Looking at the Wrong Thing for all the Right Reasons
HOW A SIMPLE COUNT CAN PROVIDE VITAL DATA FOR TEACHERS AND INCREASE ACHIEVEMENT.
Think about the last time you walked by a board covered in student writing. You stopped to look and read a few sentences. What data were you able to pull from this school-wide staple?
Were you able to provide a clear, quantitative analysis about how well the students were progressing toward meeting grade-level writing expectations?
MAYBE IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE OBSERVING THE WRONG THING FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS.
The value of posted student work to show value for completed work and build pride for student accomplishment notwithstanding, most principals walk right past these boards completely missing one of the simplest yet most important formative data measures available to track student writing progress.
The best part, you don’t have to be a writing expert to know how to analyze it!
All you need to be able to do is count.
The Logic: Students writing should parallel in complexity and sophistication to the expectation of student reading comprehension.
In short: If we expect them to read it, we should them to write it.
The steps are simple.
1. Look for posted student writing around your campus.
2. Choose one to three samples at random.
3. Count the total number of words in the sample.
4. Count the total number of sentences.
5. Divide the number of words by the number of sentences to find the average number of words per sentence.
Do the sentences increase in average length as students’ progress through the grades on your campus?
Are your fifth-grade classes writing shorter sentences than your third-grade classes?
Do the writing samples from one 4th grade class differ in average number of words per sentence from the other 4th grade teachers?
Most importantly, how do the average lengths of student sentences correlate with grade-level writing expectations for state and national testing?
Let’s take a look! The chart below lists the average number of words per sentence across academically Lexiled reading texts for each grade band.
Here are some examples:
Don’t expect these numbers to match up on the first week of school. Use these averages to look for trends over time. Are the average lengths of sentences increasing toward the academic average for each grade level throughout the year or are they remaining stagnant?
There are many subjective factors that are also incredibly valuable when analyzing and judging student writing progress. However, as a principal, a quick quantitative measure that you can use to make sure students are making progress in their ability to academically express their thoughts is a vital tool.
This is even an observation protocol that can be done outside of the school day.
Use this data in conversations about writing instruction with your teachers.