Analysis
This analysis is based on one sample of Sarah's (pseudonym) writing, a short-story draft of a girl and her dog who can talk for a day. Additionally, we conducted a 25-word spelling inventory.
Ownership and Meaning of the Piece
Sarah displayed great ownership for her fantasy story, “The Day My Dog Talked” and quickly offered to read it to us. In the story, when Sarah is awaken by her mother for school, she is shocked to learn that her dog “Ruby” can talk. When she arrives at school, for pet day, Ruby begins talking and creates a chain of humorous events. Sarah told us she thinks of herself as a good writer and enjoys writing both at school and at home. She mostly writes fantasies with talking animals, especially werewolves.
Six Traits Assessment
When looking at the ideas in the short story, it is apparent that Sarah has drawn from her own knowledge and experiences. She made herself the main character, her mom is in the beginning and ending of the story, and she has a dog of her own. The story is six pages and while it is titled, “The Day My Dog Talked” she has several events occurring throughout the day. If she eliminated the last event, which doesn’t fit as well as the first three, then she could expand the others and eliminate potential questions from the reader.
Organizationally, the story has a clear introduction and conclusion. The day begins with Sarah waking up to her dog talking and she falls asleep to her dog barking. The story transitions smoothly from the morning to school, but then begins to lose the fluidity when it transition from school to home. The title accurately describes the story, although; it’s not unique or original. It’s an obvious restatement of the prompt (NWREL, 1992).
As the main character of her own story, Sarah talks about herself in the first person, making the voice of the story personal. She also uses natural and engaging language when expressing dialog between herself and other characters, such as when the cat said, “Where’s the bathroom in this place?” In the story when Sarah is at home with her mom she reveals personal details; however, when she’s at school and on her way home the story avoids risk and she loses her natural language (NWREL, 1992).
The short story is written as though Sarah is telling the story, “I rolled out of bed… My mom yelled”. For this reason the word choice is adequate and familiar, with sporadic striking words and phrases where Sarah paints a picture for the reader, such as “sarcastically” and “she took me the wrist and dragged me to her office”.
Sarah’s ability to use conventions and sentence fluency is difficult to accurately assess since the work we saw was a first draft. However, based on this draft the sentences are varied and constructed correctly; although, the story could benefit from the use of connecting words and phrases, such as “however” and “therefore”. Since this was a rough draft there were editing marks from her teacher, correcting a few misspelled words and helping Sarah with sentence structure. The grammar and punctuation is used correctly overall, and it is apparent that they have been working on writing dialog in class with the use of quotations and comas. She attempts paragraphing, but most of them run together and she’s only beginning a new paragraph when she starts a new page, this has been corrected by her teacher, but she could benefit from additional practice with paragraphs.
Spelling
In “The Day My Dog Talked”, there are several spelling errors. Most of the errors are vowel patterns, especially diphthongs, including “ea” and “ou”. For example, “scremed” for screamed and “arond” for around. In addition, there were two homophone errors, “there” for their and “herd” for heard. In the spelling inventory Sarah missed seven of the last eight words. With “cattle” and “ripen”, she spelled them “catle” and “ripen”, either doubling or not doubling the consonant and with “cellar” and “favor” she spelled them “celler” and “faver” missing the long vowel. “Fortunate” and “pleasure” were spelled phonetically, “pleasher” and “forchanit”, and “civilized” was spelled “sivilized” missing the base word civil. The last word “opposition”, spelled “apasishion” shows that Sarah was guessing at how to spell the word and we encouraged her to try her best. Toward the end of inventory, Sarah spelled the words left to right without recognizing the patterns of letters working together to represent sounds (Templeton & Morris, 1999, p. 105). After comparing the spelling inventory with the errors from the short story, Sarah would benefit from additional help with vowel patterns.
Lesson Plan
Objective:
Student will be able to sort words according to diphthong patterns and by words that sound and look alike.
Standard:
EALR 3.3.2 Spells words appropriate for the grade level accurately.
Material:
One set of words cut into easily, manipulative rectangles.
Instructional strategies:
This lesson is designed for one-on-one work with Sarah. The words chosen for this activity were taken from Sarah’s short story. These are words she is comfortable with and will be a mixture of words she spelled correctly and incorrectly in the story. In addition, the sort will include words that look and sound familiar to the spelling errors, so she will begin to see patterns.
I will start the activity by explaining to Sarah what a word sort is and how we’re going to use this activity to work on the vowel patterns “ea” and “ou”. After this introduction I will hand her the set of words and give her a minute to read over the words and familiarize herself with them.
Once she has spread the words out on the table, I’ll ask her to sort the words into groupings that sound alike in the middle.
After she has finished her sort, we’ll discuss the groupings she’s created and what the sound is that makes the words similar. Having her see the vowel pattern similarities between the words that she uses on a regular basis.
I will ask her to sort the words a second time by grouping the words that look and sound alike.
We will discuss just like after the first sort.
Assessment:
Teacher will informally assess student’s ability to sort words by diphthongs and by words that sound and look similar, by looking at the groupings Sarah creates during the two sorts.
It sounds to me like your student likes to write. That is the most important piece of this whole project. My student has indicated in our meetings and through his writing that he is just the opposite. I hope in your real field work with this student you are able to encourage her through specific praise of her writing thus far. It would be good to find out if she published a final draft of from this prompt.
ReplyDeleteI think your suggested focus on spelling will help her be even more proficient as she writes. Nothing drags a writer down more than having to stumble over the insignificant details which prevent us from transforming our thoughts into words on a paper.
Cudos for having a sound plan of action for your student. The word sort activity moving tracking "ea" middle sounds will train your student's eye to recognize patterns in language. Could you also explore base root word combinations in this area?
ReplyDeleteI have recently lead a word "scramble" activity in a reading centers small group. Selecting the problem vowel patterns and using these in 8 letters that student's cut out and rearrange to form as many words as possible, is another way to build vocabulary.
With the variety of spelling errors which are occurring with your student, it seems that you are on the right track with this lesson. A next step is to once again, apply her newly learned vocabulary in writing. Not until she is writing in context will she gain a depth of understanding and meaning.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for the thoughtful feedback. I have enjoyed working with Sarah. She is passionate and creative with her writing. The fact that she views herself as a good writer, has found her own love for writing and free writes at home, is a huge accomplishment, and her errors with spelling and paragraphs will work themselves out with additional practice.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading my partner's analysis on Sarah's writing, I now see that she could use additional help with writing a conclusion. What I thought was clearly a conclusion was not as clear to my partner, and as a writer your readers cannot be confused about what is or isn't your conclusion.
An extension lesson to the word sort with vowel patterns could be to have Sarah edit her draft and see if she implements the vowel patterns she learned during the sort.
The suggestion on expanding the lesson to include base roots would benefit Sarah, since she did struggle with "civilized" and "opposition" during the inventory. When facilitating this lesson I would include base words from her writing, just like I did with the vowel pattern sort.
Sarah has shared her love for reading, especially books about wolves, with us, and I look forward to continuing my work with her.