The Evaluation of Third Grade Writing Development at Sugar Grove Elementary School

I. Introduction and Philosophy Sugar Grove Elementary School has a current enrollment of 766 students, with 76 of those qualifying for free or reduced lunch. Currently, 6% of the student population has been identified as eligible for special education services (K-6), and 19% receive Title One reading assistance (K-3). There are 529 Sugar Grove families living in single-family homes, 27 of which live in mobile homes. Of the 766 students, 48 of them live outside of the Sugar Grove district having been given the option of attending Sugar Grove, if parents provide transportation. This school community believes that learning is a lifetime quest for academic excellence, personal achievement, and responsibility to the community and the world. They value the unique learning style of every child and the unique path each will pursue to become successful learners and responsible citizens. The staff and parents work to build a safe and caring environment for all members of our school community to engage in meaningful learning. To create the feeling of smaller communities within a large school, six teams have been organized, three teams of five to six classrooms at the 1st – 3rd grade levels and three teams at the 4th – 6th grade levels. All teams are in close physical proximity to each other. This structure offers several advantages. It allows common planning time for teachers across grade levels as the classrooms on each team are scheduled for the same lunch, recess, and specials area times. Students, for the most part, stay within a specific team for three years (1st – 3rd and 4th – 6th). This allows students and teachers to build long lasting relationships with each other, and a familiarity that may otherwise be difficult in a large school.

After examining Sugar Grove Elementary state test scores, specifically ISTEP scores 1998-2002, it was decided that writing process/development was an area of need.

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A desagregation of Sugar Grove’s scores showed that Sugar Grove Elementary School is an above average school as established by ISTEP.

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However, it is felt by this evaluation team, that Sugar Grove Elementary can do much better as their predicted scores are still below actualized scores.

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After looking over Sugar Grove’s data, we agree with their analysis and their choice of their school improvement goal. Their data clearly shows that writing development/process is indeed their lowest achieving area across both the third and sixth grade levels. The target goal of writing development improvement across the curriculum is appropriate.

II. In Center Grove Community School Corporation the district does have a Third Grade Language Arts Curriculum. This curriculum runs from 2001-2007. The Guide includes all of the state standards and also includes standards that it has further defined as Center Grove standards. The Center Grove standards appear to be clarification standards. That is they continue standards from other grades to the next level grade. Most of the Curriculum Guide focuses on instruments to use in creating lessons for each of the standards. Center Grove as a district has also created Pre and Posttests. These tests are given at the beginning of the year and then at the end to see the student’s progression. These test at this time are set to try to identify if students are progressing. The district has not stated what means success on these tests. They have only encouraged growth. We feel that this may be contradictory to what may be most beneficial to the students. If the district was to create a criterion to focus on this would allow teachers to compare each student’s performance to clearly stated performance descriptions that differentiate levels of quality. In this way the teacher would be able to judge each student regardless of how ell or poorly other students do. Since the district has not set a specific criterion mark it is very difficult for someone to judge what is acceptable growth and what is not. The district has also instituted a curriculum calendar. However, when speaking with teachers in the building it was not a well-communicated fact. We find it odd that the district states that they have a curriculum calendar but the building level teachers seem not to be aware of it. In fact in discussion about calendars there was anger at the mere mention of the idea that the district would tell them when they would be teaching what. When we look at underlying educational theory that is predominant in the school it seems to be more of a collective of many different philosophies depending upon the individual teacher. The curriculum although spelled out is mostly left up to the individual teacher to define. However, the school has instituted a multiple intelligences learning opportunity in the Sugar Grove Station.

III. Identified Curriculum Applications Sugar Grove developed a writing action plan. This plan includes the following three interventions. 1) Writing opportunities will be increased in all grade levels, across the curriculum. 2) All students will improve writing with Standard English language conventions (spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, capitalization, grammar/word usage). 3) All students will improve writing application skills (writing process steps, writing for different purposes such as descriptive writing, narratives, research reports, literature responses, persuasive…)
We will now analyze each intervention and its corresponding strategies. I. In order to increase writing opportunities in all grade levels across the curriculum, they chose the following strategies: • Provide opportunities to write on a weekly basis through the use of 4 Blocks (Pat Cunningham), Writers Workshop (Graves/Atwell), and 6 Traits ( ). The components of the writing process will be displayed in each classroom.

Sugar Grove is currently implementing this strategy in all third grade classrooms. Each classroom is currently displaying the 6 traits. The Components posted are Think, Write—Rough Draft, Self-Edit, Peer Conference, Teacher Conference, Rewrite, and Publish & Share. Not only are they currently displaying them the components are being used as a matter of practice.

• Once a month all students will participate in a school wide writing session. A prompt will be given and students will write responses.

Currently this is done throughout the school including 3rd grade. Upon looking at the questions we do feel that the questions appear to be of an appropriate cultural and contextual nature for the population of Sugar Grove. It is felt, by us that while the prompts may not be appropriate for some schools that this schools population would have little problem relating to the issues given.

• A formal thematic unit or project will be used in every classroom.

This is done consistently in each of the 3rd grade classes.

II. All students will improve writing with Standard English Language conventions.

• Mini-lessons based on the Indiana standards will be utilized.

Pre and Posttest have been developed to help monitor individual progress on these grade level standards. Although they are available there is a question as to the authentic evaluative merit of the pre and posttests. Further research would need to be undertaken to ascertain their merits.

Compass software will be used to track students and their individual progress. • Writing portfolios will be used and they will include the reports that can be generated from Compass program.

These reports are used in the student portfolios that have been generated.

Daily practice will be provided in editing and proofreading. • Weekly assessments will be used to assess progress of daily proofreading skills.

Although DOL is used in most classes in third grade the lack of a weekly report may be one weakness. They do track but it is not consistent through the grade level. This may be a way for them to improve.

IV. All students will improve writing application skills. Inspiration software will be utilized to help organize thinking of students. • The graphic organizer will be included in writing journal
This is the practice of the 3rd grade at this time. All Writing journals include Inspiration graphic organizers. Other curricular areas such as science or social studies will use writing for different purposes. • Grade level rubrics for various types of writing will be used to assess student performance.
The following grade level rubric was developed by teachers, (insert Rubric); all teachers in the grade level consistently use this. Community connections will be utilized in order to provide real-life situations for children to use. • Each teacher will be able to show at least one piece of student writing during each nine-week grading period that was connected to an outside source.
Not all of the teachers could provide this for every student. This seems to be an area that has been left out. One reason may be the difficulty in retaining outside community help.

IV.

Reference:

Cowell, Richard and Butler, Jocelyn – Improving writing skills River Elementary school. School Improvement research Series, (SIRS) NW Regional Educational Laboratory

Paul, Susan – By us, For Us: One school’s Effort to Improve Student Writing NCA Comission Journal of school Improvement, Spring Vol. 1, Issue 1

Cobine, Gary –Teaching Expressive Writing , ERIC Digest, 1996

Center Grove Curriculum Map for Language Arts, 2001

Center Grove Curriculum Guide for Language Arts, 2001 2007

Pre/post Assessments for Language Arts, Judy Apple 2003

Angela Williamson, Principal Sugar Grove

Guskey, Thomas. “helping Standards Make the Grade”, Educational Leadership Volume 59, Number 1, September 2001.