Literacy Project 1 Analysis

Analysis
I based this analysis on the only writing sample that McKinley would share with me, his color poem; a short essay he wrote in October 2010 which his teacher sent to me because McKinley was hesitant to share his writing with me; and his spelling inventory.
Meaning and Ownership
McKinley willingly shared his “Green” color poem with me at our first meeting. The poem contained a number of easily recognizable green objects such as plants, grass, limes, and slime. The poem consisted of three stanzas, with 4 lines comprising each stanza. The first and third lines were to have five syllables and the second and forth lines were to have four syllables and rhyme. McKinley’s first stanza does not rhyme, and all the ending words of his last stanza rhyme but the poem seems to deviate from the green focus; the last two lines being: “Solar beam is sight, People are right!” McKinley also showed me his notes as he brainstormed for the poem and many of his ideas, such as “mint, continent, Sprite, leaves, Exit sign, aliens, and soldiers”, never made it into his final version. McKinley shared his first draft of the poem, which does not follow any of the rhyming convention, but has a much more natural flow to the writing. McKinley showed me how he separated his green brainstorm into different sensory categories, and his first draft poem paints a more robust description of green. Two of the lines that evoke this sensory expression are, “Green is lime, Green makes you cool, chill, have fun” and “Green feels like slime, Green is mint.”
McKinley was very reluctant to share any of his other writings with me, so I asked his teacher for another writing sample. I wonder what his response would have been if I had first shared with him another piece of my own writing. Routman encourages teachers to share their own writing life with their students in order to bond with the students (Writing Essentials, p.44-45). The writing sample I received from McKinley’s teacher was an essay written over three months ago. I don’t know if this is a piece that McKinley chose, or if his teacher simply passed along an old writing assignment. The piece is a five-paragraph essay, with an introduction, three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. The piece is not titled, but the subject of the writing is “a hidden child”. I am not sure if this essay is a response to another book or an actual event. McKinley mentions a girl named Monique who “lived in five places” and he describes the difficulty of finding a hiding place. It is unclear who the hidden child is and why he or she needs to be in hiding.
Six Trait Assessment
Regarding McKinley’s “Green” poem, his brainstorm ideas were very original in that he tied color representations to the five senses. However, his final product did not incorporate many of his most creative ideas and the result was a disconnected ramble with no discernable point. His essay was centered around the topic of “a hidden child”, but McKinley failed to explain who is a hidden child. His essay left the reader with multiple questions. His writing appeared to come from some experience or personal knowledge, but he needed more detail in order to connect to his readers in a personal way.
In terms of organization, McKinley’s writing assessment essay from October is textbook. This piece of writing has a recognizable introduction and conclusion, easily identified because both are labeled. His introduction is intriguing, “What was it like to be a hidden child?” McKinley claims it was difficult or “almost impossible” and then lists his three reasons: “hunger”, moving from place to place, and finding adequate hiding places. The next three paragraphs deal with each reason in turn, showing logical sequencing. McKinley’s pacing is fairly controlled, although he could spend more time on details.
McKinley’s voice comes through loud and clear on the “hidden child” piece. He speaks directly to the reader in a compelling way in his introduction, claiming “I’ll explain everything if you read this essay.” The writer connects with his readers by offering expressive warnings in the form of multiple exclamation points, capitalized letters (“MURDERED!!!”), and lingering questions such as “what are you gonna do?”. McKinley’s voice in his “Green” poem was sacrificed to the mechanics of the poem structure and his descriptions of common-place green objects feels jumbled. His first draft of the poem has more engaging language and descriptions which point to the person behind the words.
McKinley’s word choice in his essay and poem leave room for improvement. His poem structure was repetitive and he used common-place or unimaginative words in his final draft. McKinley was able to brainstorm some creative descriptors of the color green, but sadly many of these did not make the final draft. In his essay, McKinley repeatedly used the word “difficult” to describe being a hidden child. I think McKinley’s writing would benefit from a classroom word wall (Routman, WE, p. 165) where more descriptive and active words could be modeled to replace tired or overused words. McKinley is an English language learner and so a word wall would enhance his language learning. McKinley did struggle with some language and parts of speech in his writing. McKinley used the cliché “okey dokie” which seemed out of place both with the tone of the essay and the preceding sentence.
In regards to sentence fluency, McKinley did have a cadence to his poem and his essay. He effectively varied his sentence or poetry line length, and his fragment sentences added style and voice. Indeed, there are parts of his essay that invite expressive oral reading, such as “if you hide in a bad place, uh oh! MURDERED!!!”. Many of the lines in McKinley’s first and final draft poems begin with the word “Green” which gets tedious. In his essay, McKinley opened with a question, “What was it like to be a hidden child?” and each of the following paragraphs begins by restating the question in the answer, but the phrasing is incorrect. For example, “One reason what was it like to be a hidden child is hunger.” This specific type of phrasing error seems common among English language learners.
I was pleasantly surprised by some of the writing conventions that McKinley used in his essay. He effectively manipulated conventions for style and to show voice. McKinley successfully organized his paragraphs around a main point and his paragraph breaks were appropriately used. His essay had just one spelling error. Ending punctuation and beginning sentence capitalization were used correctly most of the time. McKinley did struggle with grammar mistakes and these mistakes affected meaning, which was distracting. McKinley’s poem also contained just one spelling error, “sabre” for saber; but he correctly used parenthesis and punctuation. McKinley’s attention to punctuation conventions helps the reader; without the consistent use of capitals and punctuation his writing would be terribly confusing as Routman explains in Writing Essentials (p. 161).
Spelling Development
McKinley completed the Elementary Spelling Inventory on January 13, 2011. He spelled 20 of the 25 words correctly. His five spelling errors were “shoping” (shopping), “caddle” (cattle), “seller” (cellar), “fortunite” (fortunate), and “opizition” (opposition). Since McKinley is an ELL student, I was impressed with his spelling ability. He correctly spelled “civilize”, “pleasure”, and “confident” which were among the more challenging words on the list. McKinley made only one spelling mistake in his color poem and one mistake in his essay (“excape” for escape). Based on McKinley’s misspellings, I would classify him to be in the Syllables and Affixes spelling stage. A majority of his misspellings took place somewhere in the middle of the words, not at the beginning or end. Another thing to note with his misspellings is that they can be pronounced similarly, if not identically, to the correct word, with the exception of “shoping”. I anticipate McKinley’s spelling to improve as he learns about bases and root words, and the various affixes that can be attached to these base/root words.