Keely Edwards

Abstract

This study examined writing samples in grades 1, 3, and 5 for organization, imagination and content focus, word choice and sentence fluency. Participants in this study were students (n= 93) in grades 1, 3, and 5 that completed an October, January and May writing sample. The students were asked to write a narrative or expository piece according to a prompt. Results revealed significant progress was made in the student writing across the grade levels comparing grades 1, 3, and 5, however, few students scored at the exemplary stage. Slower progress was made within a grade level. The results showed the need for more explicit instruction and broadening background knowledge to develop the writer’s imaginative skills.

Objectives

The objective of this research is to analyze student writing performance in grades 1, 3, and 5, noting strengths and areas for improvement. The main questions of this study, were the following:

• In narrative text, do the students use good organization for a developed story structure?
• Do the students show imaginative ideas while writing narrative text?
• In expository writing, do the students use a high quality of organization?
• Do the students show thought and creativity while presenting ideas in expository writing?

Review of Literature

Writing is a form of communication. “Literacy is a process that begins well before the elementary grades and continues into adulthood, if not throughout life” (Tompkins, 2006, p. 84). Adults use some form of writing daily. “In school, writing is one of the most necessary – and most evaluated – skills” (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001). The structure of writing should be taught in school. “When children first come to school, they have lots of ideas to share and stories to tell. Most young children tend to communicate these things in a stream of consciousness manner, saying whatever pops into their heads. Their writing often sounds like their speech” (Parsons, 2005, p.1). Organization is a writing trait that needs to be taught explicitly to early writers. “Because fiction stories and personal narratives are made up of moments, sequencing those moments can be a central means for organization and revision” (Lane, 1993, p. 84).

Children need to write everyday, as well as view the teacher writing. This modeling demonstrates not only good writing strategies but the value in writing. “Children need to understand that writing – like reading, tennis, and piano- can be improved by instruction, by practicing specific writing strategies, and just by writing” (Cunningham & Allington, 2003, p. 24). Teachers can also demonstrate rich language through the use of literature. “Have them read and compare the language and images used by this writer to the ones they used in their stories. After they have finished reading the story, discuss specific examples of the language used and the images created by the author” (Cunningham & Allington, 2003, p. 131).

Students should be encouraged to use their imagination. Suspense and details help to create an imaginative writing piece. “Rich detail is the end result of an inquisitive mind (Lane, 1993, p. 29). All of these pieces together complete a finished effective writing product. “The use of writing as a vehicle for expression, persuasion, and learning is essential to the acquisition of written language competence” (Lipson & Wixson, 2003, p. 578).

Methodology

Research Participants
The participants of this study were students from a Title I elementary school in a small urban district. A majority of the students received free breakfast and free or reduced lunch. These students were in grades 1, 3, and 5. The sample consists of students who completed a writing piece in October, January and May. The students completed the writing sample in their classroom within a period of 45 minutes. This assessment was given on the same day across the grade levels. No distinction was made between regular, special or ELL education students.

Texts
Students in the first and third grades received three narrative writing prompts. Fifth grade students received three prompts for expository writing.

Traits
There were four main areas that were analyzed in these writing pieces as noted in Table 1. The first trait was organization. This trait includes the introduction and conclusion, sequencing of details and transitions. The next trait explored was imagination and content focus in the narrative writing and creative ideas and content focus in the expository writing. This trait includes the focus and approach to the topic as well as the story idea. The third trait was word choice. This trait contains the use of vocabulary to enrich the writing. The final trait was sentence fluency. This trait involves the beginnings, length, structure, and overall fluency of the sentences.

Table 1: Writing Traits

Procedure
These common assessments were administered to students to develop a baseline of student achievement. The data is used to help teachers plan for further instruction. It indicates whether students have mastered these skills or if there is a deficiently in these areas. The students completed the wring pieces over a period of one school year. A rubric was developed for each of the three genres of writing. The rubrics were adapted from 6+1 trait writing to serve the purpose of this study. The 6+1 trait writing rubrics are very specific. The purpose of this study was to focus on the organization and imagination/creative ideas and content focus. Word choice and sentence fluency are two other important parts to a writing piece so a rubric was developed with these traits in mind. The prompts were scored by two scorers to provide for inter rater reliability. Unequal scores were then discussed between the scores to agree on a common score. The scores for each grade level were charted according to the trait and month the sample was taken. From these charts, bar graphs were developed and used to analyze the results.

Results
The first question of the study was: In narrative writing do the students use good organization for a developed story structure? To answer this question the narrative rubric for organization was used (see Table 2). Table 3 shows the actual scores for each month across the grade levels of 1, 3, and 5 for the trait organization. The primary results are summarized in the following discussion.

Table 2: Narrative Writing Rubric

Keely Edwards, (2008)
Adapted from 6+1 Trait Writing & Lipson & Wixson, (2003)
All rights reserved.

Table 3: Organization

The results showed that in first grade most students were in the emerging stage, although there was an increase in January and May in the developing stage. In the third grade for organization students stayed at the developing stage, although in January there was a decrease in the developing stage and increase in the emerging stage compared to October and May.

The second question in this study was: Do the students show imaginative ideas while writing narrative text? To test this I used a narrative rubric to examine the imagination and content focus trait. Table 4 shows the actual scores for each month in grades 1, 3, and 5 for the trait imagination/creative ideas and content focus. The results for this study showed that in first grade looking at the trait imagination and content focus that most of the students stayed in the developing stage, although there was a slight increase in the accomplished stage. In third grade for imagination and content focus the results showed that the students stayed in the developing stage, although again in January there was a decrease in the developing stage and increase in the emerging stage compared to October and May.

Table 4: Imagination/Creative Ideas & Content Focus

The third question in this study was: In expository writing do the students use a high quality of organization? To answer this question the expository rubric for organization was used (See Table 5). The results are as followed. In fifth grade for organization most students stayed in the developing stage with growth in May in the accomplished stage.

Table 5: Expository Writing Rubric

Keely Edwards, (2008)
Adapted from 6+1 Trait Writing & Lipson & Wixson, (2003)
All rights reserved.

The last question in this study was: Do the students show thought and creativity while presenting ideas in expository writing? To investigate this question I used an expository rubric looking at the trait creative ideas and content focus. The results of this study showed that in fifth grade for this trait the students stayed in the developing stage. There was a decrease from October to January in the accomplished stage but there was growth in that stage in May.

As a part of this study I also examined two important aspects of writing, word choice and sentence fluency. These two traits were included on both the narrative rubric as well as the expository rubric. Table 6 shows the actual scores for grades 1, 3, and 5 for each of the three months. The results showed that in the first grade that most students were in the emerging stage in word choice with a slight increase in January and May in the developing and accomplished stage. In the third grade for word choice the results showed that the students stayed in the developing stage. The results showed that in fifth grade the students also stayed in the developing stage for word choice. In fifth grade there was a decrease in scores in the accomplished stage in January but there was growth in that stage in May.

Table 6: Word Choice

The results of the study examining sentence fluency (Table 7) showed that first grade students had a great increase in the developing stage and the majority of students stayed in this stage. For the trait sentence fluency in the third grade students also stayed in the developing stage. The results showed that for sentence fluency in fifth grade students stayed in the developing stage. There was also a significant increase in the accomplished stage in May.

Table 7: Sentence Fluency

As a result of this study, trends are evident across the grade levels. Progress is apparent from first through fifth grade in every trait. First grade showed the greatest improvement within the grade level. Grade 5 has mostly developing writers.

Limitations

The expectations of the scorers could have affected the results as well as the expectations set forth for each trait in the rubric. Although all students were administered the writing prompt on the same day, the time of year could have skewed the results. The January prompt was given soon after the return of winter break. The topic of the writing prompt may have also had an impact on the results. Some of the prompts did not lend themselves to good story writing. Some of the prompts were vague and/or confusing. The population of the sample could have also affected the results. Many of the students lack the background knowledge and experiences necessary to produce effective writing pieces. Many of the students’ first language was not English. There was not a modified prompt for the special education students. At the time of the study there was no formal, consistent writing program in place. Some teachers used the old language series as a guide while others used writing ideas from the reading series. And some teachers used programs from previous teaching experiences. In many classrooms there was no explicit instruction in writing. Students were moving from grade to grade without a systematic writing program being followed. There was no progression in skills from year to year. Students had to readjust each year to how the teacher decided to teach writing. All of these factors could have placed limitations on this study.

Implications and Conclusions

The results from this research will help teachers to plan explicit instruction in the deficient areas that will improve the quality of student writing in our school. Writing is used across all subject matters to enhance student learning. Maxwell (1996, p.1) states, “Writing is not used in content areas so that students will improve their writing skill, but because students understand content better when writing becomes part of their learning activities.” Writing serves many different purposes in our daily life. Preparing students to write for these different purposes will be beneficial to their lifelong learning.

The results from this study showed that the following would benefit from:

• In the first grade the instruction needs to focus on moving students from the emerging stage to the developing stage in all four traits. The introduction and conclusion need to be connected. Students need to see an organized piece.
• Teachers need to model good writing. Students will benefit from teacher modeling with developing interesting story ideas and using a fresh approach to writing. The student’s use of word choice will also improve. Students will be able to hear fluid sentences.
• In the third grade the instruction needs to focus on moving students from the developing stage to the accomplished stage. Teachers should continue to model and use guided practice with gradual release of independence in the writing.
• Students need to include a main event with elaboration and suspense in their narrative pieces.
• Instruction in the fifth grade needs to focus on the use of less contrived language. Students should be shown a fresh approach to keeping structure instead of repeating the same sentences throughout the writing. They need to be more concise and less repetitive.

Throughout the grades the use of imaginative/ creative ideas was limited although there was progress across the grades. It seems that video games, clothes and Smiles Recreation Center played a big role in the lives of the students. Many were unable to think beyond these areas and it was the focus of their papers. It was very generic in thought, without any creativity or adventure into the unknown. The students need to take a risk in their writing and use creativity. For example in a narrative writing piece one student talked about a bed made out of cotton candy and his clock was a shell. Another student used his imagination and sought help from the king of clowns in the fairy world. These are the imaginative ideas that we want to encourage in student writing. A suggestion for further research would include a follow up study analyzing the current year’s wring samples. Results could be compared to the results of this study to see if the newly implemented writing program has improved the noted areas of weakness in the student’s writing. Another suggestion for further research would be to analyze the results of the writing samples grouping the various populations, comparing girls to boys or regular education, special education and ELL.

References

Allington, R. and Cunningham, P. (2003). Classrooms that work. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Auray, D. and Mariconda, B. (2004). The comprehensive narrative writing guide. Trumbull, CT: Empowering Writers, LLC.

Boyles, N. (2007). That’s a great answer! Gainesville, FL: Maupin House.

Fountas, I. and Pinnell G. (2001). Guiding readers and writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Lane, B. (1993). After the end. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Lipson, M. and Wixson, K. (2003). Assessment and instruction of reading and writing difficulty. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Maxwell, R. (1996). Writing across the curriculum in middle and high schools. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

NW Regional Educational Laboratory. (2007) 6+1 Trait writing assessment and instruction. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Parsons, S. (2005). First grade writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Spandel, V. (2005). Creating writers through 6 Trait writing assessment and instruction. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Tompkins, G. (2006). Literacy for the 21st century. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.