Writing Evaluation in my 3rd Grade Class

I asked Yosany to write about a scary time in her life. The only thing I helped her out with was the spelling of some words. After collecting her writing sample at the end of 20 minutes, I noticed many things wrong with her short story. Yosany wrote about being scared of a cat. It took me a while, however, to figure this out from her story. Her story did not have enough detail to figure out what she was trying to write about.

Yosany’s writing lacks a clear organization. For example, Yosany did not begin her story with a creative opening. My CT had just gone over how to make the opening of a story interesting and Yosany quickly forgot about all of this when she began to write on her own. She wrote her story in a way that she felt the reader knew about her house. For example, she wrote, “I was looking for Jennifer and Jason where the plants were.” The reader has no idea where the plants are at her home, and the reader also has no idea who Jennifer and Jason are. She could have added in a couple more sentences describing this with detail.

Secondly, the paper was very hard to understand from the viewpoint of someone who does not know about Yosany’s home life. She mentioned characters without introducing them. In her paper, she talks about a cat, but the reader has no idea whose cat is it, and what really made he scared of the cat. She then jumped to a completely different topic in her paper which shows how she has a lack of cohesiveness. Yosany then writes about a girl who she was calling to get help. She did not tell anything about this girl and that left the reader very confused. Finally, the last sentence of her story ended with, “The girl helped me feel better, she said maybe he was drunk.” This sentence made me laugh but I still was very confused on why she even mentioned this in detail when she didn’t describe anything else in detail.

In terms of conventions, Yosany seemed to have a good grasp on her mechanics. She only had one spelling error, and her punctuation was all correct. She made sure she always capitalized the first letter of every sentence, and ended them with periods at the right spot. She even used commas in the right spots.

Even though Yosany’s paper was hard to follow, and lacked detail to explain her thoughts, some of her sentences were very well written. For example, she wrote, “The weather was foggy and warm from winter.” This sentence was very descriptive when talking about the conditions outside. She did not just say it was warm. She allowed the reader to picture this setting in their minds. She also wrote, “I ran in side and told the girl to come quick.” Even though the reader has no idea who she is talking about, the sentence makes the reader actually picture Yosany running for help.

Out of the 6 traits of writing, she did not complete the ideas, organization, and sentence fluency. Her ideas did not clarify the main theme and the message. Her ideas were also not written in a logical manner. Her writing was hard to follow, and her events were not logically sequenced. Many of her sentences were hard to understand because they did not flow together. However, her conventions were very good along with the description in some of her sentences. I could hear her voice throughout the paper even though it was hard to comprehend. Her word choice was not too bad, but she could have challenged herself a little bit.

When look at the stages of writing, Yosany’s paper was definitely a draft. She did not convey her ideas through the pre-writing stage, and definitely need lots of revising and editing. If she had someone helping her edit this paper, I am very confident that she would be able to write a well written story.

As a teacher I could provide scaffolding. During our brainstorming step I would ask her what she wants to write about. After she described her story to me I would repeat what she tells me she wants to write about. By repeating what she said, I can show some hesitation during the parts that I was unclear about. This would clear up some confusion because it would allow her to explain the story with more detail which she could make sure she wrote about in her paper. Then during the editing step, I would make sure to ask her questions throughout her writing when I was reading over it to make her explain things with more detail. By asking her these questions she can see that the reader is going to be confused if she does not clarify it with more detail. Finally, when she has finished editing her paper, I would read it to her. I would pause at the points I was confused and allow her to elaborate on her ideas. This was she can polish off her paper with those last missing details and form a final draft

By assisting Yosany in the writing process, I would be able to teach her what steps she can go through on her own when I cannot be there to help her. She would learn what questions to ask herself during the editing process, and realize when she needed more detail, and when to clarify her ideas. During my activity I am going to have Yosany write another short story on a picture book. I will help her through the writing process, and this way, I will compare the two writing samples and see if I notice the improvement in the sequencing of her stories.