Poetry Writing Unit
Below are samples from two students during our second grade poetry unit. I decided to use a summative portfolio type of assessment to formally assess and give a grade for the students’ poetry writing. Each lesson and writing piece had a different strategy focus and skill being taught and used, so I measured students’ ability to demonstrate the specific skill of the lesson in their writing piece. They were also assessed on effort/completion and creativity. Effort and completion was assessed for the students to be held to high expectations of work, and creativity was assessed because it is an integral piece to creating poetry.
The two students’ work that I collected will be called Jackie and Andrew. Jackie is a student with lower reading and writing abilities in the class and Andrew is one of the gifted/talented students in the class. Jackie often needs support and encouragement throughout the writing process and Andrew is very independent. I collected their final products as well as their drafting, brain storming, and pre-writing samples. Throughout the process of really analyzing their work, I was able to learn a great deal about their strengths and need for improvement areas as writers. Both students really enjoyed completing all of these assignments. Jackie often does not enjoy writing as much as she enjoyed writing poetry.
While conferencing, I discovered that Jackie was struggling with remembering or retaining the skills we worked on. If she did understand them, she used them in interesting contexts. For example, in her simile piece, she wrote, “My dog is as crazy as a cat.” Cats are not ironically “crazy”, so this shows limited understanding of the use of similes. When creating the alliteration chart, she only used two “j” words, when the assignment was to use at least three. When writing her acrostic poem, she described herself as both interesting and ordinary. This tells me she is not understanding the whole picture or the meaning behind the poem. These assessments told me that Jackie needs extra time spent with her practicing the skill, and perhaps more time conferencing. She also needs to be encouraged to think more creatively and outside the box. She often thinks of the most immediate examples, and then comes up to me and says “I don’t get it.” These assessments allowed me to know how to move forward with Jackie’s writing needs.
Andrew’s writing pieces did not surprise me. I probably should have picked a student whose work would have been more interesting analyze. Andrew is a very bright student that is a talented writer. While assessing his other writing pieces, he almost always receives the highest of marks and demonstrates mastery of second grade writing skills. This was no different for the poetry assessments. One point that I took off for him was creativity while writing the acrostic poem. He used some bland adjectives such as “awesome” and “neat.” However, when I graded other students’ acrostic poems, especially some students that have more trouble with writing, I did not take off creativity points as harshly. I know that Andrew is very creative and very talented, so I think I subconsciously held him to a higher standard. Andrew exceeded the expectations for his knowledge of the skills. His simile writing skills were very strong.
From the first acrostic poem assignment to the simile assignment, I saw growth in both students. Through conferencing, I noticed they both were becoming more aware that word choice is essential when writing poetry, and they had to think more about word choice than when they are just writing stories or personal writing. Next time, I would take more anecdotal notes about the process so that I could pinpoint more specific areas of need for the students.
The two students’ work that I collected will be called Jackie and Andrew. Jackie is a student with lower reading and writing abilities in the class and Andrew is one of the gifted/talented students in the class. Jackie often needs support and encouragement throughout the writing process and Andrew is very independent. I collected their final products as well as their drafting, brain storming, and pre-writing samples. Throughout the process of really analyzing their work, I was able to learn a great deal about their strengths and need for improvement areas as writers. Both students really enjoyed completing all of these assignments. Jackie often does not enjoy writing as much as she enjoyed writing poetry.
While conferencing, I discovered that Jackie was struggling with remembering or retaining the skills we worked on. If she did understand them, she used them in interesting contexts. For example, in her simile piece, she wrote, “My dog is as crazy as a cat.” Cats are not ironically “crazy”, so this shows limited understanding of the use of similes. When creating the alliteration chart, she only used two “j” words, when the assignment was to use at least three. When writing her acrostic poem, she described herself as both interesting and ordinary. This tells me she is not understanding the whole picture or the meaning behind the poem. These assessments told me that Jackie needs extra time spent with her practicing the skill, and perhaps more time conferencing. She also needs to be encouraged to think more creatively and outside the box. She often thinks of the most immediate examples, and then comes up to me and says “I don’t get it.” These assessments allowed me to know how to move forward with Jackie’s writing needs.
Andrew’s writing pieces did not surprise me. I probably should have picked a student whose work would have been more interesting analyze. Andrew is a very bright student that is a talented writer. While assessing his other writing pieces, he almost always receives the highest of marks and demonstrates mastery of second grade writing skills. This was no different for the poetry assessments. One point that I took off for him was creativity while writing the acrostic poem. He used some bland adjectives such as “awesome” and “neat.” However, when I graded other students’ acrostic poems, especially some students that have more trouble with writing, I did not take off creativity points as harshly. I know that Andrew is very creative and very talented, so I think I subconsciously held him to a higher standard. Andrew exceeded the expectations for his knowledge of the skills. His simile writing skills were very strong.
From the first acrostic poem assignment to the simile assignment, I saw growth in both students. Through conferencing, I noticed they both were becoming more aware that word choice is essential when writing poetry, and they had to think more about word choice than when they are just writing stories or personal writing. Next time, I would take more anecdotal notes about the process so that I could pinpoint more specific areas of need for the students.