ACTION PLAN
WHAT I IMPLEMENTED IN MY CLASSROOM
WHAT WAS IMPLEMENTED?
The purpose of my study was to determine if the use of a writer’s checklist would improve students’ organization when writing a personal narrative. During this week-long study, students kept a digital journal for ideas, participated in a pre-study & post-study affective survey, composed a rough draft, utilized a writer's checklist for the drafting & editing process, and polished a final draft.
Notice: Learning was interrupted multiple times by Teacher Work Days & Snow Days.
WHY DID I IMPLEMENT THIS PLAN?
My students often wrote incomplete paragraphs with sentences that lacked flow, where their ideas did not connect. Students were never eager to write, usually rushing through assignments just to get them done and sacrificed quality. Students only focused on answering the question and did not think about how best to articulate their answer. Many of my students who struggled academically disengaged when it came to writing because they struggled to come up with what to write, leading to frustration and/or hopelessness. Students shied away from long responses, usually writing the bare minimum on assessments to get a passing grade. Students’ short and to-the-point responses showed me that they were not confident in their ability to compose complex responses and were not sure how to tie evidence to their own thoughts and ideas.
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The collection methods above were chosen specifically for my students and their needs regarding writing. The personal daily digital journal got students writing, ensuring that their writing stamina reached a point where they could draft an essay without entirely giving up on the task. The affective surveys were given intentionally before the study in order to gauge feelings toward writing. This would later inform me on how much individual support I should give each student and also which students were ready to be pushed further. The writer's checklist was implemented to help students get through a task that filled them with stress and anxiety. The predictability of the writing task, created by the writer's checklist, eliminated this anxiety by telling students exactly what they needed to do in order to be successful. This also assisted my higher-achieving students during their drafting and editing stages, giving them a path to success even if I was not able to meet with them often. By making a first draft an expectation before students submitted their final copies, it supported the community of writers I wanted to create within the classroom. Along with fostering a positive learning environment, the drafts served as a measurement of student progress and tracked student writing decisions. This measurement of improvement not only served me for making further instructional decisions, but also motivated students, especially reluctant writers, by making their progress visible. The personal essay rubric was adapted to resemble a rubric students had seen in the past making it easy for them to read and understand how they would be assessed. This study and collection methods were designed in a way that put students first by meeting students where they were, fostering student independence, and building students' confidence in themselves as writers.
Differentiation for Enhancing Individual Student Learning
A writer’s checklist gives struggling and reluctant writers an opportunity to be successful by scaffolding attainable steps to automaticity, decreasing the burden on working memory, and allowing students to focus on the task at hand (Reid & Lienemann, 2006). By chunking the writing process into sections and manageable steps, the writer’s checklist gave students who were English Learners a tool that made writing in a new language less stressful. Students who had writing-specific disabilities were also assessed more fairly, by letting them focus on what was actually being assessed by the teacher. If organization was being assessed, students would not be docked points for having minor grammar or spelling mistakes that did not impede understanding of their personal narrative. This added stress of losing points over grammar and spelling mistakes often added to students' poor confidence in their writing and took a toll on their motivation. Students got to choose an experience from their own lives so that they felt like their voices and stories were heard and valued. When assessing the personal narratives, I focused on their organization and the effect it had on their writing ability, not how good their story was. Every student was perceived and treated like a writer, a writer who should struggle, because writing is difficult but with enough practice anyone can do it.
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Students who were in my co-taught class needed additional support along with the writer’s checklist. They participated in small-group mini-lessons with the special education teacher, per students’ Individualized Education Program. These students, along with English Learners, received paragraph frames to assist them in the drafting process. Students who also expressed anxiety with the writing received the option of using the paragraph frames. These paragraph frames, paired with the checklist, supported students by decreasing the cognitive load that comes with complex writing tasks, allowing students to focus less on writing form, although it was still emphasized, and focus more on the content and organization of their ideas.
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Culturally Responsive Practices
The assignment supported culturally responsive practices by allowing students to pick from their lived experiences as their topic. By providing students the choice about what they would write about, they automatically became the expert of their writing, giving them the confidence they needed for the task. The writer’s checklist allowed all students to recognize that all of their experiences could be adapted into a successful personal essay. By approaching writing in stages, it gave me an opportunity to reteach concepts that students struggled with or design a plan of action for individual students who were struggling. This approach also allowed me to challenge students who showed an advanced understanding of narrative writing. The interactions with the writer’s checklist visualized student thinking and decision making, acting as a space for students to track their progress during the writing process and inform my instruction. Because writing is such a complex task, each student had a unique goal and progress looked different depending on the student. By creating unique goals for each student, this study welcomed all levels of writers and celebrated any kind of success or progress, encouraging students to monitor their own improvement.
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