Elaine McBride
| September | January |
| October | February |
| November | March |
| December | May |
September
1. Describe your approach to composition. I don’t
use a specific approach.
2. How often do your students attempt to write each week? We try to write two or
three times each week in Reading and English.
3. How have you integrated technology into instruction in the past? I use Power
Points to enhance Reading and Science units on occasion.
4. What do you hope to gain from participation in this project? I hope to
inspire my students to become better writers.
1. Describe your class’ positive experience(s) with Four Square writing this past month. I think my students finally understand what a complete sentence should be! They know that the topic is not a title.
2. How far did your students get with the Four Square method? (4 Square, 4 Square to paper, 4+1, 4+3) Why? I have let the students do which ever 4 square they were most comfortable with. Some students are able to complete the 4 square only, while others can do four square +1 or four square +3. Everyone did a 4 square +1 to paper.
3. Have you experienced any problems through your participation in this project this past month? Describe. I think my biggest problem has been pushing my students too hard. I expected them to write complete sentences, with capital letters and punctuation marks from day one. Therefore, I thought they could do a four square + 1 or even a four square +3 with out much trouble. I have had to back off and slow down. We have got to master 4 square first before moving on to four square +1.
4. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students? Our curriculum is so demanding that extending the school day to allow for more time to devote to writing is one suggestion. Also, if we had a teachers assistant to help with everything else required of us, I think I could manage to devote more time to writing.
1. Describe positive experience(s) with Four Square writing this past month.
A few students are asking if we can use our four square to help with our writing assignments.
2. How far did your students get with the Four Square method? (4 Square, 4 Square to paper, 4+1, 4+3) Why? I have so many different ability levels within my class. Some students are just on the basic 4 square, others are able to do four square +1 and a few are capable of 4 square +3.
3. Discuss the Virtual Field Trip experience.
The students enjoyed going on a Virtual Field Trip to Komodo Island to visit with Komodo Dragons. We visited with lots of dragons and learned about their eating habits and their size. We also learned about how their young stay in trees to keep from getting eaten by predators.
4. What problems are your students encountering?
We are still getting stuck thinking of topic sentences vs. titles occasionally. Then when we start writing sentences, they come out as fragments. Another problem we’re having is staying on topic. When I ask students to use their reading vocabulary words in their writing, they are just writing sentences to get done, but the sentences do not blend together to make an on topic paragraph. I don’t think the students are enjoying writing like I thought they would with using four square.
5. What problems are you experiencing?
6. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?
1. Describe positive experience(s) with Four Square writing this past month. The students are becoming more comfortable with writing.
2. How far did your students get with the Four Square method this month? (4 Square, 4 Square to paper, 4+1, 4+3) Why?
We are still on many different levels depending on the individual student. A few are working on the basic four square. The majority of the class is capable of four square +1 and a few are doing 4 square +3. Those who are doing 4 square +3 are somewhat jealous of the ones doing 4 +1 !
3. Discuss the Sentence Stretcher experience.
We went to the library to do this in the lab. The computers seemed to lock up with 20 students on at the same time. It was very frustrating for me and the students. I had them write the sentences with their answers to the questions on a piece of paper. After 20 minutes of trying to get everyone’s computer working correctly, we went back to the classroom to do this activity together. The students said I was going to fast, they couldn’t write their sentences down. At that point, we just walked through each sentence together and did not write them on paper at all. We have not covered adjectives or adverbs this year. I think once we have done those two sections in English, this activity will go much more smoothly. My wireless keyboard wasn’t working either, which did not help!
4. Were you able to complete a Colonial America writing activity? Discuss the success/problems.
We started on the Colonial America Trades activity, but have not completed it yet. I had students do a basic 4 square, but once they had written their four sentences, I asked them to stretch their sentences like we had done with the sentence stretcher activity.
5. Were you able to successfully download a file from the Write On site this month? Tell about any problems you encountered.
Downloading is so easy! No problems with downloading files. The problems we have had this month have been with getting connected to the internet. There is a problem that the phone company is working on in the lines to our building.
6. What problems are your students encountering with their participation in this project? Spelling words correctly that are on the word wall! They also want to get their writing done in five minutes and move on to something else. Students have no desire to correct their work to make it better.
7. What problems are you experiencing?
TIME! TIME! TIME! I am also frustrated with the students not spelling word wall words correctly in their everyday assignments.
8. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?
This is a great project.
1. Describe positive experience(s) with Four Square writing this past month.
Students are becoming more conscious of writing in complete sentences and making all of the sentences tie together to stay on topic.
2. How far did your students get with the Four Square method this month? (4 Square, 4 Square to paper, 4+1, 4+3) Why?
I have one student who can go all the way with the four square plus 3, but she gets frustrated because I ask her to do more than the other students. The majority of my class is able to do the four square plus one. A few students are still struggling to just get a four square done correctly.
3. Discuss the Miss Take’s Challenge experience.
I printed the January weeks one and two and gave to the students to complete as morning work. It’s very scary to look at their papers and see the mistakes they continue to make after having spent eighteen weeks teaching nouns, verbs, capitalization, and punctuation!
4. Was Mr. Indent helpful to your students? If so, in what way. If not, why?
I’m sorry, we didn’t get to do Mr. Indent this time.
5. What problems are your students encountering with their participation in this project?
They want to go way to fast. Once the four square is written they want to write on lined paper without making any changes or correcting any mistakes. This is a “hurry up and get finished so we can do something else” class when it comes to writing.
6. What problems are you experiencing?
Getting students to edit their work is a major problem. They don’t see their mistakes, because they write the way they talk and the way their parents talk. Also, they will not use the word wall to spell words correctly.
7. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?
Start in Kindergarten teaching this to the students, so maybe by the time they reach fourth grade, they will be able to write at least one very good paragraph.
1. Describe positive experience(s) with Four Square writing this past month. My students don’t dread writing as much as they did in the beginning.
2. How far did your students get with the Four Square method this month? (4 Square, 4 Square to paper, 4+1, 4+3) Why? I continue to have students at all ability levels from four square to 4+3. Some students have really caught on well and others are still stuck on writing a complete topic sentence rather than a title.
3. Discuss the Goof’s activity. Student’s loved the Goof’s! They were able to find these mistakes easily, yet when checking their own papers they don’t find the same mistakes.
4. What improvements are you seeing in your students through participation in this project? Most of my students are finally writing in complete sentences. There are not as many run-on sentences or fragments as there were in the beginning.
5. What is the biggest hurdle you have experienced in composition instruction with your students? Finding time to fit writing in two to three times a week and conference with the students to discuss the areas they are doing well with and the areas they need to improve.
6. What activity through Write On has been most beneficial to your students? I think Sentence Stretchers was the most helpful activity for my students this year. It helped them think about ways to improve the details in their sentences and write better.
7. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?
I expected my students to just catch on to writing and get from four square to four square + 3 in the first month through participation in this project. Let other teachers who are beginning to work with four square writing know that it’s not going to happen overnight and to not push too fast in the beginning, because you will have to backtrack and start over from scratch.
Time is a major factor in this project. With six subjects to cover in between gym, art, library, 4-H, and anything else that pops up, writing is easily put off to be done another day. Then something else interrupts and writing gets put off again.
An aide in my classroom for one hour a day would be a great benefit in that she would free me to work with three or four students during that hour each day and I could conference with every student every week.
1. Describe your class’ experience with Four Square writing this past month.
We really concentrated on writing great topic sentences this month. Some students were still writing titles or incomplete sentences as the topic sentence. Hopefully, by devoting this extra time to this one area, my students will improve their entire paragraphs.
2. Did your students participate in a science cross curriculum writing activity? If so, describe its successes/weaknesses.
Yes, we did a writing activity with a science cross curriculum activity. We were doing a unit on Electricity, so we wrote paragraphs about life without electricity. The paragraphs were not as detailed as I would have liked.
3. Other than time restraints, what is your biggest problem in composition instruction? I think I expect perfection too quickly. This is such an easy way for the students to write paragraphs, yet they want to get it finished and go on to something else. I want them to write, re-write, and re-write again until it is a truly fourth grade paragraph.
4. What positive effects can you see in your students through the participation in the Four Square method of composition?
They are thinking about using a variety of words in order not to have re-runs throughout their paragraphs, and some of them have finally realized we have a Word Wall!
5. Have you been able to share experiences or activities addressed through this project with any other educators? What was the result? Yes, I was speaking with a second grade teacher just this morning about Write-On. She is using the four square method to teach writing in her class and said the students love to write this way. I explained to her that some of my fourth graders were having trouble with topic sentences. She usually gives her second graders the topic sentence and lets them write the rest of the paragraph. I suggested she have the students brainstorm four or five topic sentences together and she write them on the board, and then let the students pick their favorite one to begin their paragraph.
6. What changes will you make in your approach to composition in the upcoming school year? I will start in August with writing a topic sentence. First we will read some paragraphs and choose which one has the best topic sentence, or we will have to choose the topic sentence that goes with a paragraph. Then once students have mastered Topic Sentences, we will move on to writing a basic four square. I will need to slow down and concentrate on just the basic four square until the students master it, before pushing on to the four square +1. I think I tried to get from basic to four +3 much too quickly this year and it frustrated the students and me.
This project address the following Tennessee Master Plan Goal: State of the art technology will be used to improve curriculum. Tennessee Report Card Performance Indicators Competency (Composition Skills) How do you feel this project moved toward the goal of improving student composition skills?
This project has introduced using a graphic organizer to the students who normally wrote "off the top of their head", and has helped students better understand the process of how to write better paragraphs.
List ways your participation in this project has positively affected the writing skills of the students in your classroom.
My students are more aware of using capital letters, punctuation marks, and spelling words correctly in their writing. They have not mastered these concepts but they have gotten better at them!
How did your participation in this project positively affect your instructional strategies?
This project has provided a wealth of ideas and activities to actively engage students in learning which I would not have had the time to develop on my own.
How has your approach to writing composition changed through your participation in this project from that of previous years?
Rather than have students just write a paragraph, now I can take them through the process and explain individual steps. We can spend a month working on one specific skill, such as topic sentences, before adding more details. I understand better that writing evolves over time and cannot be accomplished in fifteen minutes.
What other curriculum areas would you like to see implemented in a professional development technology integration project?
Math, Science, and Social Studies