Meeting Goals

One of my goals for the year is to create an environment where students assess the quality of their own work. To do this, students will be involved in creating and utilizing rubrics. That was the goal that I wrote for myself back in Oct/Nov as part of our professional growth plan in the school district. Accompanying that was the benchmark that I attempt to implement at least 1 rubric within the first grading period.

This week was an opportunity to work on those goals, and see where we were with respect to progressing to meet them. Well I have used 3-4 iterations of rubrics for different assignments. I believe the students have found them useful, as they have given honest feedback about their work. Instead of simply saying "this is great" they will say "this is great because..." or "I think it was good, but needed to improve here..."

The trouble I have run into is returning work. I've struggled with that as a whole, in particular with respect to the rubric-ed items. Obviously that begs the question: why self-assess if you don't see the feedback in a timely fashion? That has been the question I've been pondering, as well as how I can be more efficient in the grading process?! My struggle is largely around ensuring that I give them feedback, record the information in my gradebook, then return it into their "Completed Work Folder." As a whole it just some stuff I am thinking about as I try to improve my practice.

From Skeletons to Paragraphs

Comparing like items is important. Whether it is two books, two boxes of cereal, or two colonies, you need to be able to sort characteristics of those items. That has been the task of my kids this week. Previously we mined information about colonies in different regions. From there we turned the information into a radio advertisement, and then into a Venn diagram (rather, filling the venn diagram). The next step is synthesizing that information, and putting it together as a coherent piece of writing.

I've been fascinated by the evolution of their writing. Over a month ago they wrote about explorers, and I'll be the first to admit that I needed to improve my writing instruction. Their writing was laden with strings of facts in lengthy sentences. Since then we have worked on having topic sentences, and using transition words that move us from general information to specific information. The work has really started to pay off, and conferencing has been taken to heart.

I believe that part of this evolution has been tied to our use of evaluation. I don't evaluate everything, but for larger pieces of work I want my kids to self evaluate the quality of their work. Not only is it complete, but do I have sentences that make sense? Do I a variety of sentence lengths? Do I have accurate information? Do I include general statements as well as specific information? The writing sessions today were highly successful, and the quality of work was really good.

Goal Setting

We are in the midst of finishing our opinion piece on explorers. Last week I asked the 60+ kiddos to find some information about explorers. They needed to read strategically, looking for ideas that were in the social studies text. The questions ranged from: where was the explorer from, to how did the explorer help/hurt native people. The kiddos were able to easily find some of the explicit information, but inferring was more difficult (isn't it difficult for everyone?!). From those pieces of information we compared and contrasted the effects of European explorers, and worked towards drawing conclusions (do you think they were positive or negative, and why? what facts support your opinion?).

Since the tasks were so diverse, I've had to teach a myriad of skills. For example we started with identifying important information in text, then transitioned into the reading skill of compare/contrast. After that we worked on our thinking, and how we evaluate information (with the idea of the two column chart being like a scale). Where I have had to circle back, and often, has been how to structure writing. In many ways the writing is similar to a summary, as you have a topic sentence followed by facts to support that sentence. But I've found myself repeating the sequence, and reteaching the sequence each of the past 3 days. Has it sunk in? Not necessarily, which tells me that I need a more engaging teaching point as well as more guided practice.

I will admit that I am excited to look through their work. I want to see if they hit everything on our writing checklist (topic sentence, 3 supporting facts, opposing opinion, closure, readability, etc) as they have assured me they have. Next time around I will be introducing a self-assessment piece. I want them to assess where their own writing is, and what they need to do in order to make it better. I already do something like this for their homework and it has worked well. Now if I could only get it out of my box of teaching stuff....