Adventures in Writing Part II: Step Up to Writing



     This spring my school piloted the SBAC assessment.  As fourth grade teachers, we were shocked at how much writing there was.  It's all computer based, and our students had very little experience writing long pieces totally on the computer in a single setting.  I'm really glad I started looking around for a great writing program the year before.
     About a year ago I wrote a post about my first adventures trying out Lucy Calkin's Units of Study. On the whole, my year went pretty well.  I certainly felt like my professional development needs were met.  It was nice to have such a highly detailed program and not have to worry as much about planning.   As I read through the lessons, it was like I was observing Lucy as a teacher.  This really fed my soul.
     However, as the year progressed, it was clear that my students did not have the prerequisites for the type of work the program expected of them.  The students that feed into my school as fourth graders come from a Reading First school.  This means that in K-3 they are required to have a minimum of 90 minutes of reading instruction that is not allowed to include writing.  Students who are struggling with reading have an additional 30-60 minutes of instruction outside the classroom, which also cannot include writing.  The students who are still in the classroom cannot do anything above and beyond, like writing, that these struggling students might miss, so even typical students cannot be writing during this 60 minutes.  After 90 minutes of Math, this leaves 30-45 minutes a day divided among Writing, Science, and Social Studies.  So you can imagine how little writing instruction students get before fourth grade. 
     Because of this lack of writing instruction (not just lack of following the entire Units of Study program), I felt that this program became too challenging for the students.  They did alright with the narrative and persuasive units, but things started to unravel with the report unit and by the time we reached the literary essay unit, I knew Lucy and I had to part ways.  It is a reluctant parting, but caused me to think about what I liked about the program and what its drawbacks were.  I certainly loved the high standard that the program aspired to. I love how it encouraged creativity.   I will definitely continue to use the "launching", narrative and persuasive units (the narrative with little alteration and the persuasive with considerable alteration).
     What I felt the program was lacking was concrete strategies for reluctant writers, particularly in the area of text organization.  Yes, there were a few and they were outstanding.  The students and I clung to those, like a droowning man clutches a life jacket.  I love her "boxes and bullets" ideas with persuasive writing.  The program also has some great "thinking starters".  These few were very impressive (I could actually SEE the light bulb go on for several students when I taught these strategies), but they were not enough to compensate for the many lessons where there were no such concrete strategies given and students were just expected to be able to come up with volumes of written words.   
     That's why this year I went looking for a program I could pair with Calkins' to give the students more structure and strategies.  Sometimes I think creativity in elementary student writing is over-rated.  I know Units of Study can elevate student writing in the direction of creativity. But the push for creativity is a waste of time for students with little or no writing experience or desire.  I'd rather their writing starts out as a bit formulaic at first.  They can add their own creativity after that, if they are motivated to do so.  So Units of Study will have to become my supplemental writing program. 
     The program I decided to be my primary writing instruction is Step Up to Writing, a program often used to complement Units of Study.  I wish I could say that I could afford the newest Common Core-aligned version, but after breaking the bank last summer buying Calkins with my own money, I knew I couldn't pull that again.  I was lucky enough to find the second edition on eBay for under $100.  It was just what I was looking for.





     Step Up to Writing is a high visual and organized program for teaching writing.  The emphasis is on organization, particularly paragraph structure.  The paragraph is the "building block" of both short response writing and multi-paragraph writing.    Color-coded formulas and acronyms are used extensively in the program to emphasize paragraph organization.  I have the feeling I will be making a lot of anchor charts next year.  I also love that the program comes in a 3-ring binder.  This allowed me to rearrange units as I felt the need.     

     Stay tuned to see how things go next year.  It begins in about a month.

Testing: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade

As teachers in the US are returning to school, many are beginning to moan and groan about the overwhelming tide of testing that has engulfed the US educational system.  Assessments seem incapable of surviving alone.  Within a year, they reproduce like rabbits. Because, of course, you need a test to see if your kids are ready for the BIG TEST.  And if one of those tests a year is good, then one per term is even better for progress monitoring.  And that test doesn't test everything, so you need to sprinkle in a few others for good measure.  Then, of course, the next grade level wants a different assessment from the ones you use, so...  You get the idea.
     Like it or not, I don't think this frequency of assessment is going away any time soon.  It is too convenient a measuring stick for districts, principals, and teachers.  And that, my friends is the real wave of the future.  In some states, the bottom performing 10% of the teachers in a school must be fired.  In my school, assessment data is used to create yearly goals that count as a percentage of our annual performance review.  Right now that percentage is small.  But it is bound to rise in the coming years.
     So, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!  That's right!  When your students are required to take yet another test, make it worth it... for both them and you.
Making tests worthwhile to you:
1.  Learn as much as you can from the assessment data.  If you don't know how to read the assessment data (few of us learned to do this in college), ask your school "data guru".  Every school has at least one.
2.  Use what you know about your students and how you taught them to interpret the results.  Many people rely on others to "read" their data for them, but even the wisest data guru is limited because they don't know your kids and how you taught them.  Leave the data gurus to look at the big picture- trends across the grade and grade levels. Only you know whether a weakness the test reveals is because you haven't taught it yet or you did teach it, but your students didn't master it.   For example, last year my principal remarked that my Math class was the weakest in the grade level on data, statistics, and probability.  Since I had already looked at my own data, I agreed.  Then I showed her the results for my class at the beginning of the year.  Every child's weakest area was number sense and operations.  Since number sense and operations are the foundation of Math, I decided to focus my teaching in this area throughout the year.  Yes, because of this focus, something had to give.  But, by the end of the year, not a single child had number sense and operations as their lowest area.  And the class overall had the third highest level of overall growth in test scores.
3.  Know your test data well.  Like it or not, your tests scores will be used to assess your teaching ability and compare you to others. Suck it up and be proactive.  Be honest about what your data says.  Even it's not complemenary, be prepared to say how you will use the data.  And find the nugget of wonderfulness in your data, even if it is just one child.
3.  Use your assessment data and, when you do, tell your students that you are doing it.  Something along the lines of:  "Your recent ______________ test showed that ______________.  So today we are going to _________ ."
Making test worthwhile to them:
1.  Given them information about how they performed last time on the same assessment and what their goal is for this one.  A bit of specific advice never hurts.
2.  Give students feedback on their performance as soon as possible.  Next generation assessments can do this immediately, but don't just be content with a score.  Again, here is where your interpretation will be vital.  Put it in kid-friendly language.  Try to come up with at least one positive comment, such as how hard they worked or how long their written answers were.
     I  assure you that when you follow these words of advice, your students will do their best on the test.  They will become hungry for your feedback.

Are Tests the Only Measure of Student Learning?

Are Tests the Only Objective Measure of Student Learning?

Howard Gardner speaks about multiple intelligence and testing.

     The simple answer to this question is yes.  Objective assessments measure correct and incorrect answers.  Assessments of this type are common in education because they are quick and easy to arrive at a numeric score or "grade".  Numeric scores are easy to rank and compare, which makes them extremely popular in this age of heightened accountability for teachers and schools.  However objective assessments can, by their nature, only assess the lowest three levels of Bloom's taxonomy.  Those levels are:  knowledge, comprehension, and application.  The higher three levels (often called "higher order thinking skills") cannot be assessed in a right or wrong format, since they involve the skills of analysis, evaluation, and original creation.  The assessment of these skills is subjective in nature.  These are the types of skills we want our students to have in the twenty-first century.  These are the skills they will need to get and keep a high-paying jobs or to change from one career to another.

     Facts and figures are just the jumping off point for higher order thinking.  And as teachers we should be in the business of evaluating this cognition, not just the recall of facts and figures.  We can leave that for the creators of our high-stakes state testing.  In other words, we should evaluate students using a range of assessments.  These assessments could include: testing, performance tasks, projects, and observation to name a few (Buzzetto-More and Alade, 2006).

     Even that is not enough.  These evaluations need to be part of a "Continuous Assessment Loop" (Martell and Calderon, 2005) in order to improve student learning.  A Continuous Assessment Loop contains the steps of analyzing the assessment, discussing the results with stakeholders, identifying ways for students to improve outcomes, making instructional changes, and re-identifying goals.  I know I have posted her video before, but Jennifer Jones (one of my teacher-heroes) of Lake Myra Elementary in North Carolina and blogger at  helloliteracy.blogspot.com demonstrates that CA Loop so vividly in this video:

     Technology can make this Continuous Assessment Loop easier for teachers to manage and maintain.  Technology is most useful in tracking and analyzing data over time, rubric creation, and storing digital artifacts (Buzzetto-More and Alade, 2006).

References

Buzzetto-More, N.A. and Alade, A.J. (2006) Best practices in e-assessment.  Journal of Information Technology Education, Vol. 5, pags. 261-269.

Olympic Theme Classroom

Yes, my classroom will definitely have an Olympic theme to start the year.  I'm already starting to create my displays thanks to www.instantdisplay.co.uk and these handy cut-outs from Staples.  I think it will tie into test prep quite well.  Besides, my students have said, in no uncertain terms, that they want to room to look new and different next year.  (I am looping with the same class.)  So...FASTER Math facts...HIGHER reading levels, and STRONGER writing!
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