This week's learning has been around the On-Demand
Performance Assessment of narrative writing from the Calkins units of
study. Eight teachers, myself and our
interventionist are planning to support one another as we study, implement and
reflect on the use of several elements of the units of study. We began by administering the on-demand
assessment.
This was a long 45 minutes for some. The teachers and I took anecdotal notes on
post-its and documented anything we could see.
Such notes included: Students who started right off, those that didn’t,
those that engaged in pre-planning, the amount of time students could sustain
their writing, rereading, revising, editing, getting up, sharpening pencils again
and again and long pauses with lots of looking around only to come back to
writing again.
I thought about the environment of that long block of silent
writing and what it did or didn’t do to support writing. And I thought about the environment of our
writing workshops and what we can do differently to shift student writing. Clearly routines and procedures such as
sharpening pencils need to be established.
But I also think that students need to be made aware of their own
process, what they need as writers and how that changes throughout the
process. Some environmental and
instructional considerations might include a very quiet room so that a long
pause in thinking doesn't end up in a distraction because of class noise. This would require a place in the room where
talk in whispers could happen. Or maybe
it means a location of inspirational resources (books, maps, brochures, video
clips, poems) for those who just can’t get an idea to start.
I’m planning to celebrate when we complete the next on
demand assessment and more students effectively use those 45 minutes for
writing!
