A Conclusion, but not an Ending

          Kevin’s story, much like his writing, is an on-going process that is continually developing. As we have finished our one-on-one mentoring sessions, I have not been able to perform any type of culminative evaluation (assessment of learning). Nonetheless, Kevin has invited me to edit his work with me in a Google Docs and I am able to go in every couple of days to see his progress and leave comments and suggestions. Just the other day I logged in at the same time as him and was able to make suggestions and corrections simultaneously as he wrote. This technology allows me to do the same work with him online that I would do in person.

          If I had to evaluate Kevin’s story and his writing right now, I would say that he is a developing writer and that he is a solid level 3 with a couple of level 4’s in some criteria. But more than assessing him on what he has thus far produced, I hope that I have assessed Kevin in a way that has taught him how to continue developing as a writer. He now knows that he can choose topics that interest him and that he can incorporate strategies in his writing that he sees in other stories and that make his story just as interesting. I have also learnt that clear guidelines and criteria can help students focus on specific aspects of their writing and give them the push they need to develop a passion for what they are writing. But perhaps the biggest thing I will take away from this entire project is my new friendship with Kevin.

A MINECRAFT Resource!

Fresh off the press, a new website about using MINECRAFT in the classroom!  Developed by yours truly for a class about incorporating technology in the classroom, this site details how the widely popular  video game can be incorporated in Math, Geography, and English (including Kevin and his work as an example).  Check it out below!

MINECRAFT & Education

The Story Continues...

          It has only been one week since I last saw Kevin and his original one page draft has now transformed into the following:

          Three (ok, two and a half) pages of writing in just over a week!  This is amazing considering that it originally took him two weeks to write barely a page.  I was amazed to say the least.  

I quickly noticed that Kevin had begun to use verb tenses in a consistent and correct way.  Although he was able to implement some transitional and connecting words (such as “suddenly”), he was still struggling to include more, but that was to be expected, especially considering that he had just begun to learn how to use them in our last mentoring session. 

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment, though, was not his writing itself, but rather his enthusiasm for the project overall.  Where he once seemed somewhat apathetic, Kevin now was excited to show off his work and share his writing with me.  It seemed as though he enjoyed what he was writing about, and learning the steps to write better had increased that enjoyment ten-fold. 

Kevin has done a good job at creating a sense of urgency in his story.  Where at first it just began with a boy getting pulled into the video game world, now the stakes are raised and the boy has to get back within the 30 minute time limit his dad has given him to play the video game initially or he will have the privilege of playing taken away from him.

            On the second page of the story there is a line that has been erased.  I asked Kevin to think of how he could develop this part of the story in a more detailed fashion.  He tried to fit everything back into the erased space, but ultimately had to write everything down on a new sheet of paper and merge the two documents together once he typed his story.  What was interesting about this process was that, for the first time working together, Kevin didn’t immediately take the ideas that I was suggesting to him and instead took the time to develop his own.  I saw him growing more confident in his abilities and his own ideas. 

            Unfortunately, Kevin and I do not have any more scheduled time together to meet in person.  Nonetheless, he has invited me as an editor in the Google Docs for the story.  I am excited to continue to work with him and see where his writing will take us!

A Rubric for Writing

        Based on my initial session and assessment of Kevin’s work (assessment for learning), I developed a rubric as an evaluation tool.  The rubric incorporates the three criteria established by the teacher (constant verb tense, transitional words, and descriptive adjectives), as well as two others that will help guide the writing process.  These criteria are all based around the 6+1 Writing Traits.  They are:

1.     Ideas (Message)

2.     Organization (From Beginning to End – Transitional Words)

3.     Word Choice (Playing with Language – Descriptive Adjectives)

4.     Sentence Fluency (Listening to the Sound – Verb Tense)

5.     Conventions (Editing)

        These criteria will guide both Kevin and myself as we continue working on his story together.  I decided that these were the most important traits to evaluate based on the original criteria that Kevin’s teacher had established for the project and based on my own personal observations as I was working with Kevin.  I saw that he sometimes struggled with developing his own ideas and often took the ones that I suggested to him.  I also saw that he had a hard time connecting certain parts of his story, often talking about an aspect that he had not yet introduced.  Introducing the Ideas and Conventions criteria would help Kevin develop his own ideas and spend time proof-reading his writing.  He was typically a good speller and recognized and auto-correct his errors when they were pointed out to him.  I chose this type of rubric as I find that it encourages students to self-evaluate their work.  It is easy to give students a copy of the rubric before they hand in their writing and ask them to evaluate themselves based on the listed criteria.  If the students are not happy with the mark they give themselves, then they know what areas of writing they need to improve in. 

            With this evaluation tool in place, it will also guide my approach to mentoring Kevin as he continues his writing.  I know the areas that he needs to learn and will ask questions accordingly.  I will use the same techniques that I had used in the first step, asking Kevin lots of questions, helping him put himself in the place of his character to better describe the situations in which he found himself, and suggesting words that he could use to show connections between plot points.  I also will begin underlining certain spelling and grammar errors (I will only underline the first one if the same mistake was made repeatedly) and ask Kevin to correct them himself.  I will constantly ask him tell me orally the outline of his story and to explain how certain things were going to happen.  I am excited to see the progress that he will make!

Follow the link below to see the rubric:

file:///Users/match/Documents/SCHOOL/WINTER%20'15/3148/Rubric.htm

The Story Begins...

I am feeling pretty great after having a fantastic sessions with Kevin at Hawthorne today.  He showed me everything that he had done, and it was wonderful.  Below is a picture of the first page of the story that we worked on today.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Kevin had decided to write about one of his favourite hobbies: playing Minecraft.  Today, I found out the criteria on which Kevin's assignment would be evaluated.  Kevin's teacher told the class to focus on three things in their writing:

1. Keeping a constant verb tense
2. Descriptive adjectives
3. Transitional words

I was able to help Kevin in all three areas.  In the picture above, you can see some of the corrections to verb tenses that Kevin made throughout the mentoring process today ("open" changed to "opened", "is" changed to "were", "don't" changed to "didn't", etc.).  It was as simple as reading the text out loud to Kevin for him to hear the errors himself and correct them without my help.  

The next thing that we worked on was using descriptive adjectives.  Kevin started off one of his sentences as saying that he was "confused".  I praised this adjective, but then asked what else he might feel if he were to find himself in the same situation as the character in the story.  He thought about it for a second, and told me he would also be interested and cautious.  I also suggested that he could use the adjective curious, but he ultimately decided that his were better.  As we continued writing, I kept asking Kevin to imagine himself as the character and to make sure to always explain how he would feel in the situation.

The final area which we focused on today was the use of transitional words.  This area was the most conventional approach, as Kevin had been given a sheet with various transitional words divided into categories of use.  As he was telling me what he wanted to happen next in his story, I tried helping him identify the direction of the plot so that he could use one or two of the words.  I gave him the choice of using "nonetheless," "nevertheless," "despite," or "regardless," when his character decided to go ahead and do something in spite of him being cautious about it.  Kevin openly admitted to me that he did not know what any of those terms meant, so he was relying on me for their implementation.  Although I cannot be sure that he now knows how to use the correctly, I hope that he will at least begin experimenting with the terms in his own writing.

At the end of our session, I had Kevin mark down my email address so that I could look over and comment on his writing as it progressed.  I will also start developing assessment tools that include the three areas that we covered in todays session.  I look forward to seeing what else he comes up with and the application of what we went over today.

Kevin & Minecraft!

After first meeting Kevin at Hawthorne I knew two things: I was working with an extremely gifted and intelligent 4th grader, and I was going to have a great experience helping him with his writing.  Somewhat timid and reserved, I could tell that Kevin knows (and thinks) a lot more than he sometimes puts out.  My goal will be to help him express all of his thoughts on paper through his writing.  Luckily, he has chosen a topic that he is passionate about and that will help him in developing ideas (this topic also happens to be something that I am somewhat passionate about).  The topic is none other than the widely popular video game Minecraft!

An open world game that allows players to create their own world using hundreds of different materials and resources, Minecraft is fantastic game that can be useful in many content subjects.  For Kevin, it will allow him to use his background knowledge and personal experience to help in the creative process of his own writing.  I am excited to be working with him, as it will allow me the opportunity to find out more about this great tool and how I can use it in the future.

Below I have already found some helpful links explaining how Minecraft can be used to help in the writing process, and have included a couple of ideas of my own:

Minecraft Writing Prompts - This useful website has a list of prompts that relate to options that the player can make within the game.  Would you rather play the game on survival mode or creative mode?  Write your answer and explain why.

Writing and Literacy Through Minecraft - This website explains how to structure journal entries around playing the game, having students keep record of their progress through written entries

How to Make Letter and Numbers in Minecraft - Exactly what it's title says, this website is somewhat elementary, but still extremely helpful, for teaching students how to write the letters of the alphabet.

"How to" Project (own idea) - We have all had to do this project at sometime throughout our schooling: write detailed instructions telling a reader how to do a certain task.  Why not make it fun and have students write list about how to do certain actions in Minecraft?  How to survive the first night in survival mode.  How to create an enchanting table.  How to create a nether portal, etc.

The Literary Essay

Love it or hate it, the literary essay is the most conventional mode of writing in English.  Unfortunately, not many students - or even adults - get excited at the idea of writing one.  This could be for a variety of reasons.  Essays typically follow a strict formula when they are first being taught.  Everything from the topics to choose from and the number of sentences in each paragraph is laid out for the student in a straightforward, yet limiting, way.  These restrictions tend to get lifted as the student learns, giving them more option over the topic, the number of paragraphs, and even the style of the essay (persuasion essay vs. compare and contrast essay).  Unfortunately, by the time the student has enough agency in the essay writing process to choose something according to his of her interests, he or she has already learned to dread the essay for the lack of personal opinion it allows.

I do not have a solution to this problem.  Despite the restricted nature that essays have when they are first being taught, there is value in having students learn a specific formula that typically tends to work before they can start experimenting on their own.  Perhaps what needs to change is not the layout of the essay, but the way in which we approach it.

It wasn't until after I had already completed my undergraduate degree in English literature and was just beginning my Master's  degree that I learned what has, up until now, been the most helpful strategy to approach an essay topic.  This approach is easier shown through drawing a picture than it is through explaining through writing, but I will do my best nonetheless.

Imagine we are going to write an essay about the animated show The Simpsons (this can be anything else, but it helps to have something that everyone is familiar with).  My first step in trying to think of ideas for my thesis would be to brainstorm the general themes and issues that the show covers.  These include family, work, religion, and the American dream.  The second step in this process is to then pick one of those themes or issues and create a list of the different aspects covered within it.  If I were to choose religion I could write that: there are a wide variety of characters from different religious backgrounds; each religion represented is mocked AND shown to help a character through a hard time.  I would then get even more specific in this theme by finding specific instances from the show and relating them back to the information I just did in the second step.  Here, I could write that there are sometimes characters with strong religious beliefs that are shown to make conscience decisions to go against those very same beliefs, such as the Pastor's daughter who steals from the donation plate.  There are also other character's, such as Lisa, that don't necessarily associate themselves with a specific denomination, but that whose behaviour is based in making right decisions and helping others.  With those two examples in mind, I can then go back to the previous step and make a general statement about one aspect of how The Simpsons represents religion: The Simpsons shows that religion can be used in a positive way to help people through hard times, but that it is a person's actions, and not necessarily their beliefs, that will lead to happiness.  And voila, I have a thesis statement.

On paper, this process takes the form of drawing a big box that gets smaller and smaller as I narrow in on the topic.  The visual helps students realize that they do not need to make a statement about the big box, but rather only on the space covered in the small box representing their chosen theme or issue.

I have included two different examples of sample layouts that you could give to students to help them learn the basic outline of an essay.  One is more visual, whereas the other involves more reading and writing.  Although most students relate to these exemplars, and to the process I detailed above, it is important to remember that each student is different and that no one approach will work for everyone.  Differentiation is key!