Right now I feel like every time I turn around there is something new I am supposed to incorporate into my teaching. It can feel overwhelming. Sometimes, I think we need to give ourselves permission to get messy with new learning and experiment as we figure it all out.
And that’s what I’ve been doing this year-especially when it comes to the Science of Learning and writing instruction: two areas I’m really trying to grow in.
After scoring our mid-year writing assessments and hearing from upper grade teachers how many students have been struggling with our state timed writing assessments, I decided I wanted to try to help my 1st graders become more independent writers. I knew this would be a big challenge, especially when I have a large class, many of whom are working on being independent in general.
I started with the basics of a topic sentence. Even though many students were able to write a topic sentence, most didn’t match the task. For example, if the task was “Describe what bats can do,” many students’ topic sentences would be something like, “I know about bats”. For some, this led to information and details like “Bats are scary.” or even “I like bats” which did not match the texts and the task.
I decided to make a goal, that after a week of quick targeted instruction outside of writing time, students would be able to compose a topic sentence that matched the task in 5 minutes or less. As a scaffold, I would provide a sentence starter, but students would be encouraged to say the topic in their own way, as long as it matched the task.
Collecting the initial data
Since many are still learning to read, I read a sample task with the students, using a strategy called “Dot and Dash.” It’s an EBLI (Evidence Based Literacy Instruction) strategy that I learned from Lindsay Kemeny’s book, “Rock Your Literacy Block.” I am not trained in EBLI and I’m probably not doing it perfectly, but I find there is so much value in decoding with the students.
The gist is, as you decode and blend words aloud, if one letter makes a sound put a dot under it and if more than one letter makes a sound, add a dash. I explain more about this strategy here on my instagram.
I also provided the sentence starter “This is___” and encourage them to check their sentence for “CUPS” (Capitals, Understanding, Punctuation, and Spelling) when done.
Students had five quiet minutes at their desks to write a topic sentence. Since we have been practicing using silence in our classroom during math, a strategy I learned from former Goyen Fellow Laura Stam, students were able to work quietly and independently during the 5 minute time period.
After scoring, I found that 15 out of the 28 students were either writing details instead of a topic or produced a topic sentence that did not match the prompt. 46% of my students could craft a topic sentence that matched the prompt. Since it was almost half the class, I opted for whole group instruction. During our practice, I used content we were already studying, so it would be good practice for all students.
Designing my micro-intervention (5-10 minutes a day for a week):
I included daily practice of thinking and then either saying or writing a topic sentence. I either did this during our morning meeting, or after recess which I tend to always use for retrieval practice about content we’re learning.
Most times we read the task together using “Dot and Dash”.
Each time, we pulled apart the prompt by asking “Do/What?” This is something I learned as part of my thinkSRSD training. Channeling my inner Dr. Anita Archer, I modeled on the first day, we did it together the next day, and then we used a variety of ways for the remaining days including think/pair/share and cold calling for independent practice.
When it was time for students to craft a topic sentence, I used a variety of response protocols including turn and talk, stop and jot on mini whiteboards, think/pair/share, and cold calling. Again, I modeled on the first day, we did it together on the 2nd day, and students did this independently on the last 3 days. I made sure to give wait time as seen in this video. At first when doing cold calling, I purposely called on students who were struggling after a peer model. Sometimes I would call two students together for even more support.
I did an activity outside of writing time using content we were learning to practice labeling the parts of TIDE (Topic, Information, Detail, Ending). I focused on the topic, information, and detail. You can watch a snippet here.
Collecting the Results and Designing Next Steps
After practice on the 5th day (not right after), I gave the 2nd assessment. This time, 86% of my students were able to write a topic sentence that matched the task in 5 minutes or less. Only 14% of students were unable to do so. After only 5 days of a little extra practice, I was very pleased with those results.
Those 4 remaining students will get some extra support during a small group. The old workshop teacher in me would have initially wanted to pull small groups or confer individually instead of focusing on whole class Tier 1 instruction. I’m finding more and more that there is a lot of power in quality, intentional, Tier 1 instruction. This is one of the many little nuggets I picked up from Dr. Nathaniel Swain’s book, “Harnessing the Science of Learning.”
Now, this does not mean that our writing is perfect or that we’re completely independent. This does mean that now most students can craft a topic sentence that matches the task in a snap. But this does mean that they will have more space in their working memories to work on the harder parts of writing, including crafting those information and detail sentences.
If you’re like me, a bit overwhelmed by all of the new information out there, I encourage you to keep going. It’s very satisfying to find ways to work smarter and not necessarily harder. Lean into evidence-based practices in both the science of learning and the science of reading and writing. With small shifts you can also see some big results in not much time.
Resources:
Rock Your Literacy Block by Lindsay Kemeny
I love reading posts like this Holly where we get to peek behind the curtain and see your thought process and the resources you draw on. I really enjoyed this.
I appreciate this so much! I am about to start a ubith with my 4th grade multilingual learners to ensure they internalize the structures of a simple paragraph. I am reading Writing Revolution by Judith Hochman, and pieces like this lend inspiration and focus to my work. Thank you!