As I sat with my colleagues, we looked at our State Teks and what fourth graders are expected to know for the state mandate test. We pulled our curriculum and began the tedious task of making sure or lessons aligned to the Teks. We realized that many of them we cover everyday. so we relied more on our MAP data for LA and the Oral practice STAAR test for Reading
I went to work developing my plan of action:
Writing is the focal point for us at this point. So with my data in hand, note cards, and color pencils I began to study and sort.
1. I looked at whether kids were below standards, approaching standards, meeting standard, or exceeding standard.
2. I colored coded the students scores; red- did not meet, yellow- approaching, blue- meets, green- exceeded.
3. I looked at the skills that were missed the most that are tested and create sub groups within each category.
4. I determined whether we needed to reteach, teach or enrich students and planned accordingly.
5. I created a schedule on who I would pull, when, and how often.
At this point I knew I had to work on my pacing and use a timer if I wanted to get the most out of my time and hit the needs of the students. I decided which two groups I would definitely pull daily. As I looked at my groups I new I needed to break up the monotonous of paper pencil activities. So I created games that required movement, collaboration and discussion by the students.
First, I pulled passages for the week over four different skills and than one for a formative assessment.
Second, I would see if I already had a game or create a game to go with the skill,
Third, I would create my anchor charts for each day.
Fourth, I would tie this into reading by providing students with a mentor response sheet where they would find sentences that represented the skill and copy it onto the response form. or I created mentor sentences from some of my favorite read alouds and used Jeff Anderson's Notice and Mimic strategy. It kept students more engaged. If your interested hit MrsEduc8te TPT store on the right and grab this freebie and check it out. You can use one sentence for a week or one sentence a day. Each sentence easily represents several different grammar skills.
If you enjoy the freebie, than grab this comprehensive packet. It consist of mentor sentences from 5 of my favorite read alouds. All picture books, all familiar to the students. Over 50 different sentences to choose from.
How about having them become a human sentence: The activity below in the pictures was done using the sentence: The baby cried. I cut it apart into the subject and predicate. I asked these questions:
Where did the baby cry?
Why did the baby cry?
When did the baby cry?
How did the baby cry?
Every student would write an answer on a provided index card. Who ever the teacher called on, wrote their answer on a sentence strip and chose where to insert their response. The rest of the class was tasked with making corrections. They may have had to tell us we needed to make a letter lowercase move or add a punctuation mark. As we did this, every now and than I would tell the students standing is their another way to rearrange our sentences. They were able to tell me how they changed it: Introductory clause, fanboys, comma in a series, etc. They had a blast and really didn't want to stop when time was up.
Another activity was providing student with two simple sentences and tasking them with combining them using FANBOYS. They had to really think about the meaning of the sentence to choose the correct FANBOY
I used power points to further explore concepts such as Plural vs Possessive: A mini teach, a guided activity, and independent activity and kids were tasked to add the skills into their writing.
Although I focused on grammar, we had students to develop Expository essays as well. each day we focused on a different part. The student wrote on half sheets and created booklets. Each day they were asked to incorporate or determine if they could incorporate the grammar skill taught for the day into their writing some how.
Writing plan of action:
Day 1 Topic list and Box and bullet
Day 2 Introductory paragraph
Day 3 Reason 1
Day 4 Reason 2
Day 5 Conclusion, Conferring
After two weeks of this so far, I realize the key is a timer. You have to stick to a mini lesson and designate a certain amount of time to each thing and stick to it. I had to consistently just prompt kids to keep them moving and engaged. Students learned quickly that what they didn't finish became homework. After the first week, they were engaged and focused. I learned what my students could truly do. This unit has allowed me to truly differentiate and to constantly modify and adjust. As I teach students the grammar and writing curriculum I make sure to teach them strategies for taking the test as well.
What strategies are you teaching? I have talked to students about rereading, cross checking, and using ARMS and CUPS to analyze question types. how to eliminate and prove answer choices and how to make sure they are whispering reading to hear the text and using a critical eye to see the errors.
So, your a teacher of writing, What are you doing at this time of the year?
