Analysis
The following analysis has been based on one writing sample I was able to collect from Cathy (pseudonym) and from a spelling test that I conducted.
Ownership and Meaning of the Piece
The piece of writing that I used to support my analysis was a story called "Fish's Day". The topic for the story was from a writing prompt given by her teacher. In talking with Cathy about her writing she said that she liked writing the story but that it was not entirely her idea. she liked writing a story about a fish who could talk but did not pick the topic herself. After she read me the story I asked her if she was going to have a sequel to Fish's Day. She said that she did not plan on doing that but after brainstorming different ideas about what she could write about she said that maybe she would add another piece to the story. From our conversation, Cathy did not explicitly say that she enjoyed writing, but her creativeness and enthusiasm about what could happen in a sequel made me think this was something she liked doing.
Six Traits Assessment
Overall the ideas Cathy was developing in Fish's Day had a great structure and successfully got the reader's attention. Her topic was clearly identified and was consistent throughout the development of her writing. The title of her story alone allowed the reader to know what the story was going to be about and in what direction she was headed. To help the reader understand the transitions in her story she wrote things like "that was how my day began" and "a few seconds later" and even "a few minutes later". One thing in her story that could be developed a little better is that the reader's questions are not always answered. For example, when Cathy first heard her fish talking she said "she laughed so hard her brother couldn't sleep" but that makes the reader wonder if her brother ran in and also saw the fish talking. Instead Cathy never mentions her brother again.
Cathy's story had a very clear and engaging introduction that let the reader know where the story was going. In contract to her introduction, her conclusion was not as apparent other than the sentence "and that is how my day ended". The reader did not find out if the fish continued to talk or what happened next. Having read this story with Cathy was the cause for us to talk about if there would be a sequel. Another organizational piece was Cathy's transitions. There were times when she went from one thing to another smoothly but at other times there did not seem to be a steady switch but rather a jump. As the character in the story watches the fish swim and talk in his bowl Cathy mentions that the character is eating and that the fish tried to get the fish Angel's attention but he got mad and "Fish bit his head". There was not lead up to that in the story. Cathy did not give any clues to the reader that Angel's lack of response was making Fish mad.
I noticed in looking at Cathy's draft that she continued to develop her word choice. There were plenty of striking phrases in her story. In her draft she crossed out the sentence "I kept on tapping" and changed it to "I kept doing loads of tapping" and finally changed it to "I kept doing truck loads of tapping". She also went through her story to find synonyms for commonly used words like small, scared, and mad. She was successful in fancying up her writing and help to capture the readers imagination with a metaphor she used in relating the fishes behavior to bulls. Her word choices were accurate even while replacing commonly used words for synonyms. I also noticed in the draft that she had trouble with using the correct verb tense. This was a pretty common error in her writing. She had to change "singed" to sang, "hides" to hid, and "sleep" for slept, and "freezed" for froze.
In this piece of Cathy's writing I noticed a variety of sentence lengths and structures. They all have a purpose however, some convey more meaning and produce vivid pictures for the reader through her word choice mentioned earlier. Throughout the story, Cathy also begins the sentences in a variety of ways but resorts to starting with "I" a lot of the time.
Spelling
Not only did I have the opportunity to look at Cathy's spelling with the spelling test I conducted but also in her writing sample. In looking at her hand written rough draft of Fish's Day I was not able to find any spelling errors. Having worked on the spelling tests with Cathy I am not surprised that she is a pretty accurate speller with words in her spoken vocabulary. When we did the spelling inventory, Cathy missed three out of the 25 words (She spelled seller for cellar, comfident for confident, and opozition for opposition). For both opposition and for cellar, Cathy was not familiar with the words. They were not words that were in her spoken vocabulary. After noticing the error with confident, I wondered if I pronounced it incorrectly. However, I used all the words in a sentence so even if pronunciation was wrong the context would still be accurate. Without obtaining any patterns in her spelling mistakes I have trouble trying to decide where she would need work. It appears as though she is pretty comfortable with noticing letter sounds, and changing words to double consonants when needed. The only thing I can think is that she would need is more exposure words since two out of the three spelling errors were due to unfamiliarity.
According to Routman (2005) the students are sometimes not aware that they need to provide information to the reader to understand theie story (p. 145). I believe Cathy was pretty aware that this was something that she need to do to make her writing comprehensible. However, closely related to being able to give the necessary information to understand the story, sometime there is information that is added that does not make sense. This is an area that I think Cathy could use some help.
Lesson Plan
Objective: Student will understand that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic.
Standards:
1.3.1. Revises text by adding, deleting, substituting, and moving text.
1.4.1. Applies understanding of editing appropriate for grade level
3.1.1. Analyzes ideas, selects a narrow topic, and elaborates using specific details and/or examples.
Materials:
Teacher generated piece of writing, pencil, paper, a students rough draft
Instructional Strategies:
To begin the lesson the teacher will read a sample piece of writing, either something taken from text and changed to add details that are not crucial to the topic, or something that the teacher created. Have the student listen and take notes on piece of paper the things that they wished they knew more about, or what stuck out to them as they heard the text read.
After the student identifies some parts of the text that do not lend themselves to the story, talk with the student about what things could be done. It is possible that they could be added with some other changes to the story, or maybe that they need to be deleted.
After the student makes the changes to the text, show the student either where it came from in published book or the revised text that the teacher generated.
At the end of the lesson the student will apply what they learned from looking at different piece of text to one of their own writing samples. This will give the student an opportunity to look at their own writing and wade through the irrelevant details and sentences that distract the reader rather than engage them.
Assessment:
Teacher will assess student's understanding that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic by looking for a the student's revised story with a cohesive flow from one sentence to the next.
The following analysis has been based on one writing sample I was able to collect from Cathy (pseudonym) and from a spelling test that I conducted.
Ownership and Meaning of the Piece
The piece of writing that I used to support my analysis was a story called "Fish's Day". The topic for the story was from a writing prompt given by her teacher. In talking with Cathy about her writing she said that she liked writing the story but that it was not entirely her idea. she liked writing a story about a fish who could talk but did not pick the topic herself. After she read me the story I asked her if she was going to have a sequel to Fish's Day. She said that she did not plan on doing that but after brainstorming different ideas about what she could write about she said that maybe she would add another piece to the story. From our conversation, Cathy did not explicitly say that she enjoyed writing, but her creativeness and enthusiasm about what could happen in a sequel made me think this was something she liked doing.
Six Traits Assessment
Overall the ideas Cathy was developing in Fish's Day had a great structure and successfully got the reader's attention. Her topic was clearly identified and was consistent throughout the development of her writing. The title of her story alone allowed the reader to know what the story was going to be about and in what direction she was headed. To help the reader understand the transitions in her story she wrote things like "that was how my day began" and "a few seconds later" and even "a few minutes later". One thing in her story that could be developed a little better is that the reader's questions are not always answered. For example, when Cathy first heard her fish talking she said "she laughed so hard her brother couldn't sleep" but that makes the reader wonder if her brother ran in and also saw the fish talking. Instead Cathy never mentions her brother again.
Cathy's story had a very clear and engaging introduction that let the reader know where the story was going. In contract to her introduction, her conclusion was not as apparent other than the sentence "and that is how my day ended". The reader did not find out if the fish continued to talk or what happened next. Having read this story with Cathy was the cause for us to talk about if there would be a sequel. Another organizational piece was Cathy's transitions. There were times when she went from one thing to another smoothly but at other times there did not seem to be a steady switch but rather a jump. As the character in the story watches the fish swim and talk in his bowl Cathy mentions that the character is eating and that the fish tried to get the fish Angel's attention but he got mad and "Fish bit his head". There was not lead up to that in the story. Cathy did not give any clues to the reader that Angel's lack of response was making Fish mad.
I noticed in looking at Cathy's draft that she continued to develop her word choice. There were plenty of striking phrases in her story. In her draft she crossed out the sentence "I kept on tapping" and changed it to "I kept doing loads of tapping" and finally changed it to "I kept doing truck loads of tapping". She also went through her story to find synonyms for commonly used words like small, scared, and mad. She was successful in fancying up her writing and help to capture the readers imagination with a metaphor she used in relating the fishes behavior to bulls. Her word choices were accurate even while replacing commonly used words for synonyms. I also noticed in the draft that she had trouble with using the correct verb tense. This was a pretty common error in her writing. She had to change "singed" to sang, "hides" to hid, and "sleep" for slept, and "freezed" for froze.
In this piece of Cathy's writing I noticed a variety of sentence lengths and structures. They all have a purpose however, some convey more meaning and produce vivid pictures for the reader through her word choice mentioned earlier. Throughout the story, Cathy also begins the sentences in a variety of ways but resorts to starting with "I" a lot of the time.
Spelling
Not only did I have the opportunity to look at Cathy's spelling with the spelling test I conducted but also in her writing sample. In looking at her hand written rough draft of Fish's Day I was not able to find any spelling errors. Having worked on the spelling tests with Cathy I am not surprised that she is a pretty accurate speller with words in her spoken vocabulary. When we did the spelling inventory, Cathy missed three out of the 25 words (She spelled seller for cellar, comfident for confident, and opozition for opposition). For both opposition and for cellar, Cathy was not familiar with the words. They were not words that were in her spoken vocabulary. After noticing the error with confident, I wondered if I pronounced it incorrectly. However, I used all the words in a sentence so even if pronunciation was wrong the context would still be accurate. Without obtaining any patterns in her spelling mistakes I have trouble trying to decide where she would need work. It appears as though she is pretty comfortable with noticing letter sounds, and changing words to double consonants when needed. The only thing I can think is that she would need is more exposure words since two out of the three spelling errors were due to unfamiliarity.
According to Routman (2005) the students are sometimes not aware that they need to provide information to the reader to understand theie story (p. 145). I believe Cathy was pretty aware that this was something that she need to do to make her writing comprehensible. However, closely related to being able to give the necessary information to understand the story, sometime there is information that is added that does not make sense. This is an area that I think Cathy could use some help.
Lesson Plan
Objective: Student will understand that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic.
Standards:
1.3.1. Revises text by adding, deleting, substituting, and moving text.
1.4.1. Applies understanding of editing appropriate for grade level
3.1.1. Analyzes ideas, selects a narrow topic, and elaborates using specific details and/or examples.
Materials:
Teacher generated piece of writing, pencil, paper, a students rough draft
Instructional Strategies:
To begin the lesson the teacher will read a sample piece of writing, either something taken from text and changed to add details that are not crucial to the topic, or something that the teacher created. Have the student listen and take notes on piece of paper the things that they wished they knew more about, or what stuck out to them as they heard the text read.
After the student identifies some parts of the text that do not lend themselves to the story, talk with the student about what things could be done. It is possible that they could be added with some other changes to the story, or maybe that they need to be deleted.
After the student makes the changes to the text, show the student either where it came from in published book or the revised text that the teacher generated.
At the end of the lesson the student will apply what they learned from looking at different piece of text to one of their own writing samples. This will give the student an opportunity to look at their own writing and wade through the irrelevant details and sentences that distract the reader rather than engage them.
Assessment:
Teacher will assess student's understanding that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic by looking for a the student's revised story with a cohesive flow from one sentence to the next.
Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about your writer! It sounds like she's a pretty competent writer with many skills. It would be interesting to find out what kinds of writing Cathy would choose to do on her own, whether she'd write something similar to the prompted piece you analyzed or something different. I feel like free-choice writing is always going to feel different than writing to a prompt -- unless, of course, the prompt coincidentally reflects your student's interest! Your assumption that Cathy's creativity reflects an enjoyment of writing sounds right to me, too.
Your assessment of her organization gives the impression that she still needs help fully developing and following through on ideas. On the other hand, it sounds like she's definitely on the right track and has good ideas and creative content.
Your description of some of Cathy's word choices and overall voice make me wish I could read the whole piece. I was particularly taken by the progression she made in her revision of "I kept on tapping" into "I kept doing truck loads of tapping." She seems to developing a good grasp of how description can help her reader picture & grasp what's happening in her story. This is also apparent in your description of how she seeks out synonyms to keep her writing interesting.
Cathy's spelling skills seem quite advanced and your analysis implies that she has good sentence fluency, too. As far as conventions go, it does sound like she has some trouble with grammar (verb tense matching). Anecdotally, this seems to be a fairly common problem - my Juanita buddy had some difficulties, and it's very common in my main placement. Once you're confident that Cathy has some content development strategies under her belt, I believe that conventions might be an area to move to next.
One question I did have reading your analysis was in your section discussing organization. You identified clear transitions indicated by phrases such as "that was how my day began," "a few seconds later," and "a few minutes later." While these transitions may be clear, did you ever feel like Cathy was writing her story in a sing-songy "and then" fashion? In other words, did the story feel more like a chronology or timeline than a narrative? I've noticed a lot of my main placement 4th graders fall victim to "and then," and their stories read more like laundry lists of events. Just curious.
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. Cathy sounds like a budding fiction writer!
Comments on writer analysis
ReplyDeleteGeneral analysis / intro
Length of writing sample used and level of development of the sample. Was it a first draft? Final product?
Ownership and meaning of the piece
Well developed section. Gives a general sense that the student likes writing but isn't thrilled by it.
Six Traits
Ideas
It sounds like the student was successful about selecting a theme and developing a coherent story overall. You mark there is a need to work on transitions and perhaps eliminate some superfluous ideas/comments. Would it be worth giving an example of how the student is successful here?
Organization
Towards the end of second paragraph under ideas, segment starting with "As the character in the story watches the fish......" it is hard to follow the ideas. Is this on propose to represent the abruptness on the original student text? Intro well developed vs incomplete conclusion, good example.
Word choice and sentence structure
From your comments it is clear the student put time and effort into this area, selecting synonyms, varying common expressions, and making use of literary figures. Not having access to the whole piece is difficult to tell whether this was an area the student should have been spending as much time and effort on, or if it would have been more valuable invested into organization of the piece.
Lesson plan
Objective
Good objective, relevant b awed on your analysis. Based on your choice of assessment maybe add an ...." and apply" to the objective because you aren't only checking for understanding. You are directly measuring the ability to apply that new understanding effectively.
Assessment
You are looking for two things here. Revision of previous student's work demonstrating an ability to identify and eliminate irrelevant information. And the student's ability to create sentences (and paragraphs) that give the story a cohesive flow. This second aspect is not reflected in your lesson objective as currently stated or explicitly address in your instructional strategy.
You are of to a great analysis here :-)
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteYou first mention that it would be interesting to find out what kind of writing Cathy liked to do on her own. I agree. I wish I would have had more of an opportunity to talk to her about what other writings she has done and what was her favorite and why.
You were definitely right on in interpreting that Cathy needs assistance with following through on her ideas to help the organization of her writing. I did not write it that clearly but that is was I was trying to say. There were a few times in her writing where she would mention something that did not appear to connect to the idea she was developing. I not only think she could use some help with figuring out when details are irrelevant, or noticing if it’s something she wants to add to the story that they need to be developed further.
I agree that she is developing a good sense of adding description to her words to provide metal pictures for the reader. I would be curious to know more about the process she goes through to make those changes. Does she get feedback from others? Or does she reread and stop on sentences that she thinks could be livelier?
Yes I agree about your questions in her transitions being in kind of “singsong” way. When I originally looked at her writing I was thinking that they were great at mapping the story out for the reader. However, I think it could be very cookie cutter like and something a writer who is still trying to learn how to order a story uses. Reading your comment made me think about if this is something that flowed with the rest of her writing. This to me seemed like something she was still trying to develop unlike and understanding of adding detail to her words. I am not sure if this is the case but that formatting reminds me of the worksheets that students receive to map out their stories.
Monica-
ReplyDeleteThe piece of writing I was looking at was an edited rough draft. That gave me the chance to look at what she started with notice what kinds of things she wanted to change to fix her writing.
A way Cathy was successful with ideas was that I think she went beyond what was predictable for the reader. One example of this was not only the topic of the story, with a talking fish and her lead up to it, but also at the end when Fish at the other fish, Angel. However, as I had mentioned in my analysis of the fish eating the other fish, this was kind of sudden and really unexpected. I think the reader would not have been able to predict this because there was not really a connection.
In the organization section, I mentioned that Cathy jumped from one thing to another in her writing and it was not clear with the example I gave. I stated that “the character in the story watches the fish swim and walk in his, Cathy mentions that the character is eating and that the fish tried to get the fish Angel’s attention but he got mad and Fish bit his head.” It might have been better if I quoted the sentences straight out of Cathy’s writing, but what I was trying to demonstrate was that some things just happened with little insight as to why. In this example there was not a lead up to Fish being mad at the other fish and then suddenly fish bit his head off.
In the word choice and sentence structure section you brought up something I had not thought about. You said you wondered if Cathy’s decision to fancy up her writing with detail and synonyms was the best use of her time. That was not something I had thought about before. Instead I just looked as this as a strength of good writers to be able to add colorful descriptions. I am not sure how you decide when one thing is more important than the other when all aspects of writing should be developed. That is something I will have to think about more.
You mentioned in the assessment piece that I am really looking at two things. That is true. Not only am I using the final product (the students adding and deleting information that help or detract from the story) but I will be doing the informal assessment as we go along. If the students are unable to follow along as we look at different passage then I will have to adapt my lesson to make sure they are working towards understanding the objective.