Running Head; SUCCESS FOR ALL 1

Success For All

Stephanie Cumming

McGill University

EDEC 351- Prof. Agozzino.

November 13, 2015

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Background:

The student I have selected is a secondary 4 student in the Sport etudes program.

Students write an entry exam to be admitted into the program. It is an accelerated

program. I do not see this group as many times per cycle as the other English Language

Arts group. More so, many students have early dismissal often so I see them for 20

minutes some classes instead of 75 minutes. As a result, I am not able to spend as much

time on certain lessons as with the other class. Students are encouraged to attend tutorials

but this is not always an option for them considering they are away practicing their sport.

The student I chose shows great difficulty in written and oral expression. I was surprised

when I read his first writing piece because it showed many grammatical errors that

ranged from spelling mistakes to sentence structure. I found this strange considering his

placement in the program. I chose this student because his writing skills are well below

grade level and I think he could benefit from help in his writing and reading

comprehension. This will allow him to do better in his other classes such as History

where he will have to produce essays and Mathematics where being able to understand

situational problems is key to solving them. My goal is to improve his writing. He is not

able to formulate complete sentences. I would also like to help him by showing him ways

of proof reading. Not only are most of his sentences fragments, but his sentences are

often missing words. If the student is able to read the sentences out loud, this may help

his writing because he can hear the words that are missing.
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Student Profile:

At the beginning of the year, we had students complete a diagnostic which

evaluate their secondary 3 reading level. This secondary 4 student scored 58%. He also

scored 58% on a review of literary elements test. Clearly, student was missing basic

concepts that should have already been mastered.

The student struggles with writing skills. His sentences are either choppy, very

simple (Subject+verb) with no linking words or the sentences are run-ons. As a result, the

students written work is difficult to understand. Even though the assignment may be a

creative piece, the students sentence structure and mechanical errors prevent the reader

from understanding what is being said.

The student also has difficulties reading out loud. When he reads, it sounds very

robotic and monotone. As a listener, it is hard to follow and understand what is being

read. The student may be experiencing the same difficulty comprehending what he is

reading due to the nature of his reading. During an in-class reading period, the student

volunteered to read. As he was reading, I had to stop him eventually because I had a hard

time following what he was saying. I was worried the class did not understand as well.

Regardless of his reading ability, the student volunteers to read often. This shows that he

is active and involved in the classroom because he is eager to participate, which is

positive; however, improving his reading voice and style is necessary. In drama class, the

way he speaks also lacks articulation. In other class settings, the student lacks focus.

Often he is daydreaming or playing with something on his desk instead of listening to the
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instructions. Even though you try to make your lesson as engaging as possible, the

student will still lack focus and attention.

During collaborative work, the student interacts well with others. He participates

by offering examples and suggestions. He is confrontational at times which shows he

cares about his learning. He will challenge you if he disagrees with what you say. For

example, in an activity, he noticed that there was a mistake it said Curleys dog instead

of Candys dog. This demonstrated that he understood this detail about the novel. He

told me that he listened to the audiobook of the novel. I think this could help his reading,

but I think he should follow along with the book while he is listening. He completes his

assignments on time and regularly. The student is very polite and respectful. He comes to

tutorials and asks for help. He wants to improve and puts in effort to do so.

Updates and strategies:

Starting from the students first writing piece, I wanted to give the student many

comments and notes about his writing instead of simply writing awkward or re-word.

I wanted to give him concrete comments on what was well done and was not so well

done in his writing. I wanted to write specific comments because I believe students will

respond better to this sort of feedback instead of just general comments; it

demonstrates that as a teacher you put the effort in. As a result, the student should also

put in effort to understand what his mistakes were. I decided that the student needed help

with sentence structure since most of his sentences were fragments. Another grammar

rule I wanted to teach him was the Order of adjectives. Often the student would use many
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adjectives to describe a word without putting them in the correct order and without even

separating them with commas (ex.: dirty raft half broken).

Parent communication has informed us that the student reads frequently to

improve his reading and writing skills. To add to this, I had student attend tutorials to

give him feedback on his written assignments. Moreover, I have him do worksheets on

run-on sentences to prevent him from including them in his writing. This was one of the

first steps I decided to implement. Sentences are the basis of a written assignment

whether it is an essay or a creative piece. I explained to him the different sentence

structures. I also showed him how to identify the subject and the verbs in his writing as a

way of proofreading (See Appendix A). I had the student complete worksheets

(Appendix E) where he had to correct the run-on sentences. Then I had him do an

exercise showing him how to properly link sentences. I thought he should have a

foundation in sentence structure before moving onto correcting his essays.

When it was time to correct his essays, one technique that I found effective to

help him avoid using run-on sentences was to have him record himself reading what he

wrote out loud. I then have him listen to it. I pointed out the parts where he paused and I

asked him if he thought there was a reason for that pause. I then suggested that he should

have maybe put a period at that part of the sentence (Appendix D).

The student had more difficulty with the creative piece than the persuasive essay.

The persuasive essay was the first writing piece for term 1(Appendix F). The students

had already read the short story the previous year so they were familiar with it. The

student did not do so well on this essay. This may have been due to the lack of structure

for the creative piece. He made many mistakes, which confuse the meaning for the
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reader. For example, he wrote her love Mrs. Maloney instead of her love Mr.

Maloney. Moreover, the student made errors in shifts in verb tense. In this persuasive

essay, verb tense errors cost the student points in grammar and spelling but also in the

support and argument portion because the shift in verb tense weakened and contradicted

the argument. The student wrote, The defendant is always working helping her

husband. The student did not follow the guidelines. His assignment was incomplete. His

conclusion was only two sentences long. It was missing the components listed to them. I

thought that the feedback I wrote on the essay as well as the conversation I had with the

student would help. After receiving the second writing piece for term 1, I realized I was

wrong.

The second writing piece was a creative one (Appendix C) I applied Say, See,

Do Fred Jones theory (Charles C.M., 2014) to show them an example, this was

different from the first assignment because this time the students actually saw an example

of the end product. I thought this would improve the students work. Students had to

create their own writing piece on tension. The students were presented with a rubric as

well to know what was expected along with the example. I read the students assignment

and I was disappointed. First of all, I had to read it more than once to understand the story

because of the number of errors. The paper was worse than the first one. I decided to give

more specific feedback modeling John Hatties theory. In other word, my feedback

included: Where am I going? How am I going there? Where to next? (Hattie, 2012,

p.130). In his case, it would be improving my sentence structure by learning the basic

structure of sentences and reading my texts out loud to correct errors. I always give

feedback to the class as a whole for certain things that recur often, but I learned that some
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students might not think it concerns them. I asked this student to come see me during

tutorials to go over the assignment.

The student is involved in his learning. Evidence of this is that he comes to

tutorials. When I asked him to re-submit an assignment, he completed it for the following

day. One of the problems as mentioned earlier is that he is easily distracted. One solution

for this was removing unnecessary materials off his desk. This way he would not be

tempted to lose focus (Appendix B). Another issue is that the student gets defensive. He

will challenge certain things you say. For example, when I told him that his sentences

were too long, he argued last time you said my sentences were choppy. In another case,

I told him that you have to use quotations marks when using dialogue. This was discussed

in class when the assignment guidelines were explained yet the student said, I did not

know we have to use quotation marks. I thought it made it sound bad.

Conclusions and recommendations:

I noticed a progress when I went over the students essay. He was able to correct

his run-on sentences (Appendix D). Using the recorder was a great strategy that should be

continued. Student can record himself read out his written work. I also suggested him

using text to speech software on the computer. Identifying the subjects and verbs in his

assignments as a way of editing work is another strategy that could help to prevent

sentence structure errors.

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Appendix A (Samples of Sentence Structure Breakdown. These were sentences student

had written and then corrected)
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Appendix A (Samples of Sentence Structure Breakdown. These were sentences student

had written and then corrected)
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Appendix A (Samples of Sentence Structure Breakdown. These were sentences student

had written and then corrected)
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Appendix B -Example of students rough draft. Evidence of doodling that could indicate
he was off task. Some of it is hard to follow.
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Appendix C- This was the first version of the students creative writing piece. It includes
many run-on sentences and is difficult to understand.

!!
!
!
!
!
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Appendix D- This was the version the student submitted after I went over sentence
structure in tutorials and after I had him listen to himself read what he wrote out loud.
There is a significant difference although there is still more work to be done.
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Appendix E- This is an example of a worksheet completed with the student during

tutorials. The student had to correct the run-on sentences. I noticed that he started using
transitions and coordination conjunctions in his writing after completing this.
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Appendix F- The students first written piece. It was a persuasive essay. Arguments were
not supported and ideas were not developed. There were many run-on sentences.
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References

Charles, C.M. (2014). Building Classroom Discipline, (Eleventh Edition). Fred Jones:
Keeping Students Willingly Engaged, pp.137-159. New York: Pearson.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: maximizing impact on learning. Chapter
7: the flow of the lesson: the place of feedback. New York, Routledge. pp. 129-154.