My internship is in a first grade classroom, where expectations for writing are far different from other classrooms. Even among a single class, students can vary widely in the level of writing that they exemplify, whether that be based on the time of year an assessment may be given or the students differences individually. As in all classrooms, students are given assessments throughout the year to judge their level of writing, as well as accurately put them into groups for tracking. As I was looking through writing samples with my host teacher, it became increasingly clear that students improved vastly in a span of a year, and it also became clear to tell who was below, above and on grade level. I ended up picking two writing assessment pieces from the end of the year (and more advanced than the kids I am working with now) from two students who were either below grade level, or above grade level. For this assessment, students were tasked with writing an opinion piece on a book of their choice, and were asked to give reasoning behind their conclusion. These two students chose the same book but it is clear that their writings are completely different.
The first sample is the lower of the two samples. The student includes some key characteristics of first grade writing such as a capital letter at the beginning of her sentence. You can see that most of the words at the beginning of the sentence seem to be close enough to sound out and, up until the middle, you are able to read her work. However, as you get down towards the end, you can see she has a lot of thought, but is not really able to write it on the page. She is running a lot of her words together, which is something I have been seeing a lot in my internship lately. She also has some issues with letters, such as the backwards “s” that recurs. You can also see she isn’t separating her thoughts into sentences and the page has no punctuation. In terms of the stages of writing, I would consider the work of the student to be somewhere in the Early Phonetic/Phonetic Writing phases. She uses a lot of literal spellings of words, with fewer vowels, and little punctuation or sentence structure. However, the writing could most definitely be considered an example of Phonetic Writing, as she does have a direct topic and the writing is focused. Her art also illustrates her favorite moment from “Knuffle Bunny,” like she talked about in the writing portion.
The second student is a great example of a more advanced writer for first grade. She uses basic grammar they are taught in first grade, such as capital letters (even capitalizing “I”) and punctuation that is not limited to periods. She has a very good grasp on spelling. She uses the silent “e” very well and recognizes vowels and consonants in each word. She has a grasp on the topic and she introduces the topic that she will be talking about in the rest of the writing, as well as explaining that she will be giving reasons she thinks this. In terms of stages, I would say she is at the beginning of the Conventional Writing stage. The students shows a sense of who she is and shows personality in her writing. She is able to use correct sentence structure and spells most of her words correctly. She is able to write all of the letters correctly and uses spacing so you can read each individual word.
Overall, this lesson really illustrated how different students’ understanding can be at the same point in the year. I also saw how much they really do learn in one year. In high school, it seems that my writing skills may improve a little every so often, but in elementary school, they are constantly learning and improving their writing skills. The kids I am with now are at a completely different level than the pieces of writing that I read, and it will be cool to ask my host teacher at the end what their writing looks like by May.
Teaching Portfolio 