Marsi Kraynak

EDR 541-Practice-Based Inquiry Assignment

Part 1:
How can I create writing curriculum that is responsive to my students? How can I modify
the grade-level curriculum in order to enable all students to grow as writers?
In my third grade classroom we use the Lucy Calkins Units of Writing as our writing
curriculum for all students. While this program worked well for my students last year who
already had a strong set of writing skills, I am concerned that the program will not be responsive
to the writing needs of my current students who receive learning support and do not have as
strong of a foundation in basic writing skills. This concern was made especially evident recently
while looking at my current third-graders on-demand narrative writing assessments. This
assessment is given prior to the start of a writing unit to assess what students already know and
are able to do as writers of a particular genre. For this piece, students were given 45-minutes to
write a small-moment, personal narrative. While the expectation is that the students should spend
the time planning and crafting a narrative piece that is at least a page long, the majority of my
current students lost stamina after just 15-20 minutes with just a few sentences/phrases written
on their paper. After encouraging students to keep going, students only produced about a half of
a page of writing. Additionally, the writing of many of my students was very far below the
expected quality of an average third-grade writer. The needs of my students span from a student
who could only produce a page of approximately 10 isolated sentences, all beginning with Then
I, about his entire trip to Disney World to another student whose writing was illegible as
spelling and lack of punctuation made it nearly impossible to comprehend the ideas of the piece.
For another student, three sentences was the most that they could produce in the 45-minute time

frame. While looking at these pieces, I quickly realized that I would need to help my students to
increase their writing stamina in order to give them the strategies and scaffolding to improve
their writing. Additionally, looking at the specific needs of my students as writers, I became
aware that my instructional practices will need to be modified in order to be responsive to my
students current needs, interests and goals. If I were to just dive into the current writing
curriculum and present the strategies as suggested, much of the instruction would go right over
the students heads. Instruction that is not in the students zone of proximal development is not
going to be meaningful or provide them with appropriate opportunities for growth. This is
making me ask myself, How does my writing instruction need to change to be responsive to my
students needs? What methods can I use to facilitate significant growth for all of my students.
This relates to the course theme of literacy as a critical social practice. If I were to just teach the
current writing curriculum, without making modifications in order to be responsive to my
students needs, I would be privileging those students in the class who already have established
writing skills. Instruction would be limiting those students in my class that need more
scaffolding or direct instruction in terms of the third-grade level writing skills and strategies.
Through this inquiry I hope to learn how to be a more effective writing teacher that is able to
meet the needs of all of my learners. I would like to be a teacher that is able to stretch those
strong writers and to grow those that struggle to get their ideas down onto paper coherently. I
am interested in how my teaching and also my feedback to students enables them to see
themselves as writers and to improve in the subject area.
Part 2:
The question for my inquiry came as a result of my realization that my students writing
was more puzzling to me than any other class I have taught. In looking at their writing and

watching them as writers, I saw that while they have a love of writing, it is an area where many
of them need guided practice and modeling. My students love to share their stories with one
another, but they often find themselves at a loss for words when it comes time to put these
ideas and stories onto paper in written form. For some it is due to stamina for the actual
producing of letters, words, and sentences. Others it is that they struggle to see how writing must
be clear and descriptive in nature in order for a reader to understand or visualize what the text is
saying. My question is important to me because as I studied my students writing and thought
about the writing curriculum that I would teach them, I became concerned about whether my
instruction would be appropriate for who they currently are as writers. My concern was that the
lessons would be ineffective in helping my students to apply the strategies into their own pieces.
I am a third grade, regular education teacher, in a semi-rural, suburban school district in
Chester County, Pennsylvania. This is my first year teaching a class of learning-support students
who receive instructional support from various specialists that push into the classroom
throughout the school day. While some of the students have a diagnosed learning disability,
many have not been identified, but still receive a great deal of instructional support to access the
grade-level curriculum. Of my twenty-one students, 20 are White with one being AfricanAmerican. Most of my students come from families where they live with both parents and
siblings. The majority of the families would fall into the category of middle-class, with just a
few falling closer to lower middle-class. All of the families are supportive and willing to work
with their child at home. Our school is fortunate enough to have many specialists present in the
school to meet the various needs of students. Some of the specialists that work with my students
are the reading specialist, math specialist, instruction support teacher, special education teacher,
school psychologist, speech and language pathologist, and occupational therapist.

I, myself, live about one mile from the school in which I teach. This allows me the
ability to relate to my students social culture and environment outside of school. I am a White,
middle-class female in her late-twenties. I grew up living with both of my parents and my
younger sister. While my mother was born in Italy and speaks Italian fluently, English was the
only language spoken between me and my parents at home. I feel as though these experiences
have helped me to embrace other cultures and languages and generate curiosity in the dynamics
of language. I studied the Spanish language for approximately eleven years with the intention of
using my knowledge to communicate with English Language Learning students within my
regular education classroom. This is my sixth year of teaching elementary aged students and
my third year of teaching 3rd grade at my current school. All of the students in my class speak
English as their only language.
My family values education and was able to instill a love of learning at a very young age.
Throughout my schooling, my parents were supportive and involved in my learning experiences
helping with homework and volunteering in my school. While I loved school and wanted to be a
teacher from an early age, there were subjects that posed difficulty for me in school. I do not
remember anything about learning to read or write other than it just seemed to happen naturally.
On the other hand, I have many memories of learning various math skills as this was a subject in
which I did not pick up as quickly. I believe it is for this reason that I feel as though I have more
strategies to teach my students who are struggling in math than I do for those that struggle with
writing.
Our district has created benchmarks and a standards-based report card that is aligned with
the Pennsylvania State Common Core. We conduct a variety of assessments throughout the year
to monitor student progress and determine areas of need. Much of our interventions and

instructional approaches are assessment driven, but conducted in a more authentic way. We do
not have a scripted Reading program and teachers are given flexibility with instruction when
using our Math and Writing programs. In our district, we are provided with a week-by-week
map of reading and writing skills that should be covered. Assessments and report card standards
are based off of these skills. Throughout the year, walk-thru and formal observations are
conducted to collect data on current instructional practices. Often times, professional
development sessions for teachers are based upon the findings of these observations. For this
reason, I feel as though my district is supportive of its teachers and has intentions to help all
teachers to grow as educators who effectively collaborate with one another. We are fortunate
enough to have an Academic Coach, whose role includes meeting with teachers to discuss
instructional ideas, modeling of lessons, coaching, and leading professional development
sessions. Teacher questions and concerns are embraced in my school. There are a number of
specialists on hand to help answer questions or to bounce ideas off of. We have a very involved
and supportive principal who helps to create a rich and inviting learning environment. We are
one of the smaller schools in the district, but we do house grades K-6, including an early
intervention preschool class. While the majority of the faculty in the school is made up of
female teachers, we do have about a quarter of the faculty represented by male teachers. Very
few of the teachers in the school have been teaching for more than 20 years. Most teachers are in
their twenties and thirties and have a masters degree in some education-related field. Teachers
in the school can be seen working collaboratively as a team very often. In my own grade level,
we plan together each week in addition to our weekly team meetings. As a school we meet once
a week for our Whole Faculty Study Group meetings which usually involve collaboration with
our academic coach or another specialist to look at new instructional ideas. Teachers young and

old value each others ideas and knowledge when collaborating. The school culture creates a
safe environment for those who are new to teaching and those who have been around for a while.
All students are celebrated in our school and through modeling learn to be accepting and
respectful of others. While we have an anti-bullying program at the school, we have few
instances of true bullying occurring at school. The majority of our students come from homes
where both parents work outside of the home. For this reason, some students are expected to
complete their homework independently without parental support. In addition to school, students
participate in a variety of extracurricular activities and sports. While many students share stories
of their extracurricular activities, there are many students who do not engage in extracurricular
activities outside of school and spend a great deal of time at home playing video games. As a
child I enjoyed school and played a variety of sports. I still lead an active life balancing
teaching, graduate school, and exercising routinely. For this reason, I sometimes have difficulty
relating to students who do not share in my love for school and learning. While my family life
and cultural experiences are similar to those of many of my students, I also struggle to relate to
those families that are not involved with their childrens learning or who do not establish the
values of strong work habits at an early age.
I believe that it is rooted in the fact that learning to write seemed to be such a natural
process for me that has made it difficult for me to teach writing to my students; particularly for
those students whom writing does not come naturally.
Part 3:
Date

Actions
Interview & Conversations
with Academic Coach and
Special Education teachers

Goals
We will also look at more
recent student writing to
decide how to modify lessons

10/3, 10/10, 10/17

Daily, throughout the Writing

unit

10/16 & 10/23

regarding Writing instruction.

Meetings for conversation and
interview with the Academic
Coach will take place each
Friday from 12:00-12:30. The
Special Education teacher will
attend these meetings and
conversations when her
schedule allows. Separate
meetings to look more closely
at student work and individual
lessons will be held with me
and the Special Education
teacher once a week, on our
Day 1, from 11:45-12:15.

from the current third-grade

curriculum. By looking at the
writing that students have
done in their Writers
Notebook and also at their
focused piece of writing, we
will see which areas we want
to focus our mini-lessons. We
have discussed focusing on
content as our first goal, but
will adjust that goal as we see
fit for students. We will look
at how the supports that we
currently have in place and the
modifications that we have
made to instruction have
affected student learning.
Student work analysisLooking at the students
Looking more closely at what writing pieces more closely
students are doing in their
will help to gauge where miniWriters Notebook writing and lessons are still needed. I will
in their focused personal
also be able to see what they
narrative. Making
writer is taking away from the
observations of student
mini-lessons and trying out in
writing behaviors and
their own independent writing.
recording anecdotal notes of
Keeping a record of anecdotal
conversations and
notes of observations and
observations during small
writing conversations during
group work and individual
conferences will help when
writing conferences with
setting new goals as students
students. Looking at the
grow.
students writing pieces more
closely will help to gauge
where mini-lessons are still
needed. I will also be able to
see what they writer is taking
away from the mini-lessons
and trying out in their own
independent writing.
Read and reflect on research
of others- Flores et. Al.
Transforming Deficit Myths
About Learning, Language,
and Culture

The goal of reading these

pieces is to gain a different
perspective of how to look at
student work. I feel as though
when I look at a students
writing, I immediately go to

Lucy Calkins- The Art of

Writing

what needs to be fix or where

I need to help this student.
Viewing my students writing
from the perspective of seeing
what they are doing well as
writers and highlighting those
areas is what I would like to
improve upon. I believe that I
tend to have this less positive
perspective towards writing
because I often feel as though
I am the least comfortable
teaching writing, especially to
students for whom writing
does not come easily. My
feelings are totally different
when looking at a student who
may be displaying the same
difficulty with reading. I
believe that is because I am
much more confident in my
knowledge of various
instructional strategies that
can be used and taught to help
the student.
Reading the first few chapters
of Lucy Calkins will likely
help with ideas for ways that
the curriculum can be
modified for students who
need more support. I feel that
the language that she uses in
many of her lessons is framed
in a positive light and
emphasizes what the students
are doing well in their writing.

Part 4:
Copies of data will be provided with the hard copy of this assignment.
Part 5:

As I am studying the students writing now after making changes to the writing instruction, I
am surprised to see that all of them have been able to increase their writing stamina which in turn
has increased the length of their pieces. My student who initially wrote isolated sentences on
separate lines is now writing in narrative form and using sensory details to help create a visual in
the readers mind. Through explicit modeling of how to include dialogue, feelings, and
descriptive details, he has been able to apply this learning into his writing to make it sound more
like a story and less like a report. For my student who struggled to get more than just a few
sentences on the page, he is now writing 1-2 pages per Writers Workshop session. You can see
the change in his attitude towards writing and his engagement in the subject. He came into third
grade believing that because he struggles with spelling words, that no one would ever be able to
read his writing. I have tried to encourage him to write and write and focus on his great ideas
and less on the spelling of words. I let him know that we will use tools later on in the writing
process to fix up spelling. Being freed of the stress that spelling brings him during writing seems
to have really given him the space to just write! It was such a great experience when I sat down
with him after he wrote two pages of his story and saw the proud look of accomplishment on his
face. When the other students overheard my excitement, they began chanting the accomplished
students name. While a chant at the end of writing was not the ideal scenario, it was so great for
this student to see his classmates celebrating him as a writer! The biggest change to instruction
has been the increase in modeling of writing strategies and more explicit, broken down,
objectives for each writing period. In previous lessons, the students would begin writing their
story and would be expected to just write across pages to draft their ideas. Then they would go
back to revise and add in dialogue, details, and aspects to improve their storyteller voice. The
special education teacher, with whom I co-teach writing, and I saw how much the students

struggled with stamina to draft their entire story and then go back and write in revisions and
details. Therefore, during the students second story, we broke the objectives and parts of the
draft down. We decided that we would work on one part of the draft at a time. For example,
after rehearsing their story, we reminded the students of the different types of leads that a writer
might use. We then modeled how to try out different leads to find one that seemed to fit best
with the story. After modeling, the students spent the writing time thinking about the leads that
they might try, writing out three different leads, and then choosing the one that they liked the
best. The lead was the only aspect that the students worked on that first day. The second day
followed a similar sequence with us modeling how to write a strong beginning before having the
students work on drafting just the beginning of their story. The one strategy that we noticed was
helpful to the students was the planning part of drafting. Therefore, we had students story-tell to
a partner before sketching five different sequential scenes of their story. This really helped the
students as they played the mental movie of their story before they began writing each day.
Overall, the data indicates that my students strongly benefit from more prewriting and planning
strategies before they begin drafting. Additionally, visual cues and graphic organizers help them
to collect their ideas and create a map for their story. Having more explicit instruction on the
individual parts of the draft, as well as more modeling of writing, has really helped to increase
the students stamina and quality of narrative writing.
Part 6:
Based on my data analysis, I have learned that the majority of the students that I currently
have in my class benefit from additional prewriting activities such as orally telling the story,
sketching scenes from the story, and mapping ideas for their beginning, middle, and end. By
storytelling, the students are able to include the descriptive details and dialogue in their story

without the burden and added work of having to actually write everything down. The rate at
which they speak is closer to the pace at which their mind is thinking. When they are writing,
they often times get slowed down because their writing cannot keep pace with how quickly their
mind is replaying the story. During the actual drafting portion of the writing process, the
students have benefited from more explicit instruction on how they can use more of a storyteller
voice to make sure that their writing sounds like a narrative piece rather than a report of events.
Through modeling of writing and the creation of anchor charts that get displayed throughout the
room, the students have had greater success in applying these strategies into their own writing.
Another aspect that has improved their stamina and quality of writing has been breaking the
writing down into more manageable parts. Having the students sit and draft their entire story
over several days was daunting and overwhelming for many of the students. Some struggled to
manage their time, some raced through without elaborating with detail, and some just struggled
to get the ideas onto paper. Therefore, by the time it came to revision, many of the students had
totally lost stamina and felt as though there was nothing else they could add to their piece. After
making changes and having the students work on their writing in parts, they were able to focus
their attention to just the one part that they were to work on that day. If they completed that part
or wanted to go back to another part that they had previously worked on, they could also do that.
This helped the students with managing their time and also with maintaining a higher level of
narrative writing quality throughout their piece.
Two different course themes arose during this inquiry study. The theme of teacher
inquiry and the question regarding the various approaches to gathering and interpreting data in
order to take action based on learning was evident as I looked closely at my student writers.
While looking at the data, I noticed that these additional prewriting and organizational strategies

were helpful to a lot of my students, for others, the graphic organizers and prompts for revision
stifled their creativity and quality of narrative writing. A few of my students benefitted more
from just sitting and drafting their narrative piece straight through instead of breaking it into
parts. Having the organizer that prompted them to consider adding various types of sensory
details made them feel as though they had to insert these details into their writing, even if it
wasnt the most appropriate place/time. For this reason, I modeled for all students how the
organizer could help them with elaboration in their writing, but I presented the visual as just an
optional tool. Through analyzing the data I learned that my changes to instruction were
beneficial to many of my students, but not all. For the ones that it was not beneficial, it was just
a matter of giving them more freedom to write without so much structure and explicit prompting.
Another theme that connected to my learning throughout this project was the theme of
literacy as critical social practice. A few of the questions related to this theme came up through
my reflection on writing instruction in my classroom. The idea of creating authentic writing
experiences for my students that were relevant to their lives, resources, and interests was
something that related to our narrative writing topics. To engage the writers, they each wrote
about a small moment from their own life that had personal significance. By writing about a real
experience that matters to them, students could more easily include emotions, dialogue and
details to recreate the moment for readers. Additionally, students were eager to share their
stories with others. After working so hard on their narrative pieces, students could not wait to
publish their writing and share it with their peers. The idea of working against the discourses of
literacy in order to provide more opportunities for students to learn came up with a few of the
students who did not see themselves as writers at the beginning of the year. One particular
student does not view herself as a strong writer because she worries so much about the wording

of her sentences and spelling of unfamiliar words, that she has difficulty getting her ideas onto
the paper. For this student, having her tell her story orally as we mapped out the details and
events helped her to see her ideas on paper in written form and ease some of her anxiety. For
another student, writing was often a time where he would become easily distracted and where he
would display behavior issues that were not observed to be as serious in other subject areas. This
student shared that he was not a writer because he cant spell words right and no one would ever
be able to read his writing. For this student, changing his view of writing from spelling words
correctly to having great ideas, made a huge difference. One turning point that I observed was
after he had written a whole paragraph of details for the beginning of his story. I sat down at his
seat and excitedly commented on how proud I was of all of the details that he wrote today as a
writer. While I typically have the students read me their writing, I wanted this student to see that
I could understand his story and that his writing had meaning for others too! When I began
reading his piece (ignoring all of the misspelled words), his eyes lit up and there was a noticeable
change in his attitude. From then on, he has continued to show an increase in writing stamina
and overall enjoyment in the subject. He now writes in his free time in a journal that he chose as
a reward for excellent behavior choices. Another change that was observed was the increase in
students wanting to share their writing with peers. Each week numerous students will ask if they
can read their story to the class. This has resulted in our class dedicating the last few minutes of
writers workshop to sharing proud moments/parts from their written pieces.