Introduction
My School and My Students
I am currently student teaching in a kindergarten classroom in an urban school district in San Diego County. The school is extremely innovative. It is known for incorporating technology into all aspects of the classroom and using project-based learning. Project-based learning puts the students in control of their learning and the teacher acts as more of a facilitator. The students explore real world problems and try to come up with solutions to these problems. My classroom incorporates all of these aspects as well. We have six i-Pod touches and seven desktop computers that are used throughout the day. The students also are involved in various project-based activities throughout the year.
In my current teaching placement, we have twenty-one talkative, motivated and independent kindergarteners. The class consists of twelve girls and nine boys. We have two English language learners and one student with a speech issue. All the students love participating in class, talking to each other and interacting with the teachers. They always want to share their personal stories and experiences. These students constantly approach me to tell me about their weekends or things that have happened in their life.
In my classroom, the student’s day is extremely scheduled and almost always incorporates reading, writing and math. The students love the “daily five”, which is comprised of read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing and word work, and the math centers. However, I do not see the same enthusiasm with writing. The students writing time includes a teacher model of a three sentence story, the students writing at their desks on a story of their choice and then drawing pictures to accompany the writing. On occasion the students will share their writing with the class, but never more than a day is spent on one piece, except if the students chooses to work on their journals during the “Work on Writing” segment in the Daily Five rotations. The writing time is also usually at the end of the day and I hear a lot of students complain about being tired.
Their Needs
In my time with these students, which includes viewing their daily writing journals, I see their passion for learning, but I do not see that same passion when it comes to writing. During the writing lessons, the students are shown how to write capital letters, how to sound out words and how to punctuate their sentences, but they are not given a word list to accompany their writing besides the sight words on the word wall. The students are constantly asking me how to spell certain words, which they are supposed to be sounding them out on their own. These circumstances lead to many of the students using the same few words in each of their daily journal writings. Most of the sentences in the daily journals start with “I like…” or “We play…” and they usually are centered on a particular animal. Even though we model different stories each day, I see the same stories about dogs, parks and cats. There are very few students who have a journal full of creative stories, and if they do, the sentences usually incorporate the same words. Even when the students are asked to think of their most creative story or do their best work for their monthly writing assessment, I see the same stories repeatedly. I notice many of the students rushing through their sentences so that they can focus on drawing their pictures. They want me to read their sentences, check the boxes on the bottom and be finished with the journal for the day.
As part of the needs assessment, I decided to view the student’s daily journals, which will serve as a baseline comparison for my intervention. As seen in the sample work below, the students use the same sentences day after day because of their free choice on the writing topic. This is a pattern among all the students, even the more advanced writers. They are comfortable using those words, love animals and want to get writing over with as soon as possible. Also, when given the free choice on writing in their journals, on average, only two students per day will make this decision. My students tell me the most amazing stories and have the best imaginations, but these stories do not transfer into their daily writing.
I am currently student teaching in a kindergarten classroom in an urban school district in San Diego County. The school is extremely innovative. It is known for incorporating technology into all aspects of the classroom and using project-based learning. Project-based learning puts the students in control of their learning and the teacher acts as more of a facilitator. The students explore real world problems and try to come up with solutions to these problems. My classroom incorporates all of these aspects as well. We have six i-Pod touches and seven desktop computers that are used throughout the day. The students also are involved in various project-based activities throughout the year.
In my current teaching placement, we have twenty-one talkative, motivated and independent kindergarteners. The class consists of twelve girls and nine boys. We have two English language learners and one student with a speech issue. All the students love participating in class, talking to each other and interacting with the teachers. They always want to share their personal stories and experiences. These students constantly approach me to tell me about their weekends or things that have happened in their life.
In my classroom, the student’s day is extremely scheduled and almost always incorporates reading, writing and math. The students love the “daily five”, which is comprised of read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing and word work, and the math centers. However, I do not see the same enthusiasm with writing. The students writing time includes a teacher model of a three sentence story, the students writing at their desks on a story of their choice and then drawing pictures to accompany the writing. On occasion the students will share their writing with the class, but never more than a day is spent on one piece, except if the students chooses to work on their journals during the “Work on Writing” segment in the Daily Five rotations. The writing time is also usually at the end of the day and I hear a lot of students complain about being tired.
Their Needs
In my time with these students, which includes viewing their daily writing journals, I see their passion for learning, but I do not see that same passion when it comes to writing. During the writing lessons, the students are shown how to write capital letters, how to sound out words and how to punctuate their sentences, but they are not given a word list to accompany their writing besides the sight words on the word wall. The students are constantly asking me how to spell certain words, which they are supposed to be sounding them out on their own. These circumstances lead to many of the students using the same few words in each of their daily journal writings. Most of the sentences in the daily journals start with “I like…” or “We play…” and they usually are centered on a particular animal. Even though we model different stories each day, I see the same stories about dogs, parks and cats. There are very few students who have a journal full of creative stories, and if they do, the sentences usually incorporate the same words. Even when the students are asked to think of their most creative story or do their best work for their monthly writing assessment, I see the same stories repeatedly. I notice many of the students rushing through their sentences so that they can focus on drawing their pictures. They want me to read their sentences, check the boxes on the bottom and be finished with the journal for the day.
As part of the needs assessment, I decided to view the student’s daily journals, which will serve as a baseline comparison for my intervention. As seen in the sample work below, the students use the same sentences day after day because of their free choice on the writing topic. This is a pattern among all the students, even the more advanced writers. They are comfortable using those words, love animals and want to get writing over with as soon as possible. Also, when given the free choice on writing in their journals, on average, only two students per day will make this decision. My students tell me the most amazing stories and have the best imaginations, but these stories do not transfer into their daily writing.
These are three journal writings from one of our more advanced readers. These stories were taken from February writing journal. As seen above, the stories, topics and words used are all very similar amongst the different days even though they are allowed to write on anything they want.
Here are four sample writings from one of our struggling writers. As you can see, she mostly uses the words "like" and "play" and they all involve stories about animals.
Based on viewing their journals and observations in the classroom, there is a need for an expansion of writing in my classroom. With the new Common Core standards in writing, these kindergarten students are asked to “use a combination of drawing, dictating and writing to compose” opinion pieces, informative texts and narratives. They also are asked to add details and respond to questions to strengthen their writing. These are things that I am not seeing my students do. They know how to write a narrative, but have not been writing opinion pieces or informative texts. My students are getting comfortable with the sight words and the topics that are the easiest to come up with. I believe that my students would benefit from providing pictures during writing time. When given the choice on their writing topic, the students will always revert to the topic and words that they are most comfortable using. Pictures may help to show them how many topics there are available, as well as the different genres. Also, discussing these pictures as a class could help spark new ideas that other students may not have seen. These pictures may provide the push the students need to explore writing even further and help them expand their writing into different topics. It is for these reasons that I have decided to investigate the following research question and subquestions.
Research question
How does providing pictures expand kindergarteners' journal writing topics?
Research question
How does providing pictures expand kindergarteners' journal writing topics?
- How does discussing the picture as a class prior to writing and creating word lists help to expand the journal writing?
- How do the pictures influence the student's choice of journal writing during their Daily 5 rotations?