Rationale
Choosing Writing and Self-Assessment Strategies
Out of all academic areas I noticed that many of my students enjoyed writing time, however their performance was not exactly where I had hoped they would be. My district had recently adopted new language arts curricular resources and teachers across the district were adjusting to the changes from previous materials. Where we still followed the writer’s workshop model, there had been some challenges in pairing this philosophy with the curricular resources provided. In my classroom I also faced many challenges with behavior that resulted in lost instruction time. Balancing all elements of writer’s workshop and addressing behaviors was one of the toughest challenges for me as a teacher. Writing also continued to be an area I hoped to grown in professionally as I sought out new ways to teach and address students’ individual needs.
During writing time, I noticed that many of my kids were having a hard time carrying over the mini lessons into their own writing, so I sought more ways to engage my students in writing and hold them accountable for using the writing strategies we discussed. In the first baseline assessment, 95% of my students scored below proficient. With data from our Language Arts assessment, 78% of students were below proficient on letter sound identification at the end of 1st quarter. I saw this as an area of concern because if students were unable to identify letters and sounds, students would be unable to sound out words and record the letters they heard to write words and sentences. Through more engagement strategies and allowing students to become more involved in their writing progress, I believed students would be held more accountable in writing and in turn improve their achievement in writing.
Writing is a lifelong skill that helps us to communicate our thoughts and knowledge, as well as develop other necessary cognitive skills needed in the real world. I believed that through the research I could continue to reflect not only on my students' writing performance, but also my performance as a teacher of writing. When using goal setting, conferencing, and checklists, students would be able to take ownership of their writing and become independent writers. Through my continued development and knowledge of writing I hoped to ensure that I provided my students with the necessary tools to meet the Kindergarten writing standards and prepare them as they move on to 1st grade. With a new curriculum being implemented in the district, this research had potential to provide additional supports for the writer’s workshop model and give the curriculum teams some additional data to look at when formulating curriculum guides for the upcoming years.