Writing and the STAAR /EOC - JH/HS

Last Tuesday and Wednesday I had the opportunity to talk with English I and English II teachers concerning the writing end-of-course assessment. There were a lot of questions and, unfortunately, I couldn't provide a lot of answers. 

With a new state test and no actual tests available for review, it is difficult to provide guidance. Not what you wanted to hear, I'm sure. I can tell you that I have attended multiple presentations by Victoria Young, TEA ELA/SS Director of Assessments, and, more importantly, I participated in an English II Writing Test Review Committee hosted by Pearson and TEA. While I cannot discuss the test items I reviewed, I can share my perceptions of the assessment as a whole. 

The Good News: This test is a solid assessment of what students really know. Students must be skilled readers and solid writers to excel on this test.

The Bad News: There is no band-aid, quick-fix, or magic strategy to get students up to par in a few short weeks or even months. Again, students must be skilled readers and solid writers to excel on this test. Allowing students to develop to this level takes time and unwavering focus.

 We must teach our students how to handle these reading and writing tasks on a daily basis. This begins with teacher modeling. Students particularly need to see their teacher's thinking process as he or she navigates a writing assignment. They need to see you struggle to hammer out a thesis, then work to organize your ideas, then begin writing to realize you are straying off-topic and then correcting course. Serving as a model and putting the good, bad and ugly of the writing process on display for your students is difficult and takes significant planning but the pay-off is worth it. Students will begin to understand the pitfalls of the writing process before the EOC has a chance to surprise them.

We must also teach our student writers how to navigate this new prompt that incorporates the Read, Think, Write elements that TEA has designed to encourage depth of thought. Unfortunately, the lack of state training hasn't allowed us to feel fully prepared to help our students interact with these prompts.

Because we were trained by TAAS and TAKS, I find that our first instinct is to look for a trick to help students with the prompt. Many have found that the Read and Think sections can thoroughly confuse students and muddle their writing. Even Young has mentioned that when students fail to read all the way to the Write section they end up with a weak and meandering thesis. (See my notes from her presentation in a previous blog post - so informative!)

Rather than telling students to ignore the picture, cover the read section or any other trick, I encourage you to coach your students to become good writers. Good writers will read this information and recognize that the Read and Think sections can help them formulate a better essay. The realize that they cannot use the information in these boxes without offering further thought or analysis. 

While I don't want us to develop "tricks", I encourage developing techniques to help our students process the information on the writing prompt. I have developed four visual cues you can teach student writers to utilize to help them remember their purpose on the essay. Feel free to share all four visual cues with your students but only ask them to remember one: the one that works best for him or her.

I used a highlighter to create my visual cues. Students are allowed to have a highlighter during the STAAR/EOC.

Funnel Visual Cue
This visual cue could help writers understand that the information provided is meant to help them funnel down to a specific position which will ultimately lead to a more concise, cohesive essay. It's extremely important that students circle their task in the Write section.

Inverted Triangle Visual Cue

Use this visual cue to help writers understand that the Read and Think  sections should help bring their thinking to a "point" where they can explain (or persuade, etc.) the provided prompt.

 Spiral Visual Cue
Some writers may prefer the messy visual cue of a spiral to indicate how to move through the Read and Think sections of the prompt. The goal here is to let the information spin around while the writer plans the best way to attack the prompt. Again, the task should be circled and the spiraling leads to that goal.

Conversation Starter Visual Cue

Encourage writers to think of the artwork and generalization as a "conversation starter". Use the word bubble visual cue to indicate this. The personal narrative/literary essay is their turn in the conversation. They should focus their essay on the underlined portion.

Thoughts? Do you have a different strategy you are using to encourage metacognition while working with writing? Please share in the comments!

If you use this with your students, please comment and let me know if it helps them follow the thread that links the Read, Think, Write.