Washington

• Bridges Project (Central Washington University)
• Cross-Curriculur Writing Focus Increases Test Scores (Hockinson Middle School, Brush Prairie)
• Writing Across the Curriculum—Staff Assessment (Totem Middle School, Kent)
• Washington State University Writing Programs

Location

Contact

Lois Breedlove, project director
Veronica Gomez-Vilchis, coordinator
Phone: 509-963-1347
E-mail: breedlov@cwu.edu or
E-mail: gomezv@cwu.edu
Web site: www.cwu.edu/~bridges/

Bridges Project

It is the hope of the Bridges leadership to build a learning community of classroom teachers, faculty, college students and middle and high school students who are excited about writing and communicating.

Washington Sites and schools in central Washington have partnered for the last few years to provide mentors for middle and high schools, especially for children learning English as an additional language. Through this coordinated program, teams of university students assist teachers in the classroom mentoring students, organizing after-school book clubs, working on writing projects, and teaching students to build their own Web pages.

The funding for this project is primarily through a GEAR UP Grant. The Bridges Project currently receives part of that funding to operate the program in five schools. This past year, a full-time coordinator, Veronica Gomez-Vilchis was hired using the grant funds.

Mentors and CSU faculty work with teachers in designing projects that will encourage and develop their writing. Some mentors work as aides in classrooms with the teachers. Mentors visit the schools in teams at least two hours a week. Project Director Lois Breedlove suggests that teachers and mentors meet prior to the first class so they develop a clear understanding of roles and expectations. Teachers are encouraged to develop specific projects for mentors, rather than just giving them general aide duties.

Too often, says Breedlove, students who are learning English are marginalized in their schools and are not given the opportunity to express themselves. When teachers are under pressure to raise test scores in their schools, and work overtime with large classes, they may emphasize grammar and de-emphasize students just telling their stories. "Part of what we're focusing on is this whole notion of … telling the story, being sympathetic listeners and getting the kids to talk, because it is novel to them."

The mentors benefit in many ways from the experience. Preservice teachers can receive practicum credit and gain experience working with English language learners that they may not have received. Most important, they gain a greater understanding of the culture and history of recent Hispanic immigrants. Says Gomez-Vilchis, "When I recruit mentors, I look for college students who have a real desire to be role models, and to learn from their students as well. If a teacher isn't willing to learn about their students' lives, the children will not open up and be willing to learn from you."

Breedlove explains that prewriting skills are very important for children learning to write in another language. "We use a lot of journalism writing for our projects that serves to do many things, such as enable students to know what questions to ask in an interview. We model press conferences for the students to give them more practice in asking questions."

Grammar instruction is not a focus of the mentor relationships, emphasizes Breedlove. "Because these students have never written before, prewriting skills are emphasized—I focus with my mentors during their training, so they focus on how students can get their stories out. When kids learn to write for publishing, whether on a Web site or in print, for a real audience, they start to think that for others to be able to comprehend my writing, I'd better spell words right! They realize that they want their message to be clearly understood."

Gomez-Vilchis adds that when students write down their family stories, the stories become more real for them. For one assignment students were to write an essay about what story they would tell about themselves if they were invited back to their school in 2014. Students who envision what they will be doing in the future—going to college, having a family—will believe they can achieve those goals when they see it in writing.

The Morris Schott Middle School "Hidden Stories" 2004 Project gave students the opportunity to hear from their parents, often for the first time, about their life in another country and the experience of coming to the United States. The children interviewed their parents at home, and then returned to school to write stories about what they learned. Before they started to write, they heard stories from Gomez-Vilchis and others, which broke the ice for the kids to start writing. The mentors then worked with the students to help them write the stories. The essays were all bound into a book called "Harvesting Hope: Stories of Mattawa" and posted on the Web site.

Family stories were very powerful and emotional for the kids to tell—they are often about the hardships in Mexico and the turmoil and pain of the children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border on the backs of their parents. "One boy wrote a story, and then read it to me and cried like a little boy," remembers Breedlove. "And everyone just hugged him, which is so different from the more competitive Anglo classrooms that I am more used to."

Another powerful moment for the children was when they asked their parents "what did you hope for by coming to the United States?" Says Breedlove, "Of course we knew what the answer was, they came for their kids, and what they hope for is a good life for their kids. But the kids had never heard that from their parents—many of their parents are working two or three jobs to make ends meet." This experience, although it was difficult for many parents to speak of their past, helped to create better communication within the families.

Another project used technology for students to tell their stories. The Prosser Film Festival Project brought seventh-grade students from Prosser Middle School to the Washington Sites campus to watch films by both college students and Hollywood directors. Several college students presented their own films.

Students had two writing assignments. First, they wrote a film review of a movie they watched. The assignment went beyond characters and setting—they had to analyze the movie to determine the director's purpose and the message the director wanted to convey. The second writing assignment was to create a one-minute script with a prompt (www.cwu.edu/~bridges/upcomingevents/ff/assignment.html). The prompt asked the students to write a script answering the question, "What do you think your community or country needs? What can you do to help your community or country?" Says Gomez-Vilchis, "The purpose of this event was to have students use their creativity, and learn how a movie or video is created as a way to communicate their stories. It takes a lot of writing, planning, editing, and sensitivity, depending on the audience they are targeting."

These are just a small sampling of the projects that Bridges students have done. Writing for a purpose, that connects students to their community seems to be a large part of the success of the project, as is the mentoring by college students.

Both Breedlove and Gomez-Vilchis have noticed that students who have been a part of the project are writing much more than they had before. This has amazed teachers who have said they hadn't seen such expression previously. "Students accepted their mentors quickly, and wanted to do more writing if they knew their mentor was visiting that day," adds Gomez-Vilchis.

The grant will enable the project to be with sixth-graders for five more years, and so can continue to provide mentoring and support throughout their high school years.

A goal of the Bridges Project is having students become more aware of university life, and opening the door to them considering college. Many students had never met a college student before they met their mentors. Gomez-Vilchis says that now she hears many students say "I am going to college," not just that they are thinking about it. The Bridges mentors will continue to work with sixth-graders for five more years and provide continuous support and inspiration throughout their high school years. "You have to keep telling them they can go to college, because people out there will tell them they are worthless," says Gomez-Vilchis.

Breedlove says that she would like to work more with the family and community. She learned that ELL students have a strong sense of community, and that when they enter college, having a strong, supportive community will be very important.

Tips for Success in Forming a School-Community-University Partnership

• University faculty need to leave the university and go on school campuses to work with teachers, students, and mentors.
• Teachers need to be volunteers with the project, not "told to do it," for it to be successful. To facilitate partnerships at the schools, all Gear Up grantees have an on-site coordinator.

Location

Contact

Kevin O'Rourke, Principal
Phone: 360-448-6440
E-mail: kevin.orourke@hock.k12.wa.us

Cross-Curricular Writing Focus Increases Test Scores

Hockinson Middle School is located in rural Southwest Washington, about seven miles from Vancouver. There are 29 teachers, with about 550 students in grades 6–8. Like many other schools, changes have occurred in the last several years—an increase in the numbers of students; a changing community that is seeing newcomers move to the small, cohesive, rural district; and a change from a junior high model to a middle school model. Staff have been responsive to these changes and are willing to research new curriculum and implement new programs to continue to improve their student's achievement and growth.

Hockinson Middle School staff continuously use data on which to base their school improvement decisions and to inform their instruction. Beginning in 2002 and 2003, the site council did an indepth data analysis of many kinds of data—formal assessments, informal assessments, grade distribution, discipline, attendance, focus groups, and surveys, and then the site council shared the data with the entire school staff. (So the entire staff could look at all the data, a data carousel was used). This activity enabled everyone to analyze all the data, to discern the strengths and weaknesses, and to rank their top concerns. The ranking results led to a prioritized list of concerns that would be used to guide the school improvement plan. (An example of how to use a data carousel is located on the Washington Office of Public Instruction's Web site www.k12.wa.us/SchoolImprovement/pubdocs/AppB/Portfolio-CarouselActivity.doc).

Writing across the curriculum emerged as a priority from the data carousel activity. If teachers could improve students' ability to write clearly and effectively, their success in many areas would be affected. In researching how to approach implementing WAC, teacher Andrea Roscoe recommended a curriculum she had been using, Step Up to Writing. Upon further investigation, the entire staff agreed to implement it in all classes. Principal Kevin O'Rourke committed resources for all staff to be trained. A team of four teachers from across the disciplines was trained, and they in turn trained the other teachers in a sequence of inservice sessions.

Step Up to Writing offers coordinated teaching strategies and writing activities with the goal of teaching students to write clear, organized paragraphs, reports, and essays. According to an essay describing the research base for the program, "Through explicit instruction in organizational schemes, students are taught in small groups to organize their ideas before they write. Drawing on multi-sensory techniques, students are taught to use color-coding to visualize writing organization by equating the colors of a traffic signal with different parts of a written piece…" All the teachers have the elements of organization with the color codes posted in their classrooms.

This program works particularly well, explains O'Rourke, because it focuses on expository writing, which was an important area that needed improvement and is part of all curricular areas—mathematics, social studies, science, and language arts—and so is not difficult for all teachers to implement. In the past, he says, teachers may have wanted to implement writing in their classes, but didn't expect to be teaching writing themselves. Now, with the training and ongoing staff development, teachers are much more comfortable teaching these expository principles. Additionally, O'Rourke sees that science teachers are using similar and related vocabulary that language arts teachers use. For example, students are learning that topic sentence they formulate in language arts is similar to the thesis statement they use in science.

O'Rourke acknowledges that the Step Up to Writing "is somewhat formulaic" in that it provides a formula for writing orga-nization and doesn't develop the writer's voice yet. However, he says the process has greatly helped students who do not yet have these organizational skills, and has taught them to provide evidence for their ideas in a cohesive way. Now students are asking questions about how to organize their essays that indicate they are internalizing the process. Last year was the first year of implementing the program; this year the teachers intend to build on what students learned the previous year and develop other aspects of their writing, such as persuasive writing and development of voice.

Sixth-grade teacher Lisa Parker agrees that giving students a structure for their writing is very important, and that they can develop voice along with structure. Parker incorporates much writing in all her classes, as do many teachers. She uses retelling frequently. Students have put together a book of compare/contrast essays about Canada. In math, Parker has students develop a written response to a problem.

When teachers are already collaborating across and within grade levels, writing across the curriculum can be more successful, says O'Rourke. He believes that supporting his teachers is most important if writing across the curriculum is to be sustained and to progress. The move from a junior high to a middle school model, where teachers are in interdisciplinary teams, helps create a cohesive focus. All teams have a common prep time. In this way, explains O'Rourke, language arts teachers, science, math, and history teachers can support each other's work with writing. Core content teachers also meet together on a regular basis. Additionally, the school board approved last year a one-hour early release per week for staff, which has been more effective than once a month for a longer period of time. Teachers share what writing strategies are working in their classrooms and the hour is often structured so that one teacher is a trainer.

Another way that writing across the curriculum is facilitated is the curriculum mapping process. At the start of the semester, teacher teams look at their writing goals and map out when the goals will be accomplished. The ELR benchmarks for writing are broken down for each grade level and then divided up for each subject area. For example, one goal is for students to write personal letters. The map shows that this will be taught in September in [such and such] classes.

"The challenge to making the mapping process work," says O'Rourke, is to make sure that it is used as a resource that you reflect upon throughout the year. "Backing up to look at the bigger picture is very important."

Future plans to focus better on interdisciplinary, authentic projects are in the works. If the staff can come up with the funding, they are very interested in implementing Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound, a research-based model to involve students in interdisciplinary, project-based learning expeditions. Integrating core subjects such as writing is a primary goal. (For more information about ELOB, see www.elob.org.) O'Rourke and the teaching staff voted to pursue the contract, for many reasons, including having the opportunity for high-quality, comprehensive professional development and coaching support. The ELOB staff members work closely with teachers on designing projects for students, thinking the process through, identifying resources, and modeling strategies. This is very important for a sustained, cohesive process.

Many teachers, quite naturally, expressed some hesitation about implementing projects across the curriculum because they see that developing projects can be time-consuming if not structured or supported with professional development. This is why obtaining the funding to fully implement the model is so important, says O'Rourke. While O'Rourke certainly understands the hesitation, he praises teachers for implementing such projects on a smaller scale—and emphasizes that ELOB can build on these strategies. "ELOB enables students to think of a broader audience for their work, rather than just their teacher," says O'Rourke.

Funding is certainly a possibility because the district receives grants already from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation strongly supports ELOB schools—in 2003, Gates funded ELOB in 20 schools across the country.

Indicators of Success

Although the WAC focus has been in place for just a year, assessment scores show that more students are meeting standards in content, organization, and style—three of the essential learning requirements (ELRs) that the state assessment, the WASL, assesses. In 2003–2004, 71.2 percent of seventh-graders met the standards, up from 63.3 percent the previous year. The writing scores for the same cohort of students who had been fourth-graders in 2000–2001, was 48 percent.

Hockinson students took a writing pre-assessment based on the WASL rubric in September 2003, and a post-assessment in May 2004. These writing samples were scored by grade level staff and used to target areas of need. Students were rated in content, organization, and style as meeting or not meeting the standard. The number of eighth-grade students meeting the standard increased almost 30 percent from pre- to posttest. The number of seventh-graders meeting the standard increased 25 percent, and the number of sixth-graders meeting standards increased 50 percent (in interpreting these data, one must take into account that the students were pretested in the beginning of the year, after a summer break, and were tested on content they were to learn in the coming year, so an increase would be assumed by the end of the year).

To be successful, O'Rourke understands that building leadership among the staff provides the continuous focus and momentum to continue implementing writing across the curriculum. "If the push was left up to me alone, it could seem dictatorial, and indeed, I might lose energy myself," he says. By building broad support, in which staff members are encouraged to share their expertise with each other, implementing writing across the curriculum is that much more successful.

Location

Contact

Writing Across the Curriculum—Staff Assessment

A positive result of state-mandated writing assessments is that more schools are incorporating writing across the curriculum and are using assessments to guide practice. Because the writing assessments such as the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) focus on elements of purpose, organization, style, word choice, and grammar, many schools are focusing on these elements in their instruction. Critics of such standardized tests say the tests will dictate what teachers teach, and that other forms of writing will not be taught (Thomas, 2004). This could be the case; however, Baldwin of the Educational Testing Service believes that "With standardized writing tests here to stay, educators would do well to learn how their students' writing will be scored and how they can apply assessment techniques in their own classrooms" (Baldwin, 2004).

Totem Middle School in Washington state's Federal Way School District has a focus on reading and writing across the curriculum and has trained their staff to evaluate reading and writing by using rubrics based on the WASL. They determined that structure, word usage, and vocabulary were weak areas, and focused on strengthening those areas.

Staff members are trained to assess essays and compositions using WASL criteria. The school has two whole-school writing events. All staff members including elective teachers participate, and assess a variety of the papers, not just writing in their individual classes. Comments former principal Brenda McBrayer-Knight, "Interestingly, the first writing event provided us with direction…where do we need to focus our instruction and what must we emphasize in order to develop the writing skills all students need." The staff worked in grade-level teams and discussed why a certain piece of writing might rate a certain score—what an essay with a certain score would look like.

After the teachers assessed papers in their teams, they took the essays back to their students and went through the papers with them, so they could understand why they received a certain score, and why certain papers were rated as they were.

During the "all school write," students choose from a set of topics to write on that are based on the theme of two school assemblies: last year the first was Veteran's Day and the second was Martin Luther King Day. The prompts are similar to WASL prompts. An example of a prompt was "Describe what the Stars and Stripes mean to you." The students would be given a certain amount of time to finish the writing.

The WAC program was embraced by teacher-leaders who developed teams for each grade and as teams developed plans for administering writing prompts and assessing writing. The staff researched various writing curricula and implemented writing processes consistently, and shared ideas with each other. Says McBrayer-Knight, "We agreed that it is NOT just the responsibility of the language arts department to make sure kids can write well." Says the current assistant principal, Michael Swartz, "All teachers—science, mathematics, physical education teachers—participated."

Throughout the year, students are given many opportunities to write and assess their writing. Core teacher teams worked together to develop essays for a particular unit.

The schoolwide focus on writing and understanding of assessing writing has helped to increase the WASL test scores. In 2003, seventh-graders meeting writing standards of the WASL improved from 41.7 percent to 66.9 percent.

Location

Contact

At Washington State University students enrolled in a teaching writing and rhetoric class help develop middle and high school students' writing and critical thinking skills through an online writing laboratory. Director Lisa Johnson modeled this writing lab on WSU's undergraduate online writing lab. Students submit writing to the privacy-protected site, and a writing mentor provides weekly feedback. Although mentors have flexibility in the feedback they provide, the criteria for assessing writing is based on the WSU Writing Center's Hierarchy of Values. This includes assessing the focus, organization, support, and grammar, spelling, and appropriate word choice.

Because many students have difficulty in developing their subject, the mentors begin by asking questions that "draw out" their area of interest—say sports, or pets—which can then develop into a topic. Here is an example of a real online "writer's exchange" between a mentor and a student. The student, Andrea, logs onto the Web site and posts a paragraph about feeding her pets. The mentor responded the next day with positive, constructive feedback, explaining the concepts of contextualizing and framing in ways the student can understand.

Mentor: "Imagine going up to one of your friends and repeating to them exactly what you have written here… I guarantee you they will say, "Andrea, what are you talking about?" That is why you have to frame your writing (or your speaking) with an introduction that lets the reader or listener "contextualize" what you are telling them. To contextualize means to help them find a place to put the information. Right now your paragraphs have no context; you haven't written to help me understand why you are telling me the information… The best thing you could do next with this piece of writing is to "frame" it with more information … Don't forget, Andrea, that writing, like speaking, is message-sending. What is the message you are trying to send about dogs and cats? What do you want me to do or believe after I have read what you wrote? I hope you will answer these questions and get back to me."

A few days later, Andrea resubmits a revision to "Feeding My Pet." The tutor starts with complimenting Andrea on making her essay clear and giving very useful information. The tutor offers some suggestions for capitalization of proper names and proper citation of information received from another source.

After Andrea submits the next revision (this time adding a reference to Child Magazine), the tutor responds with enthusiasm and positive reinforcement: " We are impressed by how well you read and responded to our comments and we look forward to helping you write other papers in the future. … Have you considered writing another paper about caring for pets? It might be interesting for you to write (and for us to read) about the things that pet owners need to know about caring for cats and dogs in different seasons…Anyway, thanks so much for continuing to write to us. We look forward to hearing from you again."

As with the tutors in this exchange, Johnson noticed a dramatic difference in the development of students' writing over just a few sessions. Not only do the middle school students benefit from positive and constructive feedback, but the preservice education students learn how to provide such feedback and will be more prepared when they teach in the future. Classroom teachers have also said that they appreciate the time the colleges students have spent with their students, and have also noticed their students' progression.

The program is funded in part through grants that emphasize outreach and coteaching with schools. Last year the project was piloted with special education students, but will be expanded this year to students in all classes of area schools. Johnson invited teachers to an introductory workshop last summer, at which six schools signed up to be part of the pilot program. Projects funded under the grant focus on how schools can incorporate critical thinking into the curriculum. Because Johnson's specialty is teaching preservice teachers how to teach writing, this became a goal of the outreach program. She also hopes that programs like these will change the perception of the purpose of writing centers—that they don't exist to correct student work, but to work with students one-on-one to develop writing skills and interest in writing.