worked independently to complete it. In this writing piece she varied the numbers of sentences she used per page but she used no punctuation to indicate the beginning or ending of sentences. In this writing piece Allison used a more consistent spacing between letters but it was a small amount of space, about the size of a small paperclip. 

6+1 Traits of Writing

When I began really examining my students work and looking for big topics/themes that were present in their writing I decided to look specifically at 3 of the 6+1 Traits of Writing. I chose to look at sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.

Below is the link to the rubric that I used for scoring my pieces.
http://educationnorthwest.org/webfm_send/1434

The three writing pieces that were closely examined throughout this study were all informational text so I felt that these three writing traits were the most fitting.

When looking at the rubric, the students in the study were considered to be in the "Emerging" stage prior to the study beginning. My hope was to see students move toward the "Capable" stage. My research shows how these students worked toward the capable stage both independently and in partner settings. I feel strongly based on my findings that the partner writing with the animal research books significantly helped the students once they had to do their second on-demand independent writing prompt.

Wrapping it up

Okay.....so I am not really wrapping it up but we are definitely on the downhill slope of research.

Here is a breakdown of what I still need from students:

-1 student must finish their animal book. She is working on her pictures so it is only her "presentation" component that is lacking.
- students will complete the on-demand writing prompt (writing an expert book) tomorrow
-students will complete the writing attitude inventory

Hopefully I will get my narratives done for their animal books this weekend and will be able to begin comparing their pre- and post- on-demand writing prompts. These will be scored looking at the conventions, presentation, and organization components of the 6+1 writing rubrics.

Fingers crossed that this weekend is super productive!

the light at the end of the tunnel

The title of this unfortunately doesn't mean I see the light at the end of the tunnel of this project but it does mean that I saw the light at the end of the tunnel for the MEGA writing project that my kids have been working on. I feel like I can really dive into looking at their writing pieces this weekend and getting an overall picture of each "case" based on this writing piece, as well as, their pre- and post- on-demand writing prompts. I am SO excited and proud of how the students did on their animal research books but let me tell you I am so glad to have that projects in the books for this school year and to not have to revisit it again for a year. It is such an undertaking but every year the kids really blow me away with what they produce.


I have decided by looking at the way that they wrote their books that I will be looking at each student as their own case. My final paper will be written like a case study. Since the students were all kind of working in isolated scenarios it fit best to look at them this way. That being said I have 9 different "cases". That seems to be a lot but I think it will be really good once I am examining it all.


I have picked three "organizing topics" that I will be writing up narratives about for each case. These three topics are conventions, presentation, and idea development. I plan to work on the conventions section heavily and will try and write up a blog posting some of my narratives for a couple of the cases on my blog tonight. I pulled these three topics from 6+1 traits. These seem to be specific traits that apply largely to informational writing which has been the focus of my entire study with my students.


Hope everyone is doing well!!!!

Post meeting

I met with Dr. BC and walked away feeling EXTREMELY overwhelmed with what to do. I decided to take only a small bit of my students writing and code it for activity 4. I plan to really dive in this weekend and do a lot more coding. I will update more about my research this weekend as it comes along.

As Dr. BC and I talked we began really talking about the "research design" and the participants in my study. I am really looking for a word to replace "struggling" in my RQ. I don't want to talk about these kids using the word struggling. What do you all think about emergent?

One thing I didn't see coming through my meeting with Dr. BC was the decision to throw the student "Parker" out. He was the one student who truly fit the "reluctant" characteristic but we discussed that he is not struggling/emergent/pre-writer/etc so we decided to throw him. He seemed like the perfect for into my project and I ended up learning great ways to push him to being a better writer but he just didn't fit my profile.

Crazy how this is such an ongoing process! What a different world this is than anything else we have ever done!

Coded Data....

Day 1 observations- Conventions

                While investigating the students writing I spent time examining their use of conventions on the first day of their large writing project. My hope was to see how the students improve in this specific area of writing over the course of this study, specifically at the end of this writing piece and the final on-demand assessment. Below is broken down observations about each case. The writing on day one showed me that students needed a significant amount of work in the areas of spacing and punctuation. Through the use of buddy writing and teacher conferencing my hope was to see the students improving in both of these areas. I used observation from student conferences and analysis of the students written papers to determine how they did with conventions.   

Chimpanzees (3 students are working as a group on this writing project)

“Only used 1 period for 2 sentences.”

“small amount of space between words”

“capital d in anD”

“b reversal”

Tarantulas

“It’s used incorrectly”

“inconsistent spacing”

“letters aren’t sitting on the line”

Skunks

“Good use of punctuation.”

“3 sentences; inconsistent start with punctuation”

Wolves

“no periods to break sentences”

“no commas”

“capitals to start and punctuation to end”

Black Bears

“words spelled correctly”

“good use of punctuation”

“little to no spacing between words”

Elephants

“Mix of capitals and lowercase (alphabet soup)”

“3-4 words per line”

“no punctuation, only final”

“and, and, and” 

Life happened...

Just like the title says...life happened and unfortunately this blog didn't! But never fear I am back and ready to talk about what is going on with my research! I am feeling SUPER overwhelmed with it all but the good news is I am meeting with Dr. B-C tomorrow and hopefully (certainly) I will be filling much better about everything in front of me.

One huge success last week was the introduction of the program Word into my little friend Parker's life. He was being super reluctant even when doing "buddy writing". There were several days where he ended under the table and no writing was completed. He did not cooperate with his buddy and the buddy (also a male student who gets along well with all of the kids) asked me several times if he could move away from Parker. Last week I was at my wits end and dreaded writing time with him because every day was negative. It was completely unplanned for that day, but I couldn't handle another meltdown, and I decided to give him the opportunity to start typing his final draft. Since this is a research project the students had been taking their "notes" and turning them into sentences. They are now to the point that they are writing their final copies. Parker on the other hand was much further behind and didn't even have all of his draft pages done. Once I sat him at my computer he instantly became focused and started cranking out some amazing work. He was even able to go from his notes (just jotted down info from his animal book, but not complete sentences) and turn them into complete sentences while typing. I was pretty impressed with this from a 7 year old. :)

Tomorrow I will snap a photo of his awesome writing and post it for everyone to see! I will also update after my meeting! :)

You asked....I'll answer!

I want to revisit the picture of the para working with the three girls researching chimpanzees. The three girls participating in that collaborative group (only 1 is technically in my research group because the other two will be moving any day) are all performing significantly below grade level in literacy. They struggle with idea development, organization, and spelling.

During writing workshop these three students have been working with the para at my horseshoe table daily. She has been reading the text to them (because it is significantly above their reading level) and they have been working together to identify the facts that they need to put in their books. They talk through what they need to write and then she writes it on the whiteboard. These students struggle with spelling also so their writing would be very difficult to read. The three students have really enjoyed working with the para in this capacity and have been much more successful during this writing project that they have been during other units. They all are very interested in their writing topic and actively participate in the conversation daily. The para is providing guidance as needed with both idea development and organization of the information.

Comparing the product the girls are producing with the paras assistance to the work they produced when we did the on-demand writing will be very crucial evidence in showing how buddy writing can be very beneficial for struggling/reluctant writers.

Drowning maybe?!?

So I have completely felt like I was drowning and wasn't sure there was anything that I could do to get my head back above the surface before it was to late. Fortunately it appears as though I may make it but I am still not so convinced it is going to be pretty. 

After some discussion it has been decided that tweaking my RQ would be best. My new RQ will read as: How will buddy writing and technology-inclusion affect reluctant first grade writers? 

All of the students in my classroom have been working collaboratively to do their research for this project. Some of the reluctant writers are doing a great job of working with their partner doing both the research and the writing, some have needed some teacher prompting to work together, and some have just shown opposition toward working with another student. 

Two students are very reluctant to writing because they just do not find it to be a fun activity. I will be interested to see how using a word processing program will encourage them to get their writing down. 

Please give any feedback about ideas that you think might be helpful! 

Writing offices!

This blog contains photos of the awesome writing offices that I use in my classroom and it also has one great example of students who are collaborating with a teacher during this writing project.

Lets start with the pictures of the writing offices....The top picture is what the side of the "office" looks like and the bottom picture is what the outside sides look like.

Now lets talk about this example of collaboration with an adult. These three students are all performing well below grade level in writing and would be what I consider both reluctant and struggling writers. They are three girls and two of them are classified as special education. All three girls are researching the same animal  (chimpanzees). The book is well above their reading level and there writing is often to difficult to read because they struggle with spelling phonetically. These three students are receiving a great deal of structured support. This picture exemplifies how this teacher is working to help the students create the best writing piece they possibly can.

Animal Research Books!

Informational text is the unit that my research is focused around. This unit is scheduled to last about 6 weeks (or maybe 10 weeks after all is said and done and we stretch it out with a million snow days :) ). The kids are still in the beginning stages of their writing project. This stage is the research stage. It is set up on a two day rotation.

On day 1 students are using books (and occasionally the internet) to research with their partner about their animal. They are given one piece to look for each day that they research. This allows them to focus specifically on one topic. They have a planning sheet that they are recording their new information on. This is a picture of that planning/research sheet. 

On day 2 they write about the topic they researched the day before. This writing piece will serve as their rough draft. On this student's paper we worked together to edit her writing so that when she does her final copy it will be a stronger writing piece. The student who's work is shown below is the higher performing student in the collaborative partnership. She is paired with a student who is considered a reluctant writer. I am using her as a "teacher" to encourage and help the other student while they complete this project.

I will continue to post student work throughout this project. 

On Demand Writing Prompt

The On Demand writing prompt that I gave the students last Friday was a hit. The students were super receptive to this writing task (which was surprising because I had never done anything like this with my first graders before). I talked through the fact that they would be writing an informational text and we discussed the different type topics that would fall under that category. It was easiest with them to explain it as "write about what you are an expert at" because it was the very first informational writing piece we have done all school year. 

During the time while the students were writing I played soft music that did not have words (It was a Paddington Bear soundtrack....it is amazing for creating just enough background noise to keep them from talking) and I gave them writing "offices". These writing offices are an amazing resource that I have to use while the kids are writing. They are two file folders that are laminated together to create a cubical like office. On the office there is a portable word wall, writing checklist, blends and digraph charts, etc. (I will post a picture once we return to school). During the 45 minutes that the students wrote I provided very minimal assistance to them because I wanted to see exactly what they could complete independently. 

After the time was up I collected the writing pieces. The kids did an AWESOME job of showing what they are an expert about. Obviously the pieces weren't perfect because they were almost like a pretest to what they know about informational writing. There are a couple of students who I struggled to read their writing because of spelling, or because their thoughts are jumbled once on the paper. These are students who will likely benefit from the voice recording apps on the Ipad. This will allow us to break their thought process up into two steps. One step will be orally telling their story/writing piece and the second step will be actually writing it. I will compare writing pieces (like the on demand) to compare their writing before and after using the voice recording app. 

I hope in my coming blog to provide you with pictures of the writing offices, pictures of student artifacts from the on-demand and telling you about the voice recording apps that I will be utilizing. 

Hope everyone is staying warm during this crazy winter!!!

Google Chrome and the Interest Survey!

Well obviously half of my problem was that I was using the wrong internet program. Downloaded Google Chrome this morning. Hopefully no more operator errors!

This is a picture of my interest inventory. I gave this to my students on January 28th. It provided some interesting information for sure. I looked specifically at some of my students I consider to be the most reluctant and struggling of my writers. 

Parker was the student who I mentioned in an earlier blog. He is the student I would consider the most reluctant of all of my writers. He is not reluctant because writing is difficult, he is reluctant because he simply does not want to complete most assignments that are given to him. He is a special needs student but he scores in the 98-99% on MAP testing and reads on a guided reading level I. He is extremely capable of completing all tasks that are given to him.

Parker's responses would lead you to believe that he is a student who absolutely loves writing and does it when it is assigned AND in his free time. 

The majority of students in my class indicated that they wish there was more time to write at school. I am trying to take this information and make sure that at least 2-3 days a week they get to use a literacy center as a "free choice" writing time. My literacy centers have changed several times this year because my kids are flexibly grouped and I have significant support staff assistance in the classroom. We also use Ipads daily but based on this information I think taking the Ipad center (or computer center) away 2-3 times a week and replacing it with a free choice writing center may help my students to continue to grow even more as independent writers.

Blog problems....or operator error!

Last week I attempted to put my paper and my interest survey onto my blog. I was having difficulties and gave up. Due to the craziness of the weather and the craziness of life I completely forgot that it never got uploaded. I am putting my methods paper into this blog (it is far from perfect and needs a lot of work but it is a great start). I cannot get it to let me insert the picture of my interest survey. Any idea what might be my problem? It is locking up every time I try.

This study looked at the progression of first grade writers over the course of an eight week time frame. There were multiple measures that were used during the study and decisions for new measures were made based on the way students were performing throughout the study. The measures that were used to collect data in this sudy include fieldnotes and observations, an interest survey, interviews, and artifacts. Pappas and Tucker-Raymond (2011) identified all four of these as valid data collection strategies to be used during an action research study.

                The collection of artifacts was of grand importance during this study because it was the concrete way to look at changes in the students’ writing over time. Writing instruction occurred each day and students were continuously producing writing pieces. Each of these pieces was collected and one piece was chosen each week to score using the 5-Point Beginning Writer’s Rubric (2010).

Prior to collecting writing pieces fieldnotes and observations will be conducted. Marshal and Rossman discussed the importance of observation and how it is a “fundamental and highly important method” when conducting research (p.99). Pappas and Tucker-Raymond (2011) identified two types of fieldnotes: descriptive writing and interpretive writing. Descriptive writing fieldnotes were used throughout the course of this study. The simplicity of conducting a conference with students and having written field notes was invaluable to tracking their progression. These fieldnotes were strictly observations of what was going on in the classroom with the students who participated in the study.

                Interviews were another critical measure that was used throughout the course of the study. Rossman and Rallis (2003) devoted a large portion of “Chapter Seven: Gathering Data in the Field” to the discussion of interviews. They stated that “interviewing takes you into participants’ worlds, at least as far as they can (or choose to) verbally relate what is in their minds” (Rossman and Rallis, p.180). Through conducting these interviews I was able to determine how the students felt about the writing projects that they were producing and why they had the feelings they did. The section that spoke specifically about interviewing children was pertained particularly to the situation I was in with collecting data. Rossman and Rallis discussed how it was unrealistic to expect young students to participate in a long face-to-face dialogue about anything however, they encouraged talking during other activities such as lunch, snack time, or while they are playing with blocks or puzzles (p.193). Meeting my students in these sorts of settings allowed them to discuss topics in a more comfortable and honest way. Interviews were conducted in the beginning, middle, and end of the research study.

                At the beginning and the end of the study students participated in a Writing Interest Survey (Appendix A). This survey asked the students questions about their feelings about academic and leisurely writing it also asked them to list things they enjoy writing about. The reasoning for choosing this data collection method was because it was relatively easy to administer and it also provided a quick snapshot of their feelings toward writing and their survey results could easily be compared as the study progressed.

Lets get the ball rolling....

Let me just start by saying that the writing unit my students will be doing for a large portion of this research is my absolute favorite unit we do in 1st grade!!


Since returning from Winter Break we have entered the world of reading and writing informational text. We have spent this time learning about text features and characteristics of non-fiction texts. Starting this week the students are starting to get their hands wet with actually writing informational texts. Our final project in first grade at Eagle Academy is an animal book. The students are assigned animals that they research using both the internet and books and then write their own informational book about it. It is a very long and drawn out writing project because both the research and the organization of the books are very supported by me as the teacher. However, I have never seen a writing project that the students own as much as they do this one.


Prior to starting our animal books we have decided as a school that we will try our hand at "on demand" writing at all grade levels. The on demand writing prompt for 1st grade is an informational text prompt. The students will independently write about something they are an expert about and what they can teach the other students about. They will then be given 30-45 minutes to completely write their informational text. I think that this writing piece will really help me to see which students are going to be in my collaboration group and which ones will be in my technology group. I will likely be including information from this on demand prompt in my data section of my paper.


Question: I am trying to decide what I think is best for my collaboration group and would love some feedback. The plan is that every student would be researching a different animal because we have on-level non-fiction books about enough animals to do it this way. However, if my collaboration group involves a reluctant/struggling writer being placed with a stronger writer should they research the same animal? I definitely see some pros and cons to doing it this way. My concern is that if the students are doing the same animal the struggling/reluctant writer may just copy what the stronger writer is doing. Another possibility is for the collaboration group I could have them collaborating with an instructional assistant instead of another student. This would enable them to be able to each do their own animals and have very guided instruction from an adult. I'm not sure that providing an instructional assistant as their collaborator will help move them toward becoming independent writers.


Any and all feedback is welcome! :)

Interest survey and getting parents to return paperwork!!

Disclaimer:

For the sake of this blog I will be referring to my school as Eagle Academy and all students will be referred to using pseudonyms. Their pseudonyms will be revealed throughout the blog as their data is discussed.

After a crazy week or so of snow days and delays due to weather I hope that things are looking up and this research can get underway! I have now gotten all consent forms sent home (but still waiting on a couple to trickle back in), had all students sign the assent form, and given the Writing Interest Survey to all students in the class. I chose to have every student in my class do these three things so that I can include any of them in my final research.


I would love to offer you the results of my Writing Interest Survey but in the hustle and bustle of leaving my classroom today I left them sitting on my desk. Tomorrow I will post an update that discusses the information I learned about my students. One student's responses to the survey did catch my eye while I circulated the room and left me feeling very interested about how he will do throughout the course of my research. I will refer to this student as Parker. Parker is one of my special needs students but is cognitively very high performing. I consider him a "reluctant writer" because any time a writing assignment is assigned he clams up and presents himself as a behavior problem. He gets "angry" and claims that he is "bored" to try and avoid completing the work. On the writing survey you would think that Parker loved writing. He said that he thinks there should be more writing time in school, he said he enjoys writing in his free time, etc. I will post a picture of Parker's responses along with my update tomorrow. I have a feeling I will be keeping a close eye on how this process impacts him.......fingers crossed we see some improved behavior and some AMAZING writing!

Ready, Set, Go....

Well research is off to a VERY slow start. I was able to send consent forms home last week and those were trickling back in daily. I sent them home with all of the students in the class. That way all students could be used in the final research. At my school it also ensures that the parents who talk about school won't question why their child was included in this research but another child wasn't. 

My plan for Tuesday was to send home consent forms with any student who was still missing theirs. Mother Nature had different plans for this week though. Tuesday, Wednesday and now tomorrow are all snow days. Hopefully we will be returning to school on Friday and I can get the consent forms sent home then.

Next week I want to give my "student writing attitude survey". I plan to give this to all students so I can compare the attitudes of on/above level writers and struggling writers.

I will post again soon....that is if we ever return to school!

A snapshot of my classroom: context and the problem

The classroom context

I teach what I have labeled as a very challenging and special class. :)
It is a collaborative special education classroom. My class has five identified special education students (these are a mixture of behavioral and academic classifications) and several students who are being monitored for possible referral. These students are each demanding of my time and I am the only certified teacher in there for the majority of my Writer’s Workshop. Almost all of the students in my classroom can orally tell a story with many details. A handful of the students in the classroom who can orally express their thoughts and stories cannot independently write them down on paper. Each student's struggle with writing is shown in a different way but they all are most confident when they orally tell their story and I write it down for them to then copy.

As a classroom teacher with twenty-one students sitting down and writing five or six students’ stories each day is not a possibility. If these same students demand and get my attention daily, the other students in the classroom will not flourish as young writers. Developing strong writers in the early grades is so critical because of the strong relationship between reading and writing.

The problem

The demands of my students led me to ask this question daily....

What strategies will help struggling writers to become expressive independent writers?

What is the plan?

I plan to use two different strategies with my struggling writers. They will be divided into two different groups.
Group 1 will focus on using technology. They will be using a voice recording app on the Ipad to record them orally telling the story. They will then replay their recording while they independently complete their writing.
Group 2 will be collaborative partnerships. This will be two students (1 reluctant/struggling writer and 1 on/above-level writer) who will work collaboratively but will each produce their own individual writing piece. The struggling/reluctant students in these partnerships are ones who require significant one-on-one support while writing.

Now lets give this thing a go......