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.