Writing Analysis and Lesson Outline

Analysis of Student Writing

S. is an outgoing and talkative 4^th grader and clearly proud of her writing ability.  We briefly looked at several pieces in her writing folder before she selected one for us to review.  My analysis is based on S.’s response to a writing prompt about a talking animal.  S. wrote about her own kitten “Fuzzball” and she described what a day might be like if he could talk.  Her story described a series of events including eating breakfast, reading the comics, and washing dishes with the cat.  She engages the reader with her vivid descriptions and choice of language. 

Six Traits

S. has terrific ideas but instead of focusing on one, she has written about several vignettes – some more developed than others.  She is always on the general theme of a day with her talking kitten, but the ideas are not always connected and do not flow logically.  We are left with gaps and questions about the story.  (NREL .p. 2)  Reading the comics leads to a pillow fight with no explanation.  S. suddenly calls a friend and a fashion show is introduced.  These events have some detail, but are confusing because they seem a bit random.  Regarding organization, the story is a bit uneven.  S. starts with a very inviting introduction and I was eager to continue reading.  Subsequently, there are several ideas competing for focus and therefore the middle feels disorganized and somewhat fuzzy.  The story ends with a conclusion that is recognizable, but not completely satisfying for a piece that started so strong. (NREL p. 3)

S.’s strong voice and word choice are “powerful and engaging” and give her writing sparkle. (NREL p.5). Her words and phrases are thoughtful and specific; examples include “muted knock” by the kitten’s paw and “under the whistling voice of the tea pot”.  Vivid verbs include blurted, bounded and pranced.  Descriptions like “happy as a lark,” “thin, high heeled black shoes”, and “purple polka dot dress” all add color and drama to the story.

S.’s sentences always get the job done and in some cases are varied and energetic.  She does use dialogue in her story, although sometimes it is a bit choppy.  Her conversations succeed in introducing varied structure and length of sentences and helps move her story along. (NREL p. 6) Her fluency shows and conveys the excitement that she feels about her new found ability to communicate with her kitten.

S. has a very good grasp of standard writing conventions.  Evidence of S.’s ability to revise and edit for conventions were apparent in the marked up Fuzzball final draft.  There are a couple of small spelling errors (meant and licking) but I am not sure that they accurately reflect S.’s stage of development.  I suspect that with an additional review, the spelling would be corrected and the piece would be ready for publication. (NREL p. 7))    This is consistent with S.'s “Message in a Bottle” writing prompt that was published on the class bulletin board.  Spelling, grammar, paragraphs, punctuation, and capitalization were once again excellent.

Ownership

S. enjoys writing and she is confident and highly motivated to create stories at home and school.  In the Fuzzball piece, her delight in having her kitten talk makes the story silly but fun.  S. sees herself as a capable writer and she proudly showed us several writing pieces in addition to the Fuzzball story.  She was working earnestly on a pre-write about what one thing she would change at school.  Another completed piece was an “All About Me” story and she read us the clever conclusion “if you need more information, call 1-800- SAMI”.  S. enjoys acting in plays and I believe that adds to her love of language and dialogue. 

Spelling

In addition to spelling in context in her writing, S. did well on the spelling inventory.  She spelled all the words correctly except “celler”, “civiliazed” and “oppisition”. This would place her beyond vowel patterns on the developmental continuum.  Derivational relations (opposition) and suffixes (cellar and civilized) would be her stage of development in spelling.  In identifying words from a list, S. was very strong and tested at the independent level through the 6^th grade.  She insisted on continuing through all the word lists and she successfully identified many middle school and some high school level words.  She was eager and proud to know what words she had gotten correct.

In conclusion, S. is a strong writer whose voice and word choice shine.  Her writing is supported by her sentence fluency and correct use of conventions.  Two areas for improvement are ideas and organization.  S. has so many ideas that she would benefit by narrowing the focus of her writing.  Focus would enable her to elaborate on her main theme without getting sidetracked by random and distracting information.  The improved focus would help with her organization as transitions and clarity would improve.  For that reason, I would start a writing lesson on idea development and focus. 

Lesson Outline

Objectives

To brainstorm how to identify the main idea and narrow the focus for the tetherball story.

To identify overlapping and/or unrelated ideas in the tetherball pre-write.

Standards

EALR 1 Student understands and uses a writing process

1.1. Pre-write to generate ideas and plan writing.

EALR 3 Student writes clearly and effectively

3.1   Develops ideas and organizes writing

Materials

Pencil, post-it notes, new prewrite graphic organizer

Instructional Strategies

This lesson is designed as an individual writing conference and a follow-up .  Alternatively, it could be given as a small group lesson to students all working on narrowing the focus for their ideas.

I would ask S. to bring a copy of her tetherball pre-write.  I would have a copy of her Fuzzball story and start the conference by praising her terrific voice, word choice and conventions she demonstrated in the piece.  I would then gently point out that after an engaging introduction, the middle became a bit fuzzy with several competing and unconnected ideas (I would be specific).  I would then focus on the new project and explain how a pre-write helps to narrow a main idea before she starts her draft.  The goal being that the tetherball piece have a clear, well defined and narrow focus before starting the draft.

I would show S. a sample pre-write using the same prompt.  This could be from a previous year or one that I created for illustrating how to narrow topic focus.  I would demonstrate how after I finish a pre-write, I review with the goal to identify and narrow the main idea.  I would use a series of questions.  Are my ideas all different and distinct or do they overlap? Are they all equally important to the story I am trying to tell?  Are they related or connected in some way?  As I ask the questions, I would show how I could eliminate or combine repetitive ideas.  I would show how I could connect related ideas with so there is logical flow.  I would show how to identify the one idea that seems to be the most important in the story I am trying to tell – that is her main idea..

Next, we would turn to S.’s pre-write and together we would ask the first “review” question.  Are all my ideas different or do they overlap?  As S. identifies similar ideas, I would ask how she might combine or eliminate some of the information to help narrow the focus.  Although we did not spend a lot of time on this piece, my recollection is that S. had “listed” three reasons why she wanted to have more tetherball courts.  Yet all of the reasons were related to the main idea that students in different grades need to play on different courts.

When I was confident that S. could revise her pre-write on her own, I would have her go back to her seat to complete the revisions using the questions we used on the sample to combine, eliminate and revise her pre-write.  I would have S. come back when she felt that her revision focused on a narrow topic with all the other ideas connected to one main theme.

During the follow-up conference, I would have S. read her revised pre-write.  If the pre-write was focused on a main idea with related supporting information, I would have S. proceed to begin her draft.

Assessment

I will document how well S. can narrow the focus of the tetherball paper by comparing the revised pre-write to the original pre-write and checking for a main idea with a narrow focus and connected ideas.  As the assignment progresses, I will use the ideas section of the six traits rubric to assess the clarity and focus of her story.