If you read my last post, you know that I am conducting a writing experiment this year. Honestly, my goal with student writing is to find ways to help them grow, not to penalize them for the level they find themselves in! I just haven’t found the magic key to doing it well.
Enter my writing experiment. I told them all to set goals and that on their first writing, they’d all get a 25/25 as long as they marked one of their selected goals and showed evidence that they had focused on that area in their writing.
Today was the big day! We just finished our Bajo la mesa unit and so we wrote. I gave them our special writing sheet (one change I am going to make next printing is to add a rubric to the sheet so I can show them approximately what level they performed at). They marked a goal and I searched the writing for evidence of that goal.
From K who is a strong student looking for specific things she can work on to improve her communication (I am only going to give them one digestible chunk at a time).
To V who wanted to use more new vocabulary in her writing (she DID!)
To T who is frequently absent and is really trying this year to focus more and to really grow in his vocabulary and even ability to write in detail.
To, finally, E who is taking Spanish 3 and 4 simultaneously and is acting as interpreter/math tutor to our newcomer student who has no access to ESL resources.
They are all over the place! But that’s what development in the intermediate zone looks like! This was their baseline writing, so now we all have a starting point. From here, their job is to grow and to SHOW their growth. Ex. T can say “I used 5 unit words in my first writing and 11 in my second” or E can say “I remembered to check for the ‘n’ on my they verbs”. Today’s note to teacher ended up just being a hodgepodge (with some noteable cute ones or some important info – like V having very sensitive hearing). My hope is that moving forward it’s a place for both cute/important stuff AND a show off zone where they can brag on what they did to up their “goal game”.
We’ll keep you posted!!