Ah! The time crunch! There’s not enough time! There’s NEVER enough time!
Sound familiar?
Yep. We all do it when the weeks we have left begin to dwindle at an alarming rate. On one hand, the days are long, but on the other, there’s so much to do and SO little time to do it!
So in an effort to help you calm down a little and refocus, I thought I’d give you some ideas of things to work on and how that might look based on how it has worked in my classroom.
**PLEASE DO NOT LOSE YOUR MIND AND DECIDE THAT YOU SHOULD SHOVE REVISING AND EDITING PASSAGES AT YOUR KIDS EVERY DAY IN ORDER FOR THEM TO DO WELL!! KEEP READING AND I’LL GIVE YOU A BETTER WAY. JUST TRUST ME!**
I know. I know. You hear people talk about it. And you also know that the revising and editing is 75% of their grade. Yep. It is. BUT…they HAVE to write in order to get better at their revising and editing. Here’s why.
Students learn to revise and edit slowly. It is a process. Most cannot simply be taught about the rule and then turn around and successfully apply it to a revising and editing passage. Why? They have to NOTICE it in writing first. They have to be shown if they don’t see it on their own. If they don’t see it when they look at the text, they definitely can’t see it wrong in a R&E passage.
After they notice it, they need to talk about it and see other examples. Then they need to try it out in their own writing. It is extremely difficult to be successful correcting someone else’s writing (aka: revising and editing passage) when you can’t even use the rule correctly in your own writing. We cannot skip this step. It’s one of the MOST important things that our kids should be doing leading up to the test. They have to be able to put all their rules into action and feel success with it there first before trying to find errors in others’ writing.
It just makes sense. There are other ways that you can assess your kids. Keep reading.
One way to take some quick grades and see how your kids are doing is to hold quality, short writing conferences with EVERY kid EVERY week. This gives you information on how they are doing, what they need to work on, what goals need to be set…so many things.
By holding writing conferences and talking to students specifically about their writing, you are holding them AND yourself accountable for their learning. This is when you can talk about integrating what they are learning in grammar, a specific writing tool you think they need more work on, an extension of something new to try, a spelling rule…you name it.
Have them focus on only one part of the paper. Have them read it out to you and listen for one or two things. It’s not time to fix EVERYthing…just make it manageable. Make a note of what to hit next time and be done. When you check in with that kid next week, you know what to ask about, and hopefully the student has actively strived to meet the goals you have set together when conferencing. I use these pages and write my students’ names in the boxes and change out the sheet each week.
Don’t take up lots of your kids’ valuable time with whole group talking. Whatever you choose to go over, make it purposeful and short. You want to give your kids as much time to be looking at their writing and diving into the writing process as possible.
Use data from your formal assessments to see what a big portion of your class still needs. These are the skills you should be focusing on. Are they still having a hard time stating their central idea in their introductions? Are they able to write a clear topic sentence? Do you see that they are using enough evidence to back up their topic sentences? What grammar rules are you noticing that they still aren’t applying? These are all things that you could be thinking about and looking for to help drive your instruction and make it super purposeful.
A couple of things that they usually struggle with BIG time are combining sentences and those questions that deal with complete subjects and predicates. I have a couple of products that I use with my kids that have REALLY helped them grasp those concepts and they now have a solid strategy to help them answer the questions when they see if on the test.
And remember…these should be MINI lessons…not MAXI lessons! I know ALLLL about those maxi lessons. I have to set a timer. It is what it is.
You can pull small groups during your writing time, but usually doing individual writing conferences is going to give you more bang for your buck, especially this time of year. You can really narrow down what each child needs rather than trying to force them into groups. See where your energy is better spent – creating groups or just talking with each child and picking out one or two areas for growth to create a weekly goal.
I sometimes pull groups based on exit tickets or informal assessment data. These groups are very short, sometimes less than 5 minutes. I guess I just really believe whole-heartedly in writing conferences and feel that MY energy is best exerted there.
For my struggling writers, however, I DO pull a small group at the beginning of class. It’s still not real long, but I can check in with them and see how they’re feeling with the topic or structure or whatever our task is. Those who are STILL struggling with expository at this point will definitely be with me at my table for some small group or 1 on 1 time! I like to use this expository writing pack to help them get a better understanding of how to structure their writing and make it more detailed. We use the introductions and conclusions as a whole class as well.
Use your grammar time to give a quick 10 minute mini lesson on some grammar rule or skill, and then use exit tickets to help you see if students are able to transfer the knowledge into STAAR format. I have a couple of packs that I used with my kids for things that I felt they needed the most – commas and homophones. You can click on each one to see what I used.
These exit tickets, or any that you create, can be used before, during, or after your lesson to assess where students are. This will let you know pretty quickly who is getting the concept and who still needs to work on it. You can group your kids by which wrong answer they chose. Then you can address their misconception, clear that up, and lead them into the correct answer with a quick reteach or reminder. This doesn’t have to be a small group – it can be a simple conversation to point out the mistake and remind your student of a proof or a rule here or there.
Or you can use this to form your small groups. That’s totally your call.
Yes, eventually you have to check to see how they are REALLY REALLY doing by giving them a longer passage. They have to work on their stamina. They have to see the whole passage. Yes, I totally get it. So that’s why you give them a formal assessment of those skills every once in awhile.
I would recommend giving a formal assessment every two weeks for the six weeks leading up to STAAR. Take the old passages and try to weight it as closely as you can without burning out the students. Take one revising passage and one editing passage that is a released STAAR test to take data to see how they are transferring from their writing and exit tickets you’ve been doing. This will also give you data for your next weeks of grammar instruction, small groups, individual conference goals…it’s a total win!
But please…don’t make your kids practice with passages every day. I promise they will understand on such a deeper level if you just let them write and practice there authentically. And it WILL transfer over. Just give it a try!
Seriously…let them have a little fun while they learn, too. These kids work so hard, and we all know that much of their grammar/revising/editing knowledge comes from you, their 4th grade teacher.
Give those sweet kids some time to relax and play some games, grammar with coloring pages, or complete an escape room. I have several that I like to use on Fridays or as rewards when students are doing well. They are absolutely still learning when they play the games and do the escape rooms, but they have so much fun and don’t mind the learning one bit!
Hopefully this helps you when it comes to planning for those last few weeks before the big day! If you have any questions, write them down in the comments! If you have something else that you do that you’d like to add, let us know! We would love to hear from you!
Until next time…
The post STAAR Writing is Weeks Away – What Do I Do? appeared first on Texas Teaching Fanatic.
