All about

___________________
name

My favorite food is _______________________________.

My favorite animal is_______________________________.

I have ________ brothers and sisters.

If I had $100 I would buy___________________________.

I have ________ pets.

My favorite sport is _______________________________.

My favorite subject is ______________________________.

In my free time I like to ______________________________.

Kara is an impressive 2nd grade student. She is bilingual with Russian and English and acts as the

only source of communication between the teacher and Albert a student who only speaks

Russian. According to her, her parents only speak Russian at home. Yet, her writing still appears

to be one of the highest in the class among all the students. She shows a lot of strengths in her

writing but still has some areas for improvement.

Kara is exceptionally well at Conventions. Not only did she spell almost all words

correctly but she also used near perfect grammar. She clearly attempted to apply word study

features as she spoke aloud about being unsure whether the word gymnastics had two ms.

She also shows great strength in her ideas. She stays on topic and includes only relevant details.

You can tell she has voice when she uses exclamation points in her writing.

Kara does have room for improvement in organization and sentence fluency. She does

not include an introduction or a conclusion. There is also no clear sense of beginning, middle,

and end. She could also improve on her sentence fluency. The sentences did not have much

variation and were very simple. Finally, her word choice and voice could be improved by adding

more descriptive words. You can hear her voice when she emphasized the word fight but

instead of using descriptive words, she wrote the word with all capital letters.

I think one helpful conference with this student would be on introductions. By having

the first conference on introductions, it will also help give the writing a beginning, middle. and

end. I could say, Kara I like how all the sentences are related to your sisters. What would be a

good first sentence to let the reader know what you will be talking about for the rest of the

paragraph. I could also say, Kara I see that you have two sisters, but I didnt know about your

little sister until halfway through the paragraph. How could you let the reader know in the first
sentence that you have two sisters? The goal leaving the conference would be for Kara to add

an introduction to this writing sample that organizes and brings the writing together.