Westmoor High School
CAPI Coordinator: Jenna Palmer
Teachers:
School Year: 2001–2002
Student Feedback
Coordinator Report
Demographics
- Number of students served: 170
- Grade level: 12th
- Number of teachers participating: 3
- Subjects taught:
- Regular English
- Honors English
- Number of ESL students served: Not stated.
Overview
Over the course of the 2001–2002 academic year, I assisted three English teachers at Westmoor High School in improving the reading and writing of their students with the ultimate goal of reducing the need for remediation at the college level. I chose one class to observe and participate in for each teacher, and attended their classes twice a week for the entire year. I additionally met with each teacher at least once a week outside of class in order to plan and discuss curriculum, taught lessons in class in order to model them for the teachers, and helped organize and conduct six Saturday Workshops.
Following is a report of the activities I engaged in with each of the teachers and the progress I observed in the teachers and their students.
Vicky Day
The Junior English class that I participated in with Vicky Day, which contained on average 30 students, was part of a special program called the WIT Academy. The WIT students all shared the same English, Computer, and History teachers, so these teachers could plan activities and assignments that crossed over the different curriculums. Because of its unique program, students who were eligible for Honors English signed up for the WIT Academy classes, despite the fact that these classes were Regular level courses.
This left Ms. Day with a challenging mix of students, and many of our conversations were focused on how to meet the needs of students with a wide range of abilities. My presence in the class at least twice a week was particularly helpful because while students worked in class on assignments I could assist those who needed extra help. When working one-on-one with students I was able to teach them general strategies that would help them in future assignments. As a result of this extra attention, Ms. Day noticed that these students engaged themselves in the class more and completed more assignments.
My curriculum work with Ms. Day was focused on several different areas: vocabulary, grammar, and essay development/organization. Ms. Day regularly gave vocabulary quizzes but I observed that students needed more skills for learning vocabulary from context. I taught a lesson in identifying vocabulary from context which focused on making students aware of and confident in their ability to guess at the meaning of words. Several students reported that they found the technique taught in the lesson helpful in future reading assignments. I believe that Ms. Day will use this lesson, along with other strategies I shared with her, to emphasize identifying vocabulary from context more in the future.
Ms. Day was particularly concerned about how to deal with grammatical problems without taking up too much class time with exercises. While we had many conversations about dealing with grammar, I’m not sure how much her teaching has changed as a result. Her students’ grammar improved over the course of the semester because they did a lot of writing and because Ms. Day stressed the importance of proofreading by requiring revision. My role was mostly to reassure her that working with their grammatical problems in the context of their actual writing is more effective than “skilling and drilling.” We discussed how I deal with grammar and error at the college level and also how to effectively mark errors when they appear in the essays.
Ms. Day already focused much of her class time on teaching her students how to develop and organize essays, so my role was to mostly support and assist her in this endeavor. The initial writing assessment test (DWS—Diagnostic Writing Service) that was given as part of the CAPI project was very effective in revealing to both Ms. Day and the students just how much work they needed in understanding the elements of an essay.
Students responded to the writing assessment with little awareness of paragraphing, forming a thesis, or developing an idea. Throughout the year Ms. Day and I met to discuss how to create essay assignments in such a way that her students would be able to effectively respond to them, how to help students find a thesis, and how to help them focus and develop their paragraphs. I taught a lesson in class myself on paragraphing based on Francis Christensen’s teaching method.
Near the end of the year, prior to retaking the DWS assessment test, I conducted a review of how to organize and develop an essay and was impressed by the understanding the students had gained over the course of the year of how to go about forming an effective essay. Though the results of the assessment test did not show significant improvement, when reviewing the essays myself I observed that most of the students had done much better at creating a thesis statement, using paragraphs effectively, and developing their points with details and examples. I think it is much more likely as a result of our work that these students will be able to pass the essay portion of the EPT (English Placement Test) by the time they take it.
Overall I would say that this program gave Ms. Day a rare chance to reflect on her own teaching methods, to gain more confidence in what she is doing right in her active teaching of writing techniques, and to engage in conversations with other teachers that will help her improve her teaching. The students gained more confidence as well as specific writing skills over the course of the year, and as a result of the CAPI program in particular they became more aware of the expectations of college writing and came closer to meeting those expectations.
Jeff Weathers
I participated in Mr. Weathers’ 4th period Senior Regular English class during the Fall semester and his 5th period Senior Regular English class during the Spring semester. As a result I ended up working with approximately 70 of his students over the course of the year. Mr. Weathers’ class involved a lot of writing because he had students working on journals for at least 10–15 minutes every day.
The journal assignments asked them to reflect on quotes from or related to the literature they were reading in class. But despite the strong focus on writing, Mr. Weathers lacked an effective method for teaching students how to develop and organize a formal essay. He was wary of teaching methods that were too prescriptive and would limit his students’ creativity, because he recognized that there are many different ways to develop an effective essay. However his students, as evidenced by the initial DWS, had little conception of how to focus an essay on a thesis or organize an essay into paragraphs, and therefore needed some kind of structure to help them get started.
I introduced Mr. Weathers to the Francis Christensen method of paragraphing and showed him how to adapt it to meet his needs. I taught this method in both of the classes I was observing, but Mr. Weathers used it in all of his classes. It fit his style of teaching perfectly because it provided the students with some structure for beginning and moving through a paragraph without laying out a specific formula for students to simply fill in.
Mr. Weathers adapted Christensen paragraphing into many different types of handouts and lessons. His essay assignments became more structured and helpful for the students. He continued daily journal assignments, but also began showing students how to move from these initial unstructured thoughts into more decisive formal writing using the Christensen method. He even taught Christensen paragraphing to his fellow English teachers during a department meeting. Mr. Weathers is a very creative and energetic teacher, and so our brief weekly meetings became launching pads for him to develop many new and innovative lessons.
Mr. Weathers and I also worked together on managing classroom discussions. I encouraged him to engage students in more small group work, because the size of the class and the ability of students to avoid participating was leaving many students unengaged. We created together many different activities for the unit he spent the most time on, Their Eyes Were Watching God, with some success.
The students were the most engaged during this unit out of all the others and actually completed more of the reading. During the second semester, the class that I observed had significantly worse classroom behavior than the previous class. They participated less, became distracted more, and completed fewer assignments. We spent many meetings discussing how to meet these challenges including how to conduct classroom discussions more effectively and how to quiz the students to keep them on task. There was some improvement over the course of the semester in this area.
As in Ms. Day’s class, I conducted a review in Mr. Weather’s classes of the elements of an essay before their final DWS. I found their understanding of the writing techniques we had covered a little less clear, which may be because I was only able to spend one semester with each group. However, I made that choice because a student teacher was taking over the original class and I wanted to continue working with Mr. Weathers. I feel that was the right choice because Mr. Weathers got a lot our work together. With the time and support the program provided he was able to develop ideas and tackle problems, like the need to teach more structured writing techniques, that he probably would not have otherwise. As a result all of his classes this year benefited from the work we did together.
Michael Kramer
As with Mr. Weathers, because of the introduction of a student teacher in one of Mr. Kramers classes, I observed a different Senior Regular level English class each semester, and therefore worked with approximately 70 different students. At the beginning of the year Mr. Kramer was providing the least direct writing instruction of all three teachers I worked with. While he provided writing instruction in his Honors level classes, he did not feel the Regular level students had the ability and especially the interest to receive such instruction. These were the students, however, who needed it the most, so I proceeded to show Mr. Kramer ways that writing instruction could be adapted to their level and keep their attention engaged. I taught lessons in his class on creating thesis statements and topic sentences, and joining ideas with coordination and subordination.
Both lessons were very successful; they kept the students’ attention, and the majority of students used the techniques at least in some places in their next paper. But I found that what they had learned wasn’t being reinforced by the way Mr. Kramer responded to their papers. Mr. Kramer and I discussed how teacher comments can be used to provide and reinforce writing instruction. We developed a grading sheet that allowed him to evaluate and comment on the individual elements of the essay, like the thesis statement or topic sentences, which he then adapted to fit each different assignment.
Mr. Kramer and I worked together on an entire unit about violence on television, which I adapted from a unit I have done in my college courses. The unit included lessons on taking notes on readings, distinguishing facts from opinions, developing a thesis, creating paragraph topics and topic sentences, developing paragraphs with details, quoting and paraphrasing, rebutting the opposing side’s argument, and using concession words. During this lesson the students were exposed to all of the skills they would need for a college level English class. They were surprised by the amount of work involved, but many rose to the challenge and mastered at least some of the above skills. The unit gave Mr. Kramer and I a chance to work on how to scaffold a writing assignment from start to finish, from creating a clear assignment with specific guidelines, to providing direct instruction for each step in the writing process.
In addition to providing more writing instruction, I wanted to see Mr. Kramer involve the students more in discussing and analyzing the literature they worked on in class. Mr. Kramer primarily lectured on the literature, but his students would need the skills to understand and analyze literature on their own when they arrived at college. I spent two class periods modeling how I would teach a short story in a college classroom, including class discussion questions, small group work, and a creative project, that all pushed students to analyze the story on their own. I’m not sure how much I was able to affect Mr. Kramer’s teaching in this area; however, with my help he did begin to use the notebooks that he had students keep in class to do more reader response work than previously, pushing them to do more reflective thinking of their own.
Mr. Kramer probably got the most out of the program of all three teachers, because the program helped change his attitude toward his Regular level students. He had pretty much given up on his ability to improve their writing, but the work we did together showed him many techniques for direct writing instruction which I believe he will continue to use in the future. While there certainly continued to be some students who did not care enough about what was being taught to benefit from it, many of the students were grateful for the instruction and even sought me out outside of class for extra help with their writing. Both Mr. Kramer and his students are now more aware of what the college expectations are and how to get there.
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