Anita Pinkston

September
     The Write On Project will take place for this 2002-3 school year.  I will attend the monthly workshop sessions and take the ideas back to my classroom.  The 4 Square writing concept seems easy enough to present to the class.  Students will love actually writing on the screen.  The folded paper technique will be a nice attention-getter, too.  A benefit of this presentation method is that it will make idea organization much easier.  Students will have a road map from which to work.  Transition from the 4-Square diagram to lined paper should be simpler than the transition from graphic organizer to lined paper.
     I know I need to put the journaling idea to use in my classes.  This will be one of my personal goals.  Since I am not into journaling myself, I will probably be doing this only one day weekly.  Years ago I color-coded my journals and checked them by groups.  If I decide to go to more than one day weekly, I’ll more than likely resort to this method to evaluate.

October

1. Describe your class’ experience with Four Square writing this past month?   Both my classes are excited about the Four Square method.  Several kids have even been asking when they will be doing it again.  For our last lesson we used the Four Square method to write a summary of our Science chapter on plants.  I did modify the approach a bit, though.  We used all four squares for ideas relating to the science content, wrote the topic sent. @ the top of the page, and added the ending at the bottom, instead of in the fourth square.

2. How often did your students attempt to write each week? Two or three

3. Did your students attempt a Four Square + 1 paragraph (topic sentence, three detail sentences, one additional sentence for each detail).  If so, what success did they have with it?  If not, why?    Several students were able to accomplish this, but there are some that still don’t have the basic sentence writing skills to do so.  Some of my more accomplished writers can just take off and go with it, while others continue to need more assistance.

4. Have you experienced any problems through your participation in this project this past month?  Many students don’t want to take the time to edit.  They’d just rather do a final draft with the errors still there than to take the time to correct before rewriting.

5. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?  I’d just like to have time to work on it every day, as well as think of a magical way to inspire kids to take more time and care with their corrections/rewrites.

November

1.Both my classes loved the presentation.  They didn’t have any trouble putting the four square info into paragraph form.  Some even decided to research more about the island on the Internet and in the library after the writing was completed.  They were curious and wanted more information.

2.How often did your students attempt to write each week?  We are now writing three times each week, plus some short journal writing activities.

3.Did your students attempt a Four Square + 1 paragraph (topic sentence, three detail sentences, one additional sentence for each detail).  If so, what success did they have with it?  If not, why?   After completing the Easter Island writing, our next project was centered on Veterans Day and the sacrifices soldiers make for our nation.  This turned into a four square plus three activity, because once they started throwing out ideas they just didn’t want to stop.  Most students were surprisingly successful.  They love any writing that I call four square.

4.Have you experienced any problems through your participation in this project this past month?  No problems, other than the students that always hate to have their first drafts edited.  Some still want to write only once.

5.What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?  I can’t think of any suggestions right now.  We are enjoying the project immensely.  Students look forward to your visits each month.
 
 

January
  1. Describe your class’ experience with Four Square writing this past month. We didn’t do a new Four Square lesson the month of December. Instead, we spent extra time refining the lesson from November, which was a piece about Veterans Day. Some kids were sick of the paragraphs by the time we finished, but we had nice finished products. The remainder of the month was focused on journal writing.
 

2. Share your experiences with the “Christmas Surprise” activity. After your presentation, the kids wanted to talk and talk about how they loved what you did. In previous years I have done writing activities similar to the one you did, but had completely forgotten about them this year. I was glad you reintroduced me to this form of story writing. It’s fun! (for kids and teacher)
 
 

3. Did your students attempt a Four Square + 1 paragraph (topic sentence, three detail sentences, one additional sentence for each detail). If so, what success did they have with it? If not, why? The Vet. Day paragraph began as Four Square plus 1, then evolved into a plus 2 or 3. (I can’t remember which) They did well.
4.
 

5. Have you experienced any problems through your participation in this project this past month? I’ve had no problems, other than the fact that I haven’t started a new writing assignment this month. I’ve been too focused on multiplication.
 

6. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?
 

February
1. Describe your class’ experience with Four Square writing this past month.  Four Square was used to formulate a five paragraph essay relating to our study of animals.  Students wrote about how animals live in groups.  (pride, troop, etc.)  This served as a way to evaluate students’ understanding of the lesson and went extremely well.  They composed the introductory paragraph, the conclusion, and three body paragraphs.

2. Did your students attempt a Four Square + 1 paragraph (topic sentence, three detail sentences, one additional sentence for each detail).  If so, what success did they have with it?  If not, why?  Actually they wrote three additional sentences.

3. Have you experienced any problems through your participation in this project this past month?  no

4. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?
 

March
1. Describe your class’ experience with Four Square writing this past month.   I gave students the option of finishing the Civil War paragraph or skipping it.  Of course they wanted to skip it, except for Mercedes, who was insistent on finishing hers.  She did everything except the concluding paragraph.    As a whole, our entire class worked on an introductory paragraph together, then they each did at least two more paragraphs on their own.  When we finish our study of states of matter, part of their evaluation will be to do a four square writing on their own, explaining the three states of matter.  We’ll see how it goes!

2. How often did your students attempt to write each week?
They do journal entries every other week.  Our other writing this month has been mostly sentence expansion activities-adding adverbs and adjectives to enhance meaning.

3. Did your students participate in a social studies cross curriculum writing activity?  I guess I answered this in question one.  I won’t repeat.

4. Have you experienced any problems through your participation in this project this past month?  No problems at all

5. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?

April
 

1. Describe your class’ experience with Four Square writing this past month.  After a study of simple machines we used the simple machines power point writing activity.  I printed the Data Table worksheet and students had a lesson on note taking.  The next day they took their notes and with basic organizational guidance from me constructed a five paragraph essay.  They wrote an introductory paragraph, three paragraphs about simple machines, and a concluding paragraph.

2. Share your students’ experiences with the Civil War or Iraq writing activity.  One of my classes worked on the Civil War activity.  After working on three paragraphs together, I had to stop and move to something else.  One student persevered on to the end and finished the paragraph on her own. 

3. Have you experienced any problems through your participation in this project this past month?  None at all

4. What suggestions would you have for making this project more beneficial to you and your students?  My only suggestion would be that we just need to make sure we are incorporating our writing instruction into all areas of our curriculum.  This project has definitely stressed this issue.  Now we as teachers just need to make sure we continue on this course in our classrooms.  The power points that have been created have made this incorporation much easier.

May

The Tennessee Master Plan Goals the project addressed was:

State of the art technology will be used to improve curriculum. Tennessee Report Card Performance Indicators Competency (Composition Skills)

1.      How do you feel this project moved toward the goal of improving student composition skills?      My students definitely improved comp. skills.  This method was new and different, so they were more eager to write on their own.  Idea organization was easier to accomplish, since there was a specific 4-square plan for the organization.  This writing method also allows students to break their writing into paragraphs with much less effort.  This program gave me inspiration to make writing fun for the kids, thus enabling them to have more enthusiasm for writing, from the very beginning of the year.  Bottom line-this method shows a distinct PLAN for what is being written, so it is successful.

2.        How did your participation in this project positively affecting the writing skills of the students in your classroom?  I gained increased enthusiasm for teaching writing; this led to students having greater enthusiasm.  Writing was fun, on most days.  This year I saw more students writing for “fun”.   Students were also able to write much longer essays early on in the year, and could organize more effectively.

3.        How did your participation in this project positively affect your instructional strategies? I was able to incorporate journal writing into my writing program this year.  This was a plus for me and for the kids.  They are now beginning to see how writing can be done for fun, or as an emotional release.  The web activities Connie developed have been great.  We now have access to countless resources to enhance the teaching of writing.  Attending the monthly meetings and learning ways to integrate the web activities into my daily lessons has been extremely helpful.  We also did lots of work with PowerPoint, which made me more comfortable using it in the classroom.  I can now teach this skill to my students with much more confidence in my own ability to use it effectively.

4.        Describe any problems you encountered through your participation in this project? I had no specific problems.  The entire experience was positive. 

5.        What could be done to improve the Write On project?  We could continue it next year, and let me go through it again!  It has been wonderful.

6.      Other concerns: When I reflect back on all the inservice/teacher training sessions I’ve been involved in through the years, I can honestly say that this has been, by far, the most beneficial.  The ideas presented during the course of this project have been workable for the classroom; they work in the “real world” of daily teaching.  Any teacher could benefit from the chance to participate in a project such as this one.