Evolution of the St. Anne’s Writing Initiative

Beginning in 2009, the Lower School teachers began to discuss ways to refine the students’ writing to approximate and complement the high levels of achievement evidenced in reading.  As one of her professional development goals, Janet Zanzinger, first grade teacher, received a summer stipend to read myriad genres of picture books written for children, to select those books which were deemed exceptional in demonstrating the 6+1 traits of writing and to provide instruction to fellow teachers on the use of these mentor texts. Under the direction of Lisa Bloomfield, literary specialist, and Pat Davis, Lower School Head, the teachers kept the momentum going and helped to create a list of objectives to shape the work of the writing initiative.   The teachers decided to:

• Define the objectives of each writing activity beyond the types of “pieces” of writing.
• Gather data on each student
• Keep effective (and non-cumbersome) records
• Improve the breadth and depth of writing conferences with students
• Communicate strengths and weakness of individual students to Lisa Bloomfield, our literacy specialist, related arts teachers, parents (in parent conferences and on report cards), the leadership team (where applicable) and most especially to the child.
• Help students to create personal goals for writing
• Update our existing “writing” curriculum document to reflect the objectives of each genre of writing and the assessment process.
• Acquire the services of an objective agency to measure progress in students’ writing skills.

As a support for this initiative, Lisa Bloomfield designed and created a binder for each teacher in the LS.  These literacy guidebooks provided information on conference reporting sheets (which included the objectives for each piece of required writing at each grade level), rubrics for scoring, student planning sheets (which addressed the multiple ways students learn best) and finally a teacher resource section.  This last section offered information on strategies, structures and qualities of fine writing, definitions for different genres (mysteries, realistic fiction, fantasy, etc.), tips and tools for writing topic sentences and thesis statements, and self-evaluation and reflection documents for students.  The teachers used planning and faculty meeting time to confer and collaborate on the goals for this project. Grades K – 4 unanimously adopted a common language for writing conventions that included a list of copy editors’ symbols and a uniform editing procedure with a color-coding system.  During a professional development seminar, some Lower School teachers learned of this successful color coding process and brought the demonstration to a faculty meeting. The results to date have been very encouraging; the students are empowered by this new skill.  It should be noted that the expectations for self-editing increase with each grade level.

In an effort to support writing across the content areas, Linda Perkins, LS science specialist, has collaborated with Lower School teachers to provide opportunities to incorporate both fiction and non-fiction writing experiences in the science lab assignments.  Whether writing from the point of view of an aging tree or analyzing evidence and comparing results to a hypothesis, the students are broadening their writing skills.  Writing skills are also being honed in religion, art, library and music classes.

In order to provide accountability for the students’ work and the professional writing initiative we contracted the services of a standardized testing publisher to provide an objective analysis of our students’ work; the students were given the WrAP test.  Students in 3^rd and 4^th grades submitted writing samples for review by a professional writing analysis team from (ERB) Educational Records Bureau. Each entry received an individual report with raw scores for the six elements of writing.  In addition to the report and the child’s writing sample, we also received a copy of the writing rubric used in the standardization process to help parents, teachers and students to decipher the expectations that accompanied each score. The results also provided scale scores which were computed from the students’ total raw scores; these scores are critical since they provide a convenient means of measuring growth over time.  The percentile rank and stanine numbers demonstrated how our students performed compared to the results of students at the same grade level in suburban and independent schools using the same writing test.  We were pleased to learn that 65% of our third graders scored in the high average range and 55% of the 4^th graders achieved this distinction as well. 

As with the other standardized tests administered at St. Anne’s we use the results to develop plans to meet individual children’s needs as well as make improvements and/or adjustments to our writing program.  In addition to providing specific goals for each child, this year the third grade teaching team used the test results to focus on specific target lessons in “mechanics and sentence structure” while the fourth grade teachers provided lessons on “supporting details.” We are delighted to report that the Middle School teachers also have embraced the work of this initiative and consequently middle school students will be taking these tests beginning in the 2012-2013 school year. In addition the Middle School Language Arts teachers attended another workshop on writing instruction on Monday and we have plans to build on the writing initiative with our entire staff when we return for our August in-services.