KAITLIN BARNES
QUALITATIVE GROWTH
Throughout the school year, students express their understanding and opinions through writing assignments. While not all assignments use the same structure or have the same requirements, they do all require students to think about what they have read in a deep and meaningful way. Designing these types of qualitative assignments helps me gauge how students have improved in their abilities to think about a text and apply a reading skill to what they are reading.
I have included three writing samples in this portion of my portfolio. I included a sample from the very beginning of the school year (September sample) because I wanted to show the writing skills and style that students entered fifth grade with. I included a sample from the middle of the school year (December sample) because I wanted to show how students learned how to respond to texts in writing. Finally, I included a recent sample (March sample) because I wanted to show how students had become more comfortable and skilled with constructing written responses to texts.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
The first writing assignment of this school year asked students to pick one part of themselves that they loved the most and explain why. I chose to start the year with this assignment because it was a personal, low-pressure way to gather an initial writing sample from my students. Because it did not require an understanding of any texts, it was a true assessment of my students' writing abilities and not of their reading levels. This assignment also allowed me to get a sense of my students' personalities and writing styles.
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Above are the instructions I gave students for this writing assignment. The instructions are purposefully simple to allow for students to interpret the assignment however they wanted to. I also included guiding questions to help my English Language Learners and special education students access the assignment more easily. Finally, I included an example of what the final product would look like.
Below are three student samples from this writing assignment. I have chosen three students: one who is reading above grade level, one who is reading at grade level, and one who is reading below grade level.
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This student is reading above grade level and chose to write about her brain. She clearly already has a basic understanding of certain scientific concepts because she references neurons sending information. This writing shows that the student has a relatively strong grasp of writing conventions for her age.
This student is reading at grade level and chose to write about her hands. She is able to correctly use a simile in her writing, but her writing does not show the same level of grammar understanding like the above-grade level student.
This student is reading below grade level and chose to write about his legs. While he is able to explain why he likes his legs, he repeats himself several times and also has poor organization, as evidenced by the fact that several parts of his writing are difficult to understand.
A common way that I assess student writing in my class is through written responses to our class novels. After finishing our second class novel, A Long Walk to Water, and exploring the website of the organization "Water for South Sudan," students wrote a letter to Salva Dut, the main character in the novel who now works to provide clean water to villages in Africa. This assignment assessed both students' writing abilities and their ability to integrate events from the novel with their own opinions and questions.
This was the prompt that was shown to students for this writing assignment. It gives students a clear rationale for writing and still provides scaffolding guiding questions, although not as many as the prompt from the beginning of the year.
The above-grade level student was able to eloquently express her reaction to reading about Salva's life in Africa. She clearly internalized the larger themes present in the book, such as hope and family, and was able to end her letter with a very strong concluding sentence without needing any scaffolding or sentence stems.
This on-grade level student was able to include her reactions to the book and some questions for Salva. She is also able to make a connection with Salva, which shows that she truly internalized our lessons at the beginning of the year about making connections with texts. However, she is clearly still struggling with certain spelling patterns (survived, interested) and substituted "tio" for "uncle," reflecting the use of Spanglish that is common among my students.
This below-grade level student was able to use several provided sentence stems to start off his letter, but he spends most of his time asking questions instead of communicating how he felt about the book and Salva's journey. The questions do show that he understood key parts of the book, but overall his writing does not show his own reactions to the text. However, his writing does make more sense and is easier to understand than his first writing sample.
After reading our fourth class novel, Making Bombs for Hitler, I once again asked students to write a letter that would reflect their understanding of the book. However, this time they were instructed to put themselves in the shoes of the main character, Lida, and write a letter to her sister Larissa, from whom she had been separated for the past two years. This writing assignment assessed students' understanding of the events in the book so far, in addition to their sequencing skills and writing conventions.
Above is the prompt that students saw for this writing assignment. The directions remain clear, but I have removed the scaffolding guiding questions because at this point in the school year, students should know what to include in this type of text-dependent writing assignment.
The above-grade level student wrote a letter that goes beyond a simple retelling of the story's events and instead is able to include the character's emotions and thoughts (for example, mentioning how she was able to figure out the year when she didn't have access to a calendar). Like her other letters, she shows a strong grasp of writing conventions and hardly makes any spelling errors except for those that are story specific, such as "Ukraine" and "Inga."
The on-grade level student increased both the volume and quality of her writing since the December sample. She is able to include key events from the entire story (although she needs to improve her transitions between sentences) and is also able to include more insight about the character's emotions, which was missing from her previous sample.
The below-grade level student has increased his writing volume since the December assignment. He also significantly improved in his ability to write about the events in the story. This letter shows a strong understanding of what happened in the novel, whereas his December letter included primarily questions for the character. However, he still has yet to include character emotions in his letter.
By having my students write regularly about the books we are reading, I am able to assess several things. First, I am able to assess their understanding of the text and whether or not they can identify the most important events and communicate them in the correct sequence. Second, I am able to assess whether they can make inferences about how the character was feeling or what they were thinking. Third, I am able to assess their ability to respond to the text in a meaningful way by making connections and asking questions. Finally, I am able to assess their grasp of writing conventions and their ability to write for longer periods of time.
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All of my students were able to show improvement in both their length of writing and their ability to include a character's feelings in their written responses. The above-grade level student wrote pieces that were consistently insightful, but her grasp of written conventions has improved throughout the year. The on-grade level student has improved in her ability to include the character's emotions in her writing, and the below-grade level student has improved in his ability to express an understanding of the novel's events.