Starting the Write Way

Things are going well in first grade.

Today I received a kind and encouraging email from a parent. She mentioned how happy she was that her daughter was in my class, as I had done so well with her other daughter my first year of teaching. She noted that there was something for me in her daughter's backpack. Upon arriving to school, the little darling whipped out a fresh loaf of cinnamon swirl bread. Yummy. Happy teacher was I.

Later we completed our fourth (yes, fourth!) class book. We have made two class graphs, completed several worksheets, read a stack of books and much more. Things are really cruising.

This year our district adopted a new report card for k-3rd grades. They will rely less on standardized tests (summative assessment - a glimpse of what that child can accomplish at that particular moment on that particular subject) and more on work samples and observations (formative assessment). This is exciting because formative assessments are so much more accurate; if a child is having a bad day and bombs a test on a subject they understand, I have all of their other work to back it up. If a child somehow aces a paper on something I know they do not understand, I will have other work to back that up.

It's a good thing, but it's a hard thing. We have to rework how we assess, how we organize, even how we teach. In doing so, I have been trying to collect work samples for student portfolios. I had the kids write today, and was blown away by what they produced.

As a whole, this group is writing astoundingly complicated sentences with amazing accuracy. Before full day Kindergarten, the first months of school were filled with sentences like "I see a cat. I see a dog. I see a horse." For months! Today I set the kids free and saw sentences like, "I was camping and I was roasting marshmallows and I saw a deer. I was surprised." and "Me and my uncle went to Washington. We went for a visit. I was born there, so I moved away from Washington."

Now, granted... these were not spelled the way I wrote them. But I just cannot believe the amount of coherent writing these kids are already producing. This is so exciting because one of my favorite things about first grade is watching their writing change and improve. I can't wait to see what these kids are capable of.