Report from a Study Group - The Narrative Continuum

PS 154 - December 20, 2007

Teachers had a compelling need to simplify the continuum document to make it easier to use to evaluate on demand writing 3x a year and as a tool to evaluate all the narrative writing that students produce during the school year.

It was important that the study group worked across grades to break down barriers between teachers, end the blame game, and clarify the meaning that could be derived from on-demand writing.

One teacher explained that in the past while looking at student writing it was hard to notice anything besides misspellings or things the student could not do. With the studying of the continuum, she learned the essential elements of narrative writing and the differences between lower and higher levels of proficiency and can now better help students move up the levels.

Discoveries
No child will ever be a perfect level because they cannot so easily fit into a category.

Teachers began the process of simplifying the narrative continuum document by focusing on learning a range of levels(3,4,5) well by looking at the samples of student work and the language of the document. Then they underlined parts of the student sample that matched the language and made their own notes describing the work on the booklet. Then they looked at all the jottings on the page to create a simplified description of the characteristics.

They then tried the revised continuum to evaluate student writing and worked with partners to reach agreement. They found that the first few writing samples took much conversation and time but got quicker and less controversial with practice.

The teachers talked about the excitement of the thinking that was involved and the energy that comes from conversation with like minded colleagues. They worked during preps to type the document and came to each study group meeting prepared so that the work could progress in the time they had to complete the task. They never doubted their ability to complete the revision but they weren’t always sure what form the work would take.

They saw the need to create a teacher observation checklist for the on demand writing which would help to discover what students could do alone and what minilessons or small group instruction might be needed. Some teachers are using the tool as a checklist and others are adding comments and making it more of an anecdotal.

The excitement about producing something new which would help teachers and students drove the work and made the teachers proud of what they could accomplish. They admit that they love their charts and are constantly exchanging them and revising. During the sharing of the culminated projects, teachers are able to mark the pages they want to copy with a post-it note. This leads to increased exchange of ideas.

Rubrics that are created by teachers help them to manage and make sense of the data.
Teachers are covered by subs for their study group time and are given make up preps for additional time. They all agreed that study group time is time well spent.