QUALITATIVE GROWTH
The vast majority of assessments that I administer contain a heavy emphasis on reading skills and strategies. Therefore, it is my job to implement additional sources of data analysis in my classroom that focus on student growth in terms of their writing in order to establish a more academically holistic view of each student. With this understanding, I make a point throughout the year to facilitate a great deal of writing practice for my students. In fifth grade, they are starting to become more invested in and accountable for their own academics, and I facilitate progress in that aspect by providing a variety of writing opportunities and conferences with students regarding their dramatic growth in terms of writing.
Due to the fact that opinion writing is a huge standard in fifth grade, I chose to demonstrate that growth within my own classroom through an analysis of opinion writing prompts throughout the year.
In order to provide a thorough analysis of dramatic student growth within my classroom, I identified three students at varying academic levels - one student who is reading and writing below grade level and who receives additional accommodations and modifications for classroom assignments, one who is on grade level, and one above grade level.
As this student receives accommodations per his Individualized Education Plan, I provided him with additional supports in his writing assignment and worked with him in the development of his ideas. He was able to integrate information from the video that we watched, and use temporal language with my support.
Overall, he received an eight out of twelve as he was approaching fifth grade expectations in all four categories, including craft/style, conventions, purpose, and structure. I gave him the goal of working on time management, as that will significantly improve his score on all four aspects of the rubric.
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This student utilized many of the sentence stems that I provided for the class, and was also able to utilize temporal language without my assistance.
While they were able to utilize their background knowledge and notes from the video, they were not able to elaborate on the information in their own words. I challenged them to do so going forward.
Overall, they received a score of ten out of twelve on the rubric. They met fifth grade expectations in terms of conventions and purpose, but were lacking a few important aspects of craft and structure. ​
This student opted to forego the use of my sentence stems and instead organized their essay in a different way.
They obviously have had practice in structuring an opinion essay, so I challenged them to elaborate on information provided by giving examples of the two mindsets.
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Overall, they received an eleven out of twelve on the rubric. This score demonstrates meeting fifth grade expectations as far as craft, conventions, and purpose, and approaching fifth grade in the structure.
Although this student did utilize my provided sentence stems, they were able to complete more in a shorter time during independent work, which demonstrated growth in their stamina and ability to structure an essay.
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Even though they were not able to finish the essay in its entirety, they did the majority of this prompt alone, and instead of copying directly what their text said, was able to communicate ideas in their own words, which was something that we had been working on for a while. ​
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Overall, they received a nine out of twelve on the rubric, meeting expectations on conventions, while approaching them with craft, purpose, and structure.
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This essay demonstrates progression in the student's ability to structure and elaborate on their ideas. Earlier in the year, they provided paraphrased evidence but struggled with making meaning of it and elaborating on it.
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Once they were able to begin the process of diving deeply into content through elaboration, I challenged them to use direct quotes rather than paraphrase information from their text.
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Overall, this student received a ten out of twelve on the rubric, meeting expectations in terms of craft and conventions, while approaching with purpose and structure.
While this student was able to demonstrate progress through a deeper understanding of the structure of an essay and our class wide acronym (OREEO), they did not provide additional details that supported their claim, nor did they cite evidence from their text.
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In addition, I verbally challenged this student to seek out and use a more complex vocabulary in order to enhance their ideas.
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Overall, this student received an eleven out of twelve on the rubric. They met fifth grade expectations on craft, conventions, and structure, and were approaching in their purpose.
For one of the final writing prompts of the year, this student really took ownership and demonstrated dramatic progress not only in their writing stamina, but also in the content that they produced!
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I supplied them with a few sentence stems, but after that, they hit the ground running and paraphrased evidence from two different texts!
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For this writing prompt, this student received a nine out of twelve on the rubric. Their writing demonstrated an understanding of the fifth grade expectation of conventions, and an approach of the craft, purpose, and structure for fifth grade writing.
Much like the previous student, this individual greatly improved their writing stamina over the course of this year! They spent the vast majority of their time really focused on their ideas, which definitely shows!
They also were able to elaborate on ideas at a deeper level than in previous writing assignments, which represents substantial growth!
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Overall, this student received an eleven out of twelve on the rubric, demonstrating an understanding of fifth grade expectations in terms of craft, conventions, and structure, while approaching purpose.
Very similarly to the previous two writers, this student's writing stamina significantly improved between the beginning of the year and when this writing prompt was assigned.
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What struck me specifically with this individual was their extensive vocabulary. In addition to demonstrating an understanding of the basic structure of an opinion essay, they utilized incredibly academic transitions and words to get their ideas across.
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Overall, this student received a fourteen out of twelve on the rubric. This demonstrates their exceeding of fifth grade expectations in terms of their craft and purpose, while a meeting of expectations in conventions and structure.
Upon reflection of the significant gains made by these three students, the most substantial growth between the three is an increase in writing stamina. Students demonstrated dramatic growth in their ability to write longer, more in depth essays in a shorter time, which will be incredibly beneficial as they transition into middle school.
Each student began the year on a different level in terms of their writing abilities, but each made great strides in the development of crafting opinion pieces that integrated their personal background knowledge as well as information gathered from texts that we read in class.
The ability to write about one's opinion by using evidence from a text is a skill that is implemented less than ever throughout our society. Therefore, opinion writing is a skill that I need to put an emphasis on in my classroom so that my students are able to transition into members of society who can not only craft these written pieces, but also differentiate between quality writing and that which is not based on substantiated information. Going forward, I will continue to facilitate a variety of writing opportunities for my students in order to ensure that this dramatic growth continues, and that my students walk out of my classroom with the strategies to be successful writers and readers.