RESEARCH THEME - Building Student Autonomy and Confidence in Writing

Part 1: Planning

Goals
​Equity Goal:
How can we encourage fourth graders to emerge from self consciousness and self doubt centered around their writing abilities in a way that bolsters productivity and fosters genuine interest?

Content Goal:
Students will understand that incorporating new writing techniques, such as sensory details, will support them in their writing growth and can yield confidence in their writing through a short narrative. 

Research Base

​Annotated Bibliography
​Literature Synthesis
Throughout our lesson study planning phase, we did research on: the purpose of lesson study, importance of quick writes, critical literacy, and finding writing enjoyment. As a lesson study group, we unpacked each reading and used the main ideas to inform the planning of our lesson. Some of those main ideas include:
  • ​quick writes are helpful in getting students to put pen to paper
  • teachers displaying their love for writing and modeling helps student in the writing process
  • methods of self-efficacy can include feedback, goal setting, modeling, write-to-choice, successful learning experiences

We began to facilitate our PDSA cycles within our own fourth grade classrooms to inform our practice further in how we as educators can help build our students' confidence and find joy within writing time. 

PDSA Cycle 1
  • Lesson Goal: Implement positive writing culture into our classroom community
  • Task: Introduce our first quick write of the year and implement an 'open mic' protocol where students celebrate their peers. Prompt was "what do you want to be when you grow up and where do you see yourself in ten years?"
  • Takeaways: Students enjoyed celebrating one another in their writing, students asked for more time to write, and as teachers, we should model and write when our students are writing. 
​PDSA Cycle 2
  • Lesson Goal: Implement positive writing culture into our classroom community through the incorporation of an authentic audience and community feedback
  • Task: Students will engage in a 20 minute quick write and share their writing with their classmates to get some celebrations and considerations. Afterwards in an 'open mic', students will share their stories with the whole class.  Prompt: write a story using these three words; blue, goblin, pizza. 
  • Takeaways: very successful; a lot of students raised their hands to share, teacher was able to write while students were writing and share their story, and as teachers, we want to continue using this idea to strengthen students' confidence as writers. 

Focal Students' Assets and Needs

Focal Student 1
Student is social and enjoys conversing with peers in class to avoid non-preferred tasks. Enjoys writing creatively when given the freedom to choose or make their own prompt. Has a fixed mindset about learning in school. 
Focal Student 2
Student is quiet and keeps to self during learning activities. Writing is a non-preferred task for this individual. Student works best with scaffolds like sentence starters for writing prompts. Confidence in sharing happens when comfortable with specific class peers. 
Focal Student 3
Student is adjusting to new school environment. Very social and energetic. Loves to learn and has an openness to get better at writing at grade-level. Student benefits from sitting with 1-2 focus peers who can help with staying on task. 

Focal Student Work (from PDSA cycles)

Unfortunately, some of the student work is missing from focal students because of absences and/or misplacement of their writing. 

Research Lesson Plan
Lesson Study Group Memorialization Document

Part 2: How It Went

Overall, our research lesson went really well. All 20 students participated in the process of adding sensory details to their quick write from our PDSA cycle using the three words: blue, goblin, pizza. Below, you will find the exit ticket data that was collected through a Google Form. 
​(To the right): You will see students' stories where they added their revision strips to their beginning, middle, and end of their story. They used these revision strips to include sensory details (sight, touch, hear, taste, and smell). 
(Below): You will see the observation notes that were taken by the two team members who were not the host teacher of the focal students. Observation notes include:
  • share their ideas 
  • Ask questions
  • Action throughout the lesson 

Reflection

Completing this lesson study cycle was a valuable experience that provided me with many takeaways that will serve as a foundational aspect of my practice as a teacher. One big takeaway from this cycle was to model as a teacher what it means to be a writer. That means writing at the same time as my students as much as I can so that they can see how their teacher creates her story. Another way I can model is through my attitude about writing. If I want my students to feel joy and excitement around writing then my attitude must reflect the same. While these are all things I am continuing to practice to strengthen my teaching, the next step is to provide more structure with writing time to continue furthering my students as writers.

​Through this lesson cycle, I began to think about my future teaching practice and the obstacles I might overcome. My one hesitancy about including more structure with the writing process is how to continue with intention to have low-stakes writing opportunities alongside the extensive writing structured time. Another hesitancy I have been thinking about is how to maintain the classroom culture of joy around writing as it gets to be more structured and aligned with the projects we are doing throughout this school year. Nevertheless, I will continue to identify my areas of growth as an educator and be mindful of how my biases about writing can affect the students in my classroom.