Download 1 UW-MILWAUKEE Child Study Project Anthony Stecher 11/5/2012

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UW-MILWAUKEE
Child Study Project
Anthony Stecher
11/5/2012
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Introduction
My name is Anthony Stecher and I am student attending UW-Milwaukee with a goal of
obtaining a degree in Education (1st – 8th grade). In order to obtain this degree I need to work
within a classroom in order to better understand, and practice, what it takes to become an
effective teacher. Also, I am working with your daughter outside of the Manitoba classroom
curriculum, where I am learning how to work with students and better foster individual
development. This is not the first time I have worked with children, nor is it the first time I have
worked one-on-one: I previously held a position in a daycare for 1.5 years and currently work
with children with autism one-on-one. This is, however, my first time working in a classroom
setting. My hope is that in conjunction with my previous experiences, what I am learning at UWMilwaukee, and my current experiences at Manitoba Elementary will help guide me to help your
daughter succeed and improve upon what she has already learned. She is not learning by herself;
we are both students, learning together.
And so, with this is mind, I have been working with your child over the past several
weeks in order to acquire pertinent information through writing and spelling assessments, which
will be explained shortly. These will allow me to find out where she in her writing development,
so that I can detail lesson plans that will be of the most benefit for her.
Writing Assessment
For this writing assessment, I will be using two of the writing samples that Danielle did
during our previous sessions. Analyzing these samples has shown that she is showing emergent
writing behaviors, which means that she in the early stages of writing, experimenting with letters
and shapes to create “words” and using known words in place of words she does not know how
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to yet spell. However, Danielle has already learned a great deal about writing: she is able to write
left to write, knows that letters/words stand for meaning, and knows that periods mean
something, though she is not quite sure yet. As an example, in the second writing sample on the
first line, she ends her sentence with a period, however, after writing one more word she puts
down another period, which means that while periods end sentences, she might also think that
sentences always end at the end of the line of paper as well. As we see, after the first line, she
uses the period after the first word in the next line, however, she then only uses periods at the end
of the lines.
Danielle is also able to write a few high-frequency words, or common words, such as: I,
like, to, play, my, bat as shown in both of the samples. She also uses a sentence frame to help her
write sentences. Danielle uses the frame “I like to play” in the first sample and “I likes” in the
second sample to help her start her sentences. Though she does change up the last sentence of the
first writing sample. In her first writing sample, she uses the word “Bat” six times her writing,
yet when she read back what she had written, this word meant “Grandma's” in the first sentence,
“my” and “video games” in the second sentence, “with” and “games” in the third sentence, and
“with” again in the fourth sentence. Danielle also has a great interest in writing, as she never fails
to ask me, “When are we going to write?” These are all characteristics within the emergent stage
of writing.
As I talked about earlier, her period use is starting to form, and correct usage is within the
beginning stages of writing. This something that she is will improve on, as was shown in her first
sentence of the second writing sample, she uses the period correctly the first time, but after this
she uses it mainly at the end of the line; hearing her read those sentences and seeing what she
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read, it is hard to determine if it is the end of sentence of not. Danielle is also starting to learn
when to use capitalization; in both of the samples, she correctly capitalizes the word “I” when
used as a pronoun. However, she also uses capital letters throughout her writing, which shows
that she does not quite yet understand the usage of capitalization. We can expect with some more
instruction that these skills can be refined. Another characteristic of beginning writing is the
ability to write more than one sentence, which as seen in both writing samples, she does indeed
do with the help of her frame sentences.
6-Traits of Writing
In this next part I will be discussing Danielle's writing based upon the 6-traits of writing,
which are common characteristics of good writing and are used to assess where a person is at in
their writing development, for this I will be using Danielle's second writing sample. I will be
providing a quick definition of each one as is comes.
Ideas
The Idea trait is the central message of the piece and details that support it. For this piece,
Danielle and I were going to write a story about a favorite Disney character. Danielle wanted to
write about Cinderella, while I chose to write about Nemo. I wrote my story about Nemo helping
some of his friends, however, Danielle switched to writing about her Cinderella doll, which
happened because she wrote words that were familiar to her “I likes play”. Then after writing for
a bit, she ended up switching again her story to being about her dog. Danielle scored a 1 for Idea
because though we had talked about what we were going to write about there was no meaning in
the first three lines, only in the last two lines read did content appear and it was different than
what we had talked about. Also, in order to understand her writing, it had to be read to the
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audience in order to understand what she was saying.
However, Danielle showed that she is moving up to a 2 in the Idea trait as there were
letter and words that could be picked out to help understand the story, such as “I likes play”, she
is talking about something that she likes to do. The drawing also helps to clarify what the story,
at least the second half, is about: people, Danielle, with something on the ground, which was
clarified as being her dog.
Organization
The Organization trait is the internal structure of the piece. Danielle's organization in this
piece is lacking. When looking at the piece, it is hard to see any sense of order or coordination
besides the “I like”'s and “I likes play”. As a result of this, writing sample 2 is scored at a 1 for
Organization. However, she is showing progress in this trait as demonstrated by her knowledge
and use of words and letters moving in a left-to-right and top-to-bottom orientation. Once she has
an improved writing vocabulary she will also be able to improve upon her organization.
Voice
The Voice trait is the tone of the piece-the personal stamp of the writer. In Danielle's
writing sample she does not show much voice because she is not able to write out what she is
thinking. In the beginning three lines of text, she writes words that are familiar to her and some
made up words. She then attempts to read exactly what she has written, however, it does not
make sense. The reader is hard pressed to see any awareness of audience and does not know why
the writer chose the idea for writing. For these reasons she has been scored for voice at a 1.
Yet, if she was able to write what she read off for the last two sentences, this trait would
have been improved. This trait needs vocabulary and writing to be improved first before this trait
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can itself be improved. Plus her drawing can be helpful in understanding Danielle's voice in this
piece as it does show a dog with herself.
Word Choice
The Word Choice trait is the specific vocabulary the writer uses to convey meaning.
Danielle's word choice is scored at a 2. While she does have letter strings within her writing,
which is in score 1, there are recognizable words inside of the letter strings, which is part of 2.
There are words that are identifiable, such as “like”, “to”, “pet”, and “I”. The words that Danielle
does know, she uses a lot. Her writing also shows that she uses conventional letters; she does not
make up letters.
Sentence Fluency
The Sentence Fluency trait is the way words and phrases flow through the piece. In
Danielle's case, she scored a 1 for this trait. For the reader, there is no overall sense of flow, it is
very rough and there are many instances where you cannot continue reading because the words
do not make sense, such as “to Mae to I likes MeNeR.” It is also hard to find connections
between text elements. This sample is also unreadable by anyone but the author. She does for the
most part read directly what she wrote for the first three lines, however, when she reaches the
final two lines with the letter strings she reads something completely different than what she had
written down, which definitely cannot be read by anyone else. She does show beginning
characteristics of score 2 though where she shows some repetitive phrases such as “I like ...”.
This will allow her to start to move forward in her sentence fluency.
Conventions
The Conventions trait is the mechanical correctness of the piece. I feel that this trait was
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particularly difficulty to score because, while there are many correctly spelled words, she also
read some of the words as something else. Eventually, I scored her conventions as a 2. The
reason I gave her a two is that she showed characteristics of two while also showing some from
one and some from three. For score 2, she shows little discrimination between upper- and
lowercase letters such as the word “MeNeR” in line 2, however she does correctly capitalize the
word “I” when using it as a pronoun for herself which is part of score 3. She also uses spacing
well in the first three lines, but then has none in the last two which is in score 1. She also does
use conventions, however it is not on a consistent basis, such as her use of the period: while in
the first line she uses the period correctly, she then thinks that the period must be used at the end
of the line. Overall, her conventions is a score of 2.
Spelling
Danielle was able to get 2 feature points on the first two words and 1 feature point on the
third word. She is starting to learn the sounds in words; showing emergent behaviors for her
spelling ability. Danielle was unable to identify digraphs (letters that go together to make a new
sound, i.e. 'th' and 'sh'), blends (letters that go together but one can still hear both letters, i.e. 'fr',
'bl', and 'sk'), and common long vowels ('ai', 'i-e', and 'ea'). During the spelling test, she would
hear the word, then sit for a second and then write, she did well in the beginning, earning some
feature points. However, as the assessment went on she would just write letters that were familiar
and easy for her, retreating to B, b, and p.
Yet, if tutoring sessions are concentrated on her beginning development, initial and final
consonants and short vowels with digraphs and blends introduced, but maybe not used, will help
her development. She will learn strategies on how to decode one syllable words, which will
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allow her to move on to harder, more complex words once she has made progress shown through
her independent writing. She will be expected to move onto Letter Name-Alphabetic stage where
she will continue to learn short vowels and start the process of learning digraphs and blends.
Summary
Danielle has been working hard these past few weeks on our assessments. She is an
excited student who loves to read and write. For her writing assessment she showed emergent
writing skills and the traits showed much of the same, though she is developing her writing. Her
spelling also showed emergent behaviors, where she knows some words and then uses
preexisting knowledge of writing and letters for the words she did not know. She will be able to
develop both with extra guidance.