Analyzing Students’ Spelling or Grammar Based on Articles

Language and Language Development

Nina Godette

While analyzing students’ writing samples I chose to use Schleppegrell’s

framework. I chose to use this framework because of the nature of the assignment. The
assignment was to write an opinion response to would you rather have lived in Sparta or
Athens. Schleppegrell would classify this prompt as expository because the student is
reporting, explaining, and arguing their opinion based on factual information learned.
This writing response comes after students learned about life in ancient Greece with a
focus on the city-states Sparta and Athens. While conducting the lessons students
helped to create anchor charts for the whole class to refer to outlining the key details of
Sparta one day and Athens another. The class also did a compare and contrast of life in
Sparta and life in Athens to further extend our learning.

The students who I have chosen to compare come from different cultural
backgrounds, different levels of achievement, and different genders. Student 1 is
identified as a GATE learner, boy, and of a japanese/caucasian background as an
English speaker. Student 2 is a proficient/approaching proficiency student with
inconsistent performance, girl, of a caucasian background, with a single mom (no dad
present in student’s life), and a lot of absences. Student 3 is identified as an ELL
learner, girl, performing well below grade level, and of an Indian background.

When completing the assignment the class first reviewed how life in Sparta and
Athens were drastically different. Next, I went over the expectations of our writing rubric
for opinion writings and our T-chart used for planning purposes. Students were
reminded all sentences start with a capital letter and end with an ending mark. Students
were all reminded of having a topic sentence, transitions, two reasons for their opinion
as well as an elaboration for each reason, and finally a concluding sentence. Students
were then released to work independently to plan and then respond to the prompt.
Minimal assistance was provided to be able to accurately gauge each student's ability to
respond to the prompt and meet the necessary requirements of a second grade opinion
paragraph.

Based on the framework presented by Schleppegrell I analyzed the writing first

by looking to see if students met the requirements based on our writing rubric. Then I
looked a little deeper into the usage of verb phrases, noun phrases, and linking clauses.
While analyzing the writing you can see student 1 utilizing all three of these strategies
creating sentences that make sense, flow, and build upon each other. Within student 2’s
writing you can see where she would benefit from extra practice in using verb phrases.
While looking at student 3’s writing it is clear that she is able to provide information
learned from the lessons about Athens and is able to use the anchor charts to gather
information, however she was unable to provide transitions and elaborate on her
reasons. For this reason she would benefit from extra practice in noun phrases and
linking clauses. Using this framework allowed me to break down what specific areas of
sentence building would be most beneficial for each student.

Student 3’s writings lack elaboration and use of transitions shows there is a
disconnect in being able to speak in complete sentences while using the English
language. This student could benefit from practicing oral language skills while using the
English language, as well as more practice with English vocabulary. This lack of
knowledge may be hindering her from elaborating on her ideas to explain why her
reasons were important to her. Student 3 and student 2 could benefit from learning and
applying conjunctions and transitions in their writing to connect their ideas. Student 2
was able to provide the transition first to introduce her first reason, while student 3 did
not use any transitions. Both of these students could also benefit in learning more
adjectives to describe and add detail to their writing.

Using Schleppegrell’s framework allows me to analyze a student’s writing beyond

the requirements of the grading rubric. It allows me to target and pinpoint areas of
improvement to be embedded in whole group writing instruction as well as provides
data on what to expand on in small group with students who need a more direct and
explicit form of practice and instruction.