Student feedback on writing and mixed ability groups

Last week I asked my class to give me feedback on the recent changes to our writing programme.  Many students chose to add their thoughts to the PMI charts below.

Changes to the way we do writing.

After having run an accelerated literacy learning (ALL) group this year, I decided to transfer many of the successes into the rest of my writing groups.

Changes made to our writing programme included:

• No follow-up rotation.  (This was a rotation that involved the student independently continuing with their piece of writing that they had been co-constructing with the teacher).  The reason for removing this rotation, is because I found that what could have been a great, high level example a piece of writing, would often end up off-track or have irrelevant information etc, making it loose the high quality of what was started.  In order to develop student's writing, students are now asked to take what they have been working on with the teacher, and transfer this into their independent writing.  This means they independently practise and apply the newly taught skill, as well as keeping the co-constructed example piece of writing in tact and at a quality level.
• No pencil.  Many students would spend a lot of time rubbing out and correcting mistakes, and as a result it made it difficult to see the changes made and their thought process.  Now students only write in pen.  This allows me to see how much work has been done - because half of it hasn't been rubbed out, and more importantly, I can see the development in the student's thinking.
• Mixed ability writing groups.  My writing groups were always set according to ability, however after trailing mixed ability groups for over a term now, I believe this is a great way of arranging students for writing.  I gave my student's a PMI chart too, to gauge their thoughts on mixed ability groups.  It was amazing to note that the 23/26 students preferred working in a mixed ability group.  The key reasons for this included: *All students have different strengths so they can learn from them; *Love not having a top or bottom group - even more importantly, struggling learners loved not being in a bottom group for everything.
• Publishing rotation: A new rotation is publishing.  Giving students an opportunity to present their crafted piece of writing, and see it nicely presented in a range of different ways, has motivated students to create more quality pieces of work because their writing will be shared with an audience.  It also gives their writing a purpose.
• Highlighters used for editing and proofreading: Students swap their writing with a buddy.  The buddy then uses a highlighter to identify changes needed.  The students have really enjoyed using highlighters for this and it has shown some improvement in the corrections made.
• Purpose to writing focus: Planning writing units now focuses on ensuring students have a purpose for writing and an authentic context.  Examples of recent units include creating a newspaper, and publishing and illustrating their own narrative picture book.

Mixed ability writing groups

At the end of last term I changed my writing groups from streamed ability to mixed ability.  After having the opportunity to reflect on how it was going, I am pleased to say my changes were the right changes to make for my class.

Writing time in Room 2 has a positive 'buzz' about it.  Students are all willingly sharing their ideas, thoughts, feedback etc with one another, irrespective of whether they are boys or girls, friends or someone they haven't really worked with before.  I have noticed a big improvement in both the quality and volume of work that students are writing. 

At present, students are confidently helping one another and offering feedback on ways to improve writing.  Students who have tended to find writing difficult, are also asking a lot more questions and seeking advice from peers, using the writing tools from within the classroom.  As the teacher I am not being interrupted while i'm working with a writing group, as the students are able to seek help and advice for more able writers.

The more able writers have also grown in confidence and maturity as they relish in their supportive roles which also helps them to reinforce their writing process.

The next step or me is to now get student feedback and see what their thoughts are about working in mixed ability groups.

Self review report

This year I have undertaken two self review reports via Interlead Appraisal Connector.

In March this year I completed the review of myself, and in September I completed another self review, but this time, my team leader also completed the review on me.

Below is the statement from Appraisal Connector about the reasons for a self review:

Guiding Concepts

In developing this self-review we have endeavoured to create a set of items that address the key challenges of a teaching professional's work; that can operate within guidelines established by the New Zealand Ministry of Education; that are applicable to the school environment; and which are firmly based on established conceptual frameworks (ways

of thinking about a topic). I have attached the full reports of my reflections from both March and September 2015.  Both reports show my own judgements of myself as a teacher.  They also indicate my self chosen areas of development.  The September report also shows my team leaders judgements.  I found this report very gratifying about myself as a teaching professional.  It was wonderful to see that my team leader and I were often on the same wave length and placed my teaching practice at the same level.  Where there were differences - my team leader placed me higher than I had.

Appraisal Connector Report March 2015

Appraisal Connector Report September 2015

Improvement made by students in the ALL intervention

Summary of Room 2 data

Sub-level movements of Writers Club A.L.L writers

Term 2-3, 2015

16 week intervention

 

	BA	JH	JD	LJ	MRM	WH	EH	CP	Average
Overall	5	2	4	3	6	2	5	4	3.9
Ideas	8	0	0	0	8	4	3	4	3.4
Structure	5	4	4	8	5	4	7	8	5.6
Organisation	6	0	0	3	9	0	6	6	3.8
Vocab	3	3	7	4	4	0	7	7	4.4
Sentence	4	0	6	3	4	4	3	3	3.4
Punctuation	4	4	10	3	7	0	6	4	4.8
Spelling	0	2	0	4	6	2	4	0	2.3

  

Individual names of your intervention children at the top

Number of sub-levels moved from initial to end easttle data

IMPLICATIONS OF DATA: reflections

 

Current practice – What does this data say about what learning was achieved?  What could I say was going well?  What can I see that was not going well reflected here?

 

There has been a significant improvement across all areas of writing, but in particular structure, vocab and punctuation. 

 

Children are now able to correctly structure their writing so it flows and is in a logical sequence; something most of them struggled with prior to the intervention.  Part of this progress I believe, is down to doing lots of editing and re-shaping of our texts to ensure it flowed and made sense.  Also giving lots of feedback to one another, helped with making changes.  Constant re-reading of texts was also important in ensuring our ideas linked and flowed on from what was previously written.

 

The use of vocabulary has seen a big improvement.  Ensuring students had lots of fancy/exciting words cards which they could use, as well as thesauruses helped students broaden their word bank.  Lots of rich discussion and creating word charts prior to writing also helped.

 

Punctuation improved through constant modelling of correct sentences, punctuation charts on display, and constant reminders of types of punctuation that must be used.  It is wonderful to see such a huge improvement in this area, despite the fact I hadn’t explicitly taught punctuation on its own.

 

Spelling still remains a weakness, despite starting individualised spelling lists and tests part way through the intervention.  The fact that there has been progress in this area, despite it showing the least amount of progress; still reflects the importance of learning spelling words each week.

 

Some students didn’t make progress in the ideas domain.  This is because this domain was already a strength of theirs prior to starting the intervention.

 

Some students made no progress in organisation due to the fact they were still unable to paragraph independently.

 

Future practice – What might I change?  What would I do differently?  What does this data say about my focus for continued learning for these children?

 

Next time I would ensure I started a spelling program at the start of the year as part of homework.  For those students who are below national standards, I would ensure they learnt the essential word lists before progressing to individual words they need to learn.

 

I need to focus more on ensuring students can independently paragraph their writing.  This could be done by dividing their books into sections with a highlighter.  Also, ensuring they refer to their plan and start each new idea on a new line may help reinforce the concept of paragraphing.

 

Now that I know how to find the student’s individual e-asttle reports, I would print these off prior to starting the intervention and conference with each student so we could establish their learning intentions and next steps together, and ensure the areas of greatest need, were at the forefront of my teaching.

 

I am now trying mixed ability writing groups so that these students will have the support from more able writers.  This grouping will also give the ALL students opportunities to reinforce their new learning, as they become the teachers of their new groups, as we roll out the ALL approaches to writing to the rest of the class.

ALL writing intervention end results and thoughts.

Now that the ALL intervention has come to an end for my first group, I have attached my report about my findings and reflections.

Inquiry and knowledge building:

Outline how you are using a ‘teaching as inquiry’ process to guide your intervention design decisions. (Record this process from the start of your intervention.) 

• Within the first few weeks of term 1, it became alarmingly apparent that more than a third of my class are well below in their writing.  These writers were struggling in all areas of their writing and with only two years left of primary school, I felt I needed to do something to meet their needs and raise not only their confidence in writing but also their achievement.  
• In a team meeting, this problem was noted across all four year 5 classes.  I was decided that I would deliver a new writing approach to the neediest students.
• The first step was to identify my writing group.  I looked at past assessment data, writing books, and what I had already noticed during group writing sessions – paired up with what my teacher aide had noticed.
• Based on my data, my urgent focus needed to be around developing writing.  In order to begin the inquiry into my teaching practice I needed to develop my inquiry question.  My initial question was 'What can I do to improve the achievement levels of my struggling writers?' however on reflection, I found this was extremely broad and more about what I wanted to achieve at the end of my inquiry.  During a staff meeting, I worked with a group of teachers who all wanted to work on improving the achievement levels of struggling writers.  After discussion, I found I first of all needed to work out what was causing my students to struggle with writing, then work on strategies/interventions/direct acts of teaching, etc which will help these students to overcome these identified barriers.  A large proportion of my identified struggling writers are also boys, so a lot of my inquiry would probably involve focusing on finding out how boys learn best, and how I can motivate boys to write more quality pieces.
• Finally my new question was formed:  'What approaches can I take to help struggling students overcome writing difficulties and enhance their motivation to write?’
• Initial thinking was: If I can help students overcome the challenges/barriers to learning such as handwriting, spelling, lack of ideas, topics, self belief,  etc, then hopefully the students would become more motivated during writing, and become more willing to put their ideas on paper.  If I could also identify what the barriers are, and the causes of these barriers, then maybe I would need to make some changes in teaching practices across all curriculum areas.
• Once the question and group were established, I started researching and getting ideas on how to change my writing program and improve student achievement.
• Regular discussions were held with colleagues who were also doing ALL.  This was helpful in getting ideas to help me move my students on.
• Selected students were tested using E-Asttle and their needs were identified.
• My timetable was changed to accommodate the minimum of 40 minutes writing a day with the group.  I also had 45 minutes after lunch on a Thursday.  This session was used for rich experiences.  This was also time for us to work together, away from the rest of the class.
• The majority of the group didn’t like writing, and they all thought they were bad writers.  The group were made to feel important and to see writing as being fun.  They were given new writing books and were able to use purple pen for writing, instead of pencil.  The decision to write in purple pen was made because the students had said it was frustrating when they had to rub out their mistakes all the time because they have to have their pencil work all correct.  By rubbing out their pencil work, it also didn't show their proof-reading or editing changes which are an important part of the writing process. 
• Writing only in pen helped celebrate proof-reading and editing changes.  Before the intervention, there seemed to be a real negative connotation about proof-reading and editing because students thought it made their work look messy and highlighted all the things that they had done wrong.  Instead I spent time developing a change in their thinking so that students saw all the changes as a sign of excellence and that the changes should be celebrated.  The improvements to their work also showed that they were following the writing process, and they were reflecting and improving their own work.  By writing only in pen, it reinforced that the changes made during guided teaching sessions were a sign of improvement and excellence, rather than the negative connotations that rubbing all of their errors out were creating.
• I made the focus for writing on quality versus quantity.  Removing time constraints was very successful as it removed the added pressure of having to complete a story within a specific time frame.  This reassured the students too because it removed unnecessary stress around writing.
• A huge emphasis was placed on changing students attitudes towards writing, and making them see themselves as successful writers.  Gail Loane’s book was helpful for ideas.  I also found several blogs that gave tips for motivating struggling writers.  I ensured the style of writing and contexts for writing came from the student’s interests so that they would want to write.  The experiences we shared were also focussed on fun, so that the students had rich ideas, vocab, and experiences that they could write about.
• Writing for a purpose.  Students had fun creating their texts for a purpose.  They love sharing their ideas and writing with the group.  As a result, there was a significant improvement in their motivation towards writing as well as their confidence.
• Writing for an audience.  Writing emails to parents sharing a 'snapshot' of their writing is great for this.  Students got a chance to share their writing with parents during the drafting process.  Students also received feedback about their snapshot of writing from their parents.
• Planning together.  Sharing our ideas orally.  This has helped everyone to expand their ideas because they have heard others.  Sticky notes for planning was also fun.  Everyone shared their ideas as they popped into their heads then the sticky notes were placed on a chart.  Double up ideas or unrelated ideas are easily removed.  The sticky notes are easily arranged into sequential order.  
• Creating descriptive word charts prior to writing.  This was really helpful because students were able to refer and add in lots of these words to writing.  They loved creating word charts using the online tool 'Wordle'.
• Having writing tool box full of descriptive words charts, punctuation charts, essential word spelling lists was very important as the students were able to use the resources for ideas and apply them to their writing.
• Students noticed improvements in their writing and are now able to verbalise these when asked.  Comments were noted in their books in dated speech bubbles in a different colour pen.  Video recordings of student feedback was also taken.
• Children who were once shy or reluctant, are now willing to share their writing with others.
• Children are beginning to give feedback to their peers and say what they liked about their writing.
• After sharing examples of writing, students are beginning to independently make changes and improvements to their own writing.
• Reluctant writers are now coming into class enthusiastic to carry on with their books that they are writing before school and whenever else they can. 
• Using pictures as prompts to give students ideas of what they could write about.  Students refer to the images to check they have described them in their writing; ensuring the picture and text match.  A great way to expand the detail and descriptive language used. 
• Publishing our writing helped the children to discover that they can write.  It showed the students that they were successful authors and removed their fears about sharing their work because of messy handwriting.

• My planning changed continually to meet the needs of the group.  I am very passionate about writing and enjoy it, so it was important for me to ensure the group all enjoyed writing too.  We had a lot of fun in writing times, shared lots of creative ideas, and did our best to incorporate this into our writing.
• Regular entries about the intervention were made on my personal blog. 

Intervention Implementation

What were the strategies/learning conditions that supported acceleration?

Identify the three – five key factors that made the difference.

• Ensuring students worked with the teacher every day for a minimum of 40 minutes
• Constant discussions about writing and sharing of ideas.  Direct acts of teaching through frequent modelling, think alouds, examples, questioning etc from group members and teacher.  This enabled students to learn from one another, build on ideas, and share own expertise.  (Allowing time for the rich discussions was crucial).
• Fun topics to write about followed up with fun learning experiences.  Enjoying the topic helps to motivate students’ willingness and desire to write.
• Self-esteem building.   The focus on quality of writing versus quantity.  Removing the time constraints and pressures have seen children take greater ownership, come into class early to continue, lengthier pieces.  More passionate and enthused to write.
• Publishing work.  Students are happy to edit and reshape text.  Not worried about the messiness of reshaping, crossing out etc, because they get to publish their work at the end and present it neatly.
• Regular reflecting on own learning.  This involved students finding what they’ve been able to do well; what they need to improve on; what they need to next. 

Accelerated student achievement

What was the impact of the intervention on student achievement?

• Very positive. Every student made progress in writing and attitude.
• The quality of students writing is much higher.  A lot more detail gets written.  Rich vocabulary is used.  A greater range of punctuation is used.  Exciting story ideas.  
• Every student is now able to organise their ideas into a logical sequence and their ideas flow.
• Every student is now willing to share their writing with others.
• Every student is able to give feedback, both positive and constructive, to another student about their writing.
• Students are willing to edit and reshape their work.  They see this as developing/improving their writing as opposed to mistakes or being wrong. 

To what degree was this accelerative progress?

• All students made significant progress in their overall levels within the 16 weeks.
• There was a shift in attitude towards a more positive outlook about writing also.

What was the impact on student motivation, engagement and student agency?  How did you gain this information?

• Students’ attitudes towards writing shifted to more positive affirmations.  
• Students are more confident with writing, willingly sharing their stories and ideas with others.
• Some boys who were very reluctant writers, are now coming into class and choosing to continue writing before school.
• Students are able to talk about how they have made progress and can give evidence from their writing to support this.
• All students willingly contribute to discussions about writing.
• All students are able to identify their next steps and their achievements. 

Refocus and deepening the inquiry

Describe what is being put in place to sustain the learning and monitor the progress of intervention students who have met New Zealand Curriculum expectations.

• Class grouping and formative assessment/ PaCT Tool
• Team wide moderation writing process/ school wide monitoring and testing 
• Guided teaching sessions at least 3 times per week.
• Regular feedback/feedforward, as well as teacher conferencing.
• Individual spelling lists for homework each week. 

Describe what is being put in place to accelerate the learning and monitor the progress of intervention students who have not met New Zealand Curriculum expectations.

• Class grouping and formative assessment/ PaCT Tool
• Team wide moderation writing process/ school wide monitoring and testing 
• Guided teaching sessions at least 3 times per week.
• Regular feedback/feedforward, as well as teacher conferencing.
• Trying mixed ability groups so that struggling students will have more support when writing independently.
• Individual spelling lists for homework each week.
• Communication with parents on how they can help support writing at home. 
• Describe what is being put in place to sustain the learning across your school.
• Our findings/successes from our writing inquiry and the way in which we have taught writing, needs to be applied throughout the school – using the Year 5 teachers as support /tutors. 

Intervention Evaluation 

What new learning have you acquired this year as a result of the work you have been doing?

• Able to acquire student voice and help them to articulate their progress/next steps better
• Better at monitoring progress through a variety of ways: teacher conferencing, student self-reflections, student feedback via writing/oral feedback, formative testing…
• More efficient at self-reflecting and blogging about my inquiry and teaching practice.
• A passion for teaching writing again because the time constraints that once were driven by assessment were removed.  Also, able to have a lot of fun with writing.  Lots of rich experiences to motivate and engage students.  Had to be creative and come up with lots of new and exciting ways to motivate reluctant writers.
• Implementing individual spelling program for struggling writers.
• Improved knowledge of sentence structures and use of complex punctuation.
• The importance of following the entire writing process – especially publishing.  This helped significantly with reluctant writers, as they were able to see their final piece of writing presented nicely without messy handwriting, errors, or editing changes.

What barriers and challenges did you experience during the implementation of PfS?

• Messiness of writing books.  Lots of changes, editing, messy handwriting etc made the books really hard to read.
• Not knowing where to start or how to start initially.
• Time constraints trying to find resources and get resources made.  Would have been better to have these before the intervention started.
• Drop off in motivation for the intervention because we stopped having meetings.  The meetings had been motivating because we were able to share ideas and discover what other teachers were doing , what was working well, not what wasn’t working well.
• Time of initial meetings before school: very rushed.
• No release time for completing all the reports for ALL.