Subject A Summary of the Findings by Type The scores for the pretest and posttest writing samples using the Six Traits writing rubric (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 2011) showed significant gains for this student. This student produced a one-paragraph essay for the pretest, and a 5-paragraph essay on the same writing prompt for the posttest assessment. This student improved from a 1-point score to a 5-point score in the areas of idea and voice, indicating Subject A’s proficiency in bringing a story to life, and in using his own voice with a more clearly formed development of written expression. The scores in organization, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions increased from a 1-point score to a 3-point score, indicating improvement in the ability to compose a story with appropriate vocabulary and conventions, using clearly formed sentences. This subject clearly benefitted from the explicit instruction in writing and vocabulary and was able to produce a story that showed considerable progress in the process of writing. Student A’s TOWL-3 (Hammill & Larsen 1996) scores showed a slight gain in overall spontaneous writing ability. It is important to note that the writing is timed, and the overall score is a result of the combined scores of contextual conventions, contextual language, and story construction, indicating that this student benefits from additional time when given a writing assignment. Although this student’s score on the pretest for Morphological Word Analysis was low with a score of 20%, the gains made on the posttest showed an improvement of 31% points, with a posttest score of 51%, which indicated this student’s understanding of segmenting words into morphemes and defining those parts and the words improved significantly. However, the skill of analyzing words was emergent as evidenced by their performance on the pretest and posttest for morphological word analysis. Assessment Measure Pretest Score Posttest Score
Summary of the Findings for Each Subject by Feature (subtests) Findings were not submitted for the Six Traits writing rubric or for the Word Analysis assessments, as there were no subtests administered for those assessments.
Pretest and Posttest Scores for subtests in TOWL-3 Spontaneous Writing Subject A Subtest Pretest Score Posttest Score
These results indicate that the student moderately improved in story construction as it related to the theme and plot of the story. The contextual conventions score shows a moderate increase as well, indicating improvement in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. However, in using language conventions such as grammar and vocabulary, the level decreased from the pretest score. The student’s use of rich words was not present, and the description of the writing prompt picture in the story construction subtest of the TOWL-3 was ordinary in the posttest. Students were given different pictures in the pretest and posttest story construction subtest. The pretest picture depicted cave men battling a wooly mammoth, and the posttest was a scene on a deserted planet with astronauts exploring the surface of the planet. Students were scored on length of words and sentences and whether they used dialogue or proper names in their story. This student did not use descriptive words in his story, resulting in a lower score. Discussion of Pre/Post Change for Subject A: The most notable gains for this particular student were made in word analysis. This would suggest that although the writing did not significantly improve, the skill in deconstructing words to find meaning was improved, which would aid in this student’s ability to learn new words incidentally though independent reading. This skill enables students in word learning when new words are encountered in text during reading. This student will be better skilled in understanding new words as the skill of analyzing word parts can be implemented to gain comprehension of the new word. Word learning also can be learned intentionally through explicit instruction, and having a foundational and fundamental understanding of how morphemes or word parts contain meaning will benefit this student throughout school. This word-learning phase is fundamental in beginning the process of incorporating strong words into the student’s vocabulary. Once part of the word schema, it becomes more and more likely that this student will include these words in written work in the future. There was also improvement in this student’s score on contextual conventions and story construction subtests on the TOWL-3 (Hammill & Larsen 1996). Although the grammar and vocabulary did not improve as part of the contextual language measurement, more attention to spelling, punctuation, and capitalization was evident, and the story was constructed with a more interesting plot, sequencing, and theme. The story of the space scene contained more interesting language and ideas and the student’s spelling improved in this posttest of the TOWL-3. There was a notable difference in this student’s written sample score as a 51% point gain was realized through a much more thorough and well-constructed piece of writing than was produced in the pretest. This student’s understanding of constructing a story with more detail and use of voice is clearly evidenced by the use of dialogue and sentence fluency in telling the story of finding a wounded seagull and bringing it to an animal hospital. The organization of the piece was also greatly improved as the sequence of the story moved from when they found the bird to getting it help and finally releasing the bird, including more detail improved the quality of this student’s writing. The student used dialogue that showed evidence of the use of voice in the story. Good word choice, which enhanced the story, was also evident in this piece of writing. Idea development was greatly improved with the posttest sample as more detail and description of the story was given in relaying the story of the wounded bird. Analysis/Discussion of Subject A's Change (Response to Intervention)
Subject A needed more practice in all areas including word analysis and writing using the language of the Six Traits (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 2011). However, the assessments showed that he was making progress in constructing stories with better idea development and sentence fluency. His word choice was not improving at the rate of the other students. However he showed promise in beginning to understand how to incorporate more interesting words into his stories to make them sound more interesting. As part of our work with the vocabulary journals, students were encouraged to record more interesting words. This student showed improvement when I worked one-on-one with him to improve one of his stories about a time he went four wheeling with his friend. He referred to his journal and to the packet on synonyms for commonly used words. I modeled substituting more common words for richer words, and he showed improvement in exhibiting the ability to do the same. Examples from Results to Support Analysis
Subject A produced a more detailed piece of writing for the posttest as he described a time that he and his dad found a wounded seagull on the side of the road. His pretest writing sample was a one paragraph account of how he helps his mother. The pretest piece had a run-on sentence, and capitalization errors. His posttest sample involved dialogue in the beginning paragraph, although not properly punctuated. “Hey, look at that seagull dad”, was an opening sentence that showed the student’s voice and set the tone of the piece. The next paragraph involved more detail in explaining how the seagull was injured. “The seagull could not fly it had a six pack of cans and a hook in it’s mouth.” More detail was added when he explained how they waited to see the veterinarian. The final paragraph explained how they brought the bird back to the beach and released him. In the last sentence, the student’s voice is also present. “I felt so good when he flew off into the sky.” Although this student’s word choice was not exceptional, it was appropriate for the telling of the story. The way he developed the idea and included detail was a great improvement from the pretest writing sample. |
