The Problem - Training Wheels
Well, I was frustrated. My students aced their weekly "common assessments" each week, but as soon as the next week's lesson began, that "old" knowledge disappeared. I could tell in the daily writing.
While instruction consisted of more than worksheets, I needed to expose the students to at least one worksheet. After all, the format matched that of the tests. [Yes, teaching to the tests, I guess. But students need to be taught how to read and follow directions or they'll be tricked on the "big" tests.]
Well... Using the worksheets is deceiving, really.
See, if the class did really well on the worksheet(s), I would cut that lesson time a little short to spend extra time on other more difficult concepts in language arts. I had the peace of mind knowing my students were going to do well on the test. Students would be happy, parents would be happy (with the grade), but my students weren't learning. They were fooled; I was fooled.
There it was. They learned (and were tested on) writing and grammar skills with their training wheels on. That was the problem. We never took them off.
Independent Writers - Training Wheels Off
Is it easier to teach a child to ride a bike if he wants to take off his training wheels, or if he is happier just riding around with them on?
My first efforts to create more independent writers failed. I was surprised by how reluctant my writers were. I simply asked them to write their very own sentences to apply a skill. This took forever, and some students complained of "not knowing what to write." The few students that did write quality sentences shared their work in small groups, but language arts was over, and there was very little practice time applying the skill. At least with the worksheet, students had more practice, and they had something to take home. But wait, that's right. That didn't really help them learn to be independent writers (which is our true end goal).
Finally, I got an idea. It came after a reading lesson where we discussed the character traits of Clementine in great detail. Students found text evidence to demonstrate those traits. They really saw how the writer developed the character of Clementine.
Before the next language arts lesson (on dialogue and quotation marks), I had each student create a character. It could be anyone. Each character was sketched, named, and described with many character traits. I explained that we were not writing a story about the character. It was only going to be a friend to them to help them practice writing.
I was AMAZED at how quickly students did this, and at how creative the characters were. That took no more than 5 minutes. I made up a character while they did, and I used her for the example to show quotation marks in dialogue. The students cracked up at my character traits, and they couldn't wait to make up sentences for what my character would say. I wrote down the dialogue some of them suggested. It was hysterical. Of course, we talked about where to put the quotation marks, but then it was their turn. They had to write one sentence.
In less than 5 minutes, many students had several sentences, and whoa, I was seeing mistakes! We stopped. I showed them all some examples of mistakes I had seen. We corrected them and tried again. There were more mistakes. We stopped, made corrections, and tried again.
The lesson was self-differentiating. More advanced students tended to create more difficult opportunities for using quotation marks. They wrote more as a whole, and dared to veer from the examples' patterns. Other students wrote one sentence, and I was able to use it as an opportunity to remind about capitals, punctuation, and spelling. I did not read every sentence in every notebook; I just went around making corrections as much as I could. It was surprising how many students raised their hands to have me double check if they were "on the right track." THEY CARED! It was not uncommon to hear someone randomly blurt out laughing. The dialogue from their off-the-wall characters was making them crack up.
They were writing solo, and they were loving it!
At the end of class, some students begged me to allow them to take their notebooks home so their "characters could say more things." I had to remind them that they were not allowed to write stories yet. I told them it is like soccer practice. You can't play a game until you practice. I overheard one student whisper to another, "How will she know, especially if I write it on a separate sheet?"
Those characters are going to help me teach writing and grammar from now on. This will not be the last you hear about them!
They only had to create their characters once, and we can use them for rest of the year!
Note: They still did the worksheet in 5 minutes, and they aced the test. I am anxious to see if they remember how to use quotation marks in the future!