CORTNIE BELSER'S MSED PORTFOLIO
Qualitative Academic Growth
Students demonstrate at least 1 year of academic growth on teacher-created written formative assessments
Table of Contents
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Introduction to Formative Writing Assessments
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BOU: Formative Writing Groups and Rubric
Student Samples: Beginning-of-Unit
Introduction
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As an ELA teacher, I am constantly assessing and evaluating academic progress through student writing. From their warm-up prompt to stop-n-jots to formative assessments, I try my best to be aware of the gaps and knowledge and provide interventions for my students to grow as writers. The qualitative writing my student submit is integral not only to their success in my class, but often times can be utilized to enhance their writing in other content areas as well. Throughout each unit, students are engaged in self-selected routine writing prompts, in which they are able to the 2-3 benchmark writing tasks they respond to in a given unit. By the end of the unit, students can observe their progress between units as well as throughout. As many of the unit's essential questions are inter-related, many of the formative writing tasks asks students to reflect and apply on these concepts using the content knowledge gained throughout the year.
BOU: Formative Writing Groups and Rubric ​
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To support students' individualized academic goals, the formative writing task students respond to are individually tailored to their learning and academic goals groups. As shown in the Powerpoint below, students are split into differentiated writing groups depending on their previous progress in the last unit. For students with disabilities, their IEP and 504 goals require extended time in a unit or scaffolded instruction to build their academic growth.
These writing groups provide me with effective qualitative measure to track student progress of their individual goals as well as whole-class trends. As shown in the first slide, even though it is the beginning of unit writing assessment, I am still able to provide differentiated tasks and student choice. Regardless of whether or not students are responding to the exact same prompts, their writing groups both include two writing assessments that I can use to track progress throughout the unit. Additionally, students are more inclined to be motivated to respond to the formative prompt when they feel they are choosing their own option. Since these writing prompts are a routine Friday formative assessment, they are meant to offer students a quick and accessible measure of their progress. Thus, the rubric on Slide 2 is meant to adapt a more rigorous rubric into student-friendly language so that students can utilize it as a checklist as they write their responses.
Student Samples: Beginning-of-Unit ​
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The student samples provided below represent the academic growth in my 7th grade English class. As shown in the writing groups and prompts above, for students who are below one or more grade-level skills mastery or students with disabilities, their units are often extended beyond the allotted time, which means their beginning of unit writing prompt may be building upon the previous unit's text. Nonetheless, the rubrics provided with each student sample demonstrates the academic growth of each individual student over the time of a unit.
Student A is a highly engaged student in the classroom who consistently participates but he struggles to complete independent work with fidelity. While he is one of the top 7th grade male scholars, his writing does not often reflect his critical thinking and analysis. The rubric scoring of 6/15 points or 40 percent, highlights the gaps in foundational writing skills needed for 7th grade CCSS mastery. His next steps is to utilize a note-taker to better determine the best evidence to integrate in analysis.
Student B is also a high performing student, holding the highest i-Ready score at the middle-of-year assessment. However, this student's motivation and focus during writing assessments prevents her from demonstrating skill mastery. As the rubric shows, her weakest domain is in producing a strong conclusion and editing. The red marking at the top of the handout is my feedback and edits from her first draft turned in, which was no more than 2 run-on sentences. However, to move this student from 9/15 points or 60 percent, she will need to integrate teacher and peer feedback.
Student C is a student with an IEP but is in the 7th grade honors class for a more rigorous learning environment. Even though this student is reading and writing more than 3 grade-levels behind, his motivation to make dramatic academic gains, is evident even in his beginning of unit assessment. Unlike the other students, Student C was also given a scaffolded outline to respond to his formative writing task. Then, as an additional layer of support, I have provided feedback directly to the student's outline. From there, the student produced his final essay as shown on Page 5. While the same rubric is used to measure the student's writing, his score of 10/15 points or 66 percent mastery is within the context of his IEP goals. Next steps for this student will be the gradual release from a heavy outline to a first draft.
Student D is another consistent honor roll student who has a difficult time synthesizing key details into a succinct topic sentence and main idea. While this student has a strong reading comprehension and analysis, they have not built the writing stamina to fluently integrate their own topic sentence, evidence support, and subsequent analysis without leaving a weak conclusion. Since this student has reached 10/15 points or 66 percent mastery at the beginning of unit, focusing on a stronger topic sentence and relevant examples will move this student towards academic gains.
EOU: Formative Writing Task and Rubric ​
After 10 weeks of instruction, individualized feedback and differentiated writing groups, all students are prepared to respond to the same writing prompt. As shown in the PowerPoint below, all students have been caught up in instruction with the unit's text and are able to demonstrate qualitative academic gains through an end-of-unit writing performance.
While the beginning-of-unit assessment was used to understand where students were in their academic writing at the start of the unit, the end-of-unit assessment does not include a choice. Since all students received individual and group interventions and instruction, I was aware that all students should be able to respond and demonstrate growth by the end of this unit. As Slide 2 shows, all students will continue to be evaluated and measured using the standardized paragraph rubric we have used from beginning and throughout the unit.
Student Samples: End-of-Unit
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The student samples provided below represent the academic growth of the four previously highlighted students. Each student improved by at least 2-3 points, raising their academic growth by at least 20 percent. Since each student responded to the same final unit prompt, I was able to assess not only how students improved by the end of the unit, but also how they were able to catch up to their peers and still demonstrate considerable academic growth.
Student A demonstrates the majority of his academic growth in producing a strong topic sentence as well as integrating relevant details to support his analysis. It is evident that this student wants to demonstrate the writing skills he has learned and practiced throughout the unit. For example, he introduces his text evidence much more strongly than in his beginning of unit assessment through writing stems, such as "according to the text" and references to unit notes and discussion. Additionally, this student explicitly provides a concluding sentence to convey how to has grown from 1 requirement met in that domain to 2. Next steps to further his academic growth will be proofreading for grammar and run-on sentences.
Student B's insistence to not proofread and edit continues to stifle her ability to convey the dramatic academic growth she has made. Thus, while she does move from 60 percent to 75 percent mastery, it is her spelling, grammar, and punctuation domain that has not improved. However, she does move from 2 requirement met to all in her ability to provide supporting details and evidence to support her topic. To support this student's academic growth, I will continue to provide direct instruction focused on grammar intervention, although she masters these smaller activities and without integrating them in her own writing.
Student C is my sample of a student with disabilities whose goal was to move from multiple layers of support through the outline and edit to writing a strong first draft. Even though there is numerous edits and feedback I provide to this student's end of unit writing task, it is not because he does not demonstrate growth. Rather, it is feedback that will further challenge and model grade-level writing skills for this student. As evidence of his academic growth this student moves from 66 percent to 80 percent mastery, utilizing the same rubric as his peers. To further this students' academic growth, he will move from a structured outline to graphic organizers to develop strengthen the relevant details used in his writing.
Student D has been the most consistent from instructional engagement to skills application and mastery across formative writing tasks. For this end of unit assessment, she provides a well-rounded clear and concise essay response, but merely loses points in strengthening her topic and concluding sentences. Nonetheless, she demonstrates dramatic academic growth and mastery (if there was a domain to earn 4 points she would) through the relevant text evidence and supporting content knowledge she builds in her response. Out of all the student sample, she does create an image in the reader's mind as the examples and anecdotes she provides directly support her claim.
Teacher Reflections
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When comparing the four students, it is evident that dramatic academic growth in writing must be subjective and individualized. While students are evaluated using the same rubric, the gaps in content mastery and skills require me to provide feedback tailored to individual or clusters of students. Across the four students, all of them continue to struggle with capturing their reader's attention through relevant supporting details. While I have done explicit instruction on writing strong opening hooks, it is clear that I need to focus on reteaching how to restate your topic through a strong conclusion sentence. While each student improved from beginning to end of unit, I must continue to hold students accountable to practice writing multiple drafts, conducting peer edits, and integrating teacher feedback.