At
the beginning of this school year, I encountered an issue with writing with my
students. This experience can be read about in more depth in my previous blog post , “Slow and Steady Wins the Race.” The
gist of the problem was the kids were feeling defeated and did not have a
strong strategy to help them be successful.
The defeatist attitude was extremely frustrating for me because I wanted
them to accept the challenge, and they weren’t. That is when I created a
plan and basically enrolled myself in the coaching cycle. The process was very
helpful because a plan was created and then executed; I am a natural problem
solver, so this was right up my alley. I believe there was a success, but also
the next steps need to be implemented for continued student growth. The
coaching cycle also allowed me to view student work based on hard evidence
instead of what I believed was happening. It was positive and eye opening. I am so happy I tried something new to help my students and myself grow.
The Plan
Edison is a K-8 site, and my sixth-graders are
part of the middle school schedule. I teach four different sections of
ELA. As a grade level, we decided to
break the general ed students into ability levels; the first group is much
smaller and needs intensive scaffolding their instruction, and the second
group, they are more independent and can manage instruction with less
scaffolding. The grouping really helped our students. With the two groups
of students who struggled with writing essays, I decided to focus on summary
writing and writing constructed responses until January. The first time around the students complained
that writing was too laborious, and they did not plan to tackle a multi-stepped
task. Once they were able to focus on smaller writing assignments, they
were ready to start writing argument essays. The outcome was great because they
did not complain once that they did not understand where to start. I just
simply explained the body of the essay were constructed responses, and the
introduction and conclusion were summaries. The more intensive group received
sentence frames only with transition words/phrases, but they were expected to fill
in the frames with their own words and proper citing formats. The
second group, which is my intermediate level students, was given a planning
sheet, and then I chunked what writing needed to be completed each day.
The Outcome
Students
completed their essays and with better quality and more confidence. Using
the Add-on feature of Google Docs student work could be assessed for grade
level writing ability and sentence fluency. I used GradeProof and SAS Writing
Reviser. The students’ grade level increased and they were writing
using their own words, which was an improvement because before they were just
citing and not explaining the importance of their evidence. Looking at a
group of 30 students, 22 students were successful, and eight students will need
more explicit small group instruction to meet the expectation.
Next Steps
After reading all their essays, I
noticed across the board they need to cite with more than one piece of
evidence. This was after giving the ICA Benchmark, and I saw a need to
continue to reinforce this strategy in their writing. I have explained using more evidence
when writing an argument will strengthen their claim, and on the ICA it was
required of them on several of the short answer responses. Word choice is
also an area of need. My next lessons
will be taught using 6 Traits of Writing and focusing on word power in their
writing overall. By the end of the year,
I will feel confident sending them onto their next English class with the
writing skills they learned this school year, where they will continue to be
successful in their English classes.
To close, I am grateful that I re-examined how
writing was being taught in my classroom. It was awesome to see the
successes, and readjust my instruction based on facts not what my perception of
I believed the students needed. This process was really positive and
extremely helpful, especially because writing instruction is one of the more
difficult areas to implement in the classroom.
The
Coaching Cycle Cheat Sheet
1. Collect student data on an area of need
2.
Determine strategies and next steps based on your expectations toward meeting the standard
3.
Execute the plan and collect more data
4.
Reassess student work and repeat the cycle
5.
Create a next steps for students and yourself
·
The amount of time you are implement your plan is
based on what you feel is best for your students.
