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January 14, 2008 07:15 PM
Collaborative Writing Project
Fourth Grade teachers at Central Elementary were thrilled to learn that we received the Qwest Grant to help improve our writing program. We received the technology equipment....Macbooks, projectors, document cameras, and tablets during our winter break. We spent a couple days during the break to get the systems up and going. It was and is a fantastic learning experience for the students, as well as for the teachers. We have already seen an increase in student motivation to use proper conventions, better handwriting, and more details. Students never know if their work is what is going to be shared via the document camera. Here is our goal statement and lesson outline:
Project Goals
Central Elementary School, located in LaGrande, Oregon, has had a major shift in size and population in the last two years. We have seen our school change from a K-6 elementary school with 410 students and 25% free and reduced lunch, to a K-5 school with 468 students and 42% free and reduced lunch. As our school changes, the needs of the students change, our class sizes are growing, and our teachers are looking for ways to reach students in whole group settings, rather than the time consuming one on one conferencing approach.
Our School-Improvement Plan focuses on writing. We have seen our writing assessment scores go from 42% meeting or exceeding to 35% in 2007. We are getting more students that have lower reading and writing abilities, with less and less Title One money to pay for assistant help.
We seek the ability to reach all students as our class sizes grow and our opportunities to work one-on-one with students decrease.
Our goal is to incorporate technology that would allow interactive lessons during our writing sessions.
Our goal for our students is to provide scoring, instant feedback, and collaborative writing opportunities.
Our School Improvement Plan states that we will improve our writing assessment scores by 5 % each year.
Student Goals:
Students will use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
Students will use the writing process to produce quality writing samples that will met the Oregon 4th Grade Standards
Use a variety of strategies to prepare for writing.
Learn revision techniques
Learn how to paragraph correctly
Learn how to edit and what editing is all about
Use the REAL network at the Oregon Department of Education�s website
Learn the Oregon Scoring Guide and to score other students� work.
Provide opportunities to explore the modes of writing such as narrative, expository, and persuasive.
The following are examples of how we will use technology with students in our classrooms:
1. The teacher will prepare a lesson on the use of an inviting lead sentence using literature and authors students are familiar with. It will be loaded onto the laptop and presented to the students via the projector. After discussion about the characteristics of an inviting lead sentence, students in collaborative groups will search for more examples of inviting leads within the classroom library. They will type them on their Quickpads and share with the rest of the class.
2. The class will collaborate on writing a five paragraph narrative essay with either a student or the teacher writing on a piece of notebook paper using the document camera and projector. When the rough draft is complete, using the Tablet PC, students and the teacher can add revisions and edit in such a manner that everyone in the class can see and contribute.
3. Using the Oregon Department of Education�s REAL network, students can interactively learn the Oregon Scoring Guide for writing. The scoring guide can be projected onto the screen, the teacher can highlight on Tablet PC, while students are highlighting their copies. Students can score available work samples, and using the Quickpads can beam their scores to the class laptop, and then discussion will follow.
4. Students have written a five paragraph narrative essay. Revision is the lesson goal. Students volunteer to take their essay up to the document camera to collaborate with the class on adding details to the essay. Students use the Tablet PC to interject editing marks or details.
5. The teacher shares descriptive writing (orally and visually) from literature and authors students are familiar with. Then she provides a very bland paragraph for group to collaboratively revise using figurative and descriptive language (appropriately, without going over the top). The groups type in their final copy on their Quickpads. It is then beamed to the projector for group assessment and discussion.
6. Under the dimension of Word Choice, using the Quickpads and projector, students can collaboratively brainstorm lists of words for topic word banks, lists of words to take the place of old tired words, use the thesaurus to look for synonyms of bland words that may be more exciting to use. These lists can be saved for future use or copied out and put in student writing folders.
7. Using the Binocular Approach, a picture is flashed on the screen showing a shot of a scene in a marsh from far away. Students write a story about what they see. Groups then use the Quickpads to list details that they see. The Tablet PC can be passed around for students to circle the objects they see. They share their stories using the document camera. They make revisions to their stories at this time. Then a close up picture of the marsh is shown. Groups list more details, discuss and revise their stories further to create more detailed essays.
Student-centered use of technology impacts student performance
Ideas/Content: *60%
The use of technology will open the world to students that rarely travel out of Eastern Oregon. The more students experience, the better writers they become. As we all know, it is better to write about what you know.
Organization: *55%
Students come to fourth grade knowing how to write one paragraph. They need to be able to write essays using paragraph skills by the Writing Assessment window which is in January/February. Using collaborative writing, students can learn how to use paragraphing effectively. Students can write their rough drafts, show them to the class using the document reader. The paper can be cut up to show what belongs where and the whole class can participate. Students can judge collaborative writing in the area of writing an inviting introduction and a satisfying ending. Access to graphic organizers on the web will help students to organize their thoughts before they begin to write.
Sentence Fluency: *55%
Students often have problems with sentence fluency. Some create long sentences that take up the whole essay. Some have short, choppy sentences that are very boring to read. Giving students the ability to see and experience sentences that flow across the page as opposed to those that are choppy and mechanical, invites the students to incorporate appropriate sentence structure into their own writing. Working collaboratively with the Tablet PC, Quickpads, Document camera, and projector, students can quickly share their new and improved sentences with the class for their critiques.
Conventions: *42%
Editing, editing, editing. Just telling students they need to look for misspellings, punctuation, indenting, capitals, and left out words, does not do the trick. They do not transfer it over to their own writing. They need ongoing work with learning to edit. One program we use is the daily edit or Daily Oral Language. The two sentences for the day can be projected, students can write corrections in their DOL journals. Then the Tablet PC can be given to a student to note corrections for the whole class to see. Or, students can volunteer to have a collaborative edit session, where the whole class can help to edit their paper.
* Percentage of students meeting or exceeding in this dimension 2006/07
Posted by lesliegraham on January 14, 2008 at 07:15 PM in Ed Tech Grants | Comments (0)
