In my classroom we recently had a writing assessment, where the students were exposed to the new format of the FSA writing test. In this test they will have to read three passages that are related to the prompt and then they will write their response. This is the second one this year and the results didn’t yield what we expected. The students didn’t preform substantially better than they did the first time. Despite the fact that we have been catering our writing instruction to match this form of testing, we have deducted that this form of instruction is not benefiting our students the way we need it to. Fortunately because our classroom is part of the UTRPP program we have the opportunity to do something that will truly make a difference in our students learning.
From here on out our students will no longer participate in whole group writing instruction based on their needs. We will be breaking students into writing groups, similar to a guided reading model. The students have been broke into one of three categories with the expectation that they will be drifting between these throughout the week. These categories include, Prompt, Planning, Editing, Elaborating, Source Citing, and text coding (for the reading passages).
In all of these the student will have the same prompt and performance task. They will just be getting to the end in a different manner. In prompt the student will be working to decode and understand the text. Planning we will be finding effective ways for the students to plan and how to improve these skills. Editing is helping students take their final piece and be able to improve it themselves. Elaborating, we will be helping this student expanded on their ideas to strengthen their pieces. Source citing is an important part of this new testing format and most of the students are having a hard time including this in their pieces. We will be working with the students in order to show them how and when it would be appropriate to do this. Finally some students don’t understand how to include the information in the text that is provided within the test. After reading the prompt they will be working to code their text for the information they are looking for.
In order to achieve this the groups will be broke up between my CT and myself. While the students are broken up into their groups I will be meeting with one while Mrs. Grant meets with another. We will be rotating groups throughout the process and moving students to different groups as we see fit.
Hopefully this model will be what the students need. If we find success in this we will be following this model until the final FSA writing assessment.
From here on out our students will no longer participate in whole group writing instruction based on their needs. We will be breaking students into writing groups, similar to a guided reading model. The students have been broke into one of three categories with the expectation that they will be drifting between these throughout the week. These categories include, Prompt, Planning, Editing, Elaborating, Source Citing, and text coding (for the reading passages).
In all of these the student will have the same prompt and performance task. They will just be getting to the end in a different manner. In prompt the student will be working to decode and understand the text. Planning we will be finding effective ways for the students to plan and how to improve these skills. Editing is helping students take their final piece and be able to improve it themselves. Elaborating, we will be helping this student expanded on their ideas to strengthen their pieces. Source citing is an important part of this new testing format and most of the students are having a hard time including this in their pieces. We will be working with the students in order to show them how and when it would be appropriate to do this. Finally some students don’t understand how to include the information in the text that is provided within the test. After reading the prompt they will be working to code their text for the information they are looking for.
In order to achieve this the groups will be broke up between my CT and myself. While the students are broken up into their groups I will be meeting with one while Mrs. Grant meets with another. We will be rotating groups throughout the process and moving students to different groups as we see fit.
Hopefully this model will be what the students need. If we find success in this we will be following this model until the final FSA writing assessment.