Our statewide assessment results are in and our former sophomores performed well in many areas. Their Reading for Information scores, however, did not meet the goals set for them. Therefore, our school (and every department) is now on a mission to weave these non-fiction materials throughout our curriculum! We need to find a way to teach reading and writing skills related to this area, so we will be having meetings and breakout sessions to brainstorm strategies on how to improve performance in this area.
Blogs would be a perfect way to provide input and feedback on student responses in many ways. Example responses can be posted for students to read and discuss. They can use a rubric to score the answer and also determine positive and negative aspects of the response. Students can then give ideas on how to improve the answer.
Students can also be given a question based on information they have read and post their answer. Teachers from all disciplines and peers can give their reactions and write comments about the work, helping students revise and improve their response. By completing these on a regular basis, progress can be monitored and next year, I can blog about improving math scores!
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Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI think blogging would be a great way to get your entire school (all departments) involved in helping the students with thier writing prompts.
Nice idea!
Laura
Do you think that the scoring of students based on other students evaluation would cause problems? What if students who are corrected or scored poorly become unwilling to participate because they are being judged by their peers? How would you use this as a grade for the students that need to have program modifications?
ReplyDeleteI guess I wasn't clear on the example responses. The state sends out scored sample answers from previous tests which students will comment on. By using the rubric on these samples, they will see what types of responses earn higher scores and how they can apply this to their own writing.
ReplyDeleteWhen answering questions in class, students often evaluate peer work and are taught to use criticism constructively. This would translate to blogs, as well, so students will see input from their classmates as helpful.
Regarding program modifications, that is vague, but I will try to give a few modifications and accommodations which hopefully will answer your concerns. Students may be given graphic organizers or frames which may help them construct their answers. Other students could provide their responses in bulleted form instead of as paragraphs. Students will fine motor skill needs could have assistive tech or have someone type their responses for them. Extra time can be given to students who need time to complete the work or need to complete more than one draft. Feedback can be provided before work is submitted and revisions can be made if needed.
I feel that blogging would not be any different from completing these assignments in class and this would just be another method to do the same work.
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI am a Language Arts teacher as well. I really like your idea, and I made need to borrow it. We also have state writing samples that I could have students post to on how to fix them and score them. I was also thinking of creating groups because there are quite a few samples, so different students could be scoring different sample essays.
I have been struggling with some issues that may arise in the classroom regarding some students not having access to computers to be able to complete these assignments.
I think I just solved my problem by creating small groups in class to blog with each other about the sample essays. It would be like creating a center based activity in the classroom. All students would be able to participate because it would be built in as a classroom activity.
Dawn