Week of December 5th Using the Rubric

The week of December 5^th. 

On Monday I had the rubric ready for them to review, ask question about, and revise.

Trait and Criteria	1 = NO!	2 = No But!	3 = Yes But!	4 = YES!
Concept of Writing: Students will use letter sounds/phonics to spell words, words will have proper spacing, letters will have consistent sizing, capital letters will used properly.	No words are spelled correct. No words are spaced properly. None of the letters are consistently sized. Capital letters are not used in the correct places.	Some words are spelled correct. Some words are spaced properly. Some letters are consistently sized. Some capital letters are used in the correct places.	Most words are spelled correct. Most words are spaced properly. Most letters are consistently sized. Most capital letters are used in the correct places.	All words are spelled correct. All words are spaced properly. All letters are consistently sized. Capital letters are used in the correct places.

I lead a discussion with them about the criteria to see if they had any other questions, to clarify their understanding, and to see if we wanted to make any revisions.  During the discussion, we re-clarified that some meant less than half, more meant more than half, proper spacing meant about one finger, and consistently sized meant all the short letters were the same height and all the tall letters were the same height.  The students chose not to change anything on the rubric.  I told them when they write today they will be using the rubric as a guide to help them make their writing better.  While they write, look at the rubric and look at the examples of the writing we scored; let the rubric and the examples help you.  When you think you’re done, use the rubric to score yourself, see what you scored your writing and revise your writing if you can make your writing better.  After you have made any changes, get together with your CF and you can read each others writing and see if you agree with the score together.  You and your CF will explain why and how you came up with the score.  You will then have a chance to revise your writing again.

This process took some time.  None of the students were ready to share their writing with their CF until the second day and some of the students didn’t share until the third day.  Some of the students were not even ready on the third day cause they wanted to make their writing the best they could.  I had all the students sharing what they had written even if they weren’t “quite ready” yet, so they could get a good feeling about the process.

I learned the students’ through this first process were excited about using the rubric “as a tool” to help them and most of the students were excited to share with their CF. Some of the students were apprehensive to share at first but, once they had a chance to share with their CF they enjoyed talking about the criteria and working together. 

What is Quality to my Second Grade Writers? 4=YES!

The next day, the students were eager to see their ideas under the examples on the smartboard.  I showed them the examples and the list of criteria we came up with under the examples.  I also had the examples ranked in-order from 4 to 1.  Under the best piece of writing (the 4), I listed in bullets: All words are spelled correct, All words have a consistent space (about one finger), All letters are consistently sized, Capital letters are used in the proper locations.  Under the poorest piece of writing (the 1), I listed: The words are not spelled correctly, The words do not have spaces between them, The letters are not consistently sized, Capital letters are mixed with lower case letters.  Under the 3 ranked piece I used the same criteria and used the word most of in front of the criteria.  Under the 2 ranked piece I used the word some of in front of the criteria. 

I started the lesson by having them look over what we did yesterday and do a turn and talk about the criteria and the numbers 4 to 1 by the examples.  Then, we had a discussion about the criteria and the numbers.  We discussed the words most of and some of in terms of giving one piece of writing a 3 and another a 2.  The students were a bit confused in this gray area of scoring until we talked more about what the quality of the writing meant in terms of the scoring 4-1.  I used the example from the student-created rubric model to further teach this gray area: Example: 4= YES! 3= YES BUT!  2= NO BUT!  1= NO!  Ask students to tell you about some of the mistakes they may have made in the past. When I used this example and talked about why the 3 was a yes but and the 2 was a no but, the students were able to grasp the concept. 

After the lesson, I told them on Monday I would have a rubric ready for them to look at and we would learn how we could use it to review our own writing to help make our writing better…for today, I want you to look at the criteria “what counts in our writing” and see how you can use these lists to make your writing better today and everyday.

Starting the Process of Student-created Rubrics with my Students

I began implementing the action process of having my students create rubrics for their writing on December 1^st.  From the conversation I had with my literacy specialist and from the data I collected and analyzed, I decided to start the process with the trait Concept of writing/craft.  I decided this because, the data I collected showed my students needed to learn more in the basics of concepts of writing.  They needed to focus on getting more letter sounds in their words, having consistent size and shape of their letters, having more consistent word spacing, and knowing where and when capital letters should be used. 

I began the process by making four examples of good work and poor work, which I put up on my smartboard.  Right away one student said, “Who wrote those bad words.” One piece was written perfectly with all the words spelled correctly, the letters had consistent size and shape, the word spacing was good, and capital letters were in the right places. Another piece was written totally opposite of previous and the other two were in-between; one closer to the good piece and one closer to the poor piece. I told the students we were going to be judges who get to review samples of work and then decide what makes one piece of writing good and the other one not so good.  I told them we are going to score the best writing with a 4, the poorest writing with a 1 and the other ones we had to decide if it was a 3 or a 2.  So, we reviewed the examples of good and poor writing and had a class discussion about their observations.  Before our discussion I let them look at the writing for a minute then, I had them turn and talk to their Critical Friend (CF)—(Super serious partner) about what they noticed.  As we discussed the writing I wrote their responses down on chart paper.  I was pleased that the students were easily able to pick out the best writing and the poorest writing right away.  As we talked about why they thought the good piece was good and deserving of the 4 they were able to say they could read it and the words are spelled right.  When we talked about the poorest writing deserving a 1 the students were able to say it’s hard to read, the words are pushed together, the letters aren’t the same size, and the words aren’t spelled right.  As the discussion continued I helped them transform their vocabulary to use words like consistent when talking about size and shape, and proper spacing when talking about words and letters being pushed together.  When we continued to discuss and judge the other pieces the students began to notice smaller detail and used words like some and more, and they noticed where capital letters were being used and not used.  After the discussion I told the students we would be putting our list of “what counts in our writing” on the examples on the smartboard for tomorrow and we will talk about why our criteria is important to the quality of the writing…for today, think about what counts in your writing as you write today and everyday.

Finding a Place to Start

Last month I met with my schools literacy specialist.  I told her about my action research and how I wanted to create rubrics with my students so they could learn more about the writing process, the traits of writing, the criteria for good writing, how to determine good writing and poor writing, how to determine the quality of their own writing, and how they can use the rubric to help them become better writers.  We discussed typical early second grade writing and my group of writers to determine if my group was typical of early second grade writers.  They are.  Then, we looked at the districts writing rubric.  The writing rubric is a K-8 continuum for assessing narrative writing with 10 levels of criteria; one being low and ten the highest, the traits being evaluated are structure, elaboration, concept of writing/craft and meaning/significance. After looking at the rubric we discussed where second grade writing typically lies on the continuum for assessing WOD scores and how those levels equate to a writing score for report card grading.  For second grade a level 2 on the continuum is a 1 on the report card which means below standard, a level 3 is a 2 on the report card which means approaching the standard, a level 4 is a 3 which means they are meeting the standard and any level above a 4 means they are exceeding the standard in second grade.  We then looked at the criteria for each trait at each level to see what that writing could look like.  From there, we discussed my students writing and where we thought a good starting point would be for them to learn more about the writing process, the traits of writing, the criteria for good writing, how to determine good writing and poor writing, how to determine the quality of their own writing, and how they can use a rubric to help them become better writers.  We thought it would be best to start at the beginning with having them investigate the trait of Concept of Writing/Craft and have them think of the criteria.  I will start the process by putting up writing examples that show work that is below, approaching, meeting, and exceeding the standard. I will follow step one and two.

1.    Look at Models--review examples of good and poor work and have a class discussion of what makes the one piece of work good and the other work poor.  Record the students responses during the discussion.

2.   List Criteria—Ask the students how you should assess the work.  Lead the students to recall the list generated during the discussion of the good and the poor work examples.  List the students’ ideas under the heading “Criteria” or “What Counts”.  Guide students to think of less obvious ideas or criteria as well.  Once students have given their ideas of criteria you may add what you want and explain why that criteria is important to the quality of work

The beginning and Base-line Data

Hello, I know I haven’t blogged for quite some time.  I have had difficulties this year with finding balance in my life.  When I began this process of finding a sensed need for my class and framing it around a question, I was thinking of the first grade students I had last year and the first grade writing curriculum.  A lot of that has changed this year.  I am now teaching second grade.  I have several students who are taking much of my time in regards to behavior management and I need to constantly think of new engagement strategies to add to my lessons in order to keep things exciting and new or they loose interest and behaviors escalate.  Also, the curriculum has changed from first grade to second grade.  In first grade there was an emphasis on narrative writing.  In second grade there is an emphasis on nonfiction writing.  The part about that change that has been difficult is that my districts report card rubric for scoring writing supports narrative writing so, I have had to look at the rubrics for reporting to the district and decide how to formulate them in a way to show a correlation in my students learning and performance.

I have collected and scored writing samples from a Writing on Demand (WOD) that I gave to students the first week of school.  A WOD is when students are asked to write a personal narrative small moment story with a scripted prompt and no direct pre-teaching.  I also gave an eight question survey to my students to see how they felt about their writing and writing in general.  I have also collected and scored students personal narrative stories from late October.  After scoring the writing myself, I had a colleague of mine score the writing samples as well.  We discussed the scores we both gave and the criteria for scoring based on our districts rubric.  This initial data will give me a great base-line for determining later growth and progress around meeting the writing standards on the district rubric and the rubrics the students will help to create.