School leads district in meeting state standards

Recent state and local news stories have given a lot of attention to the low number of Oregon high schools meeting state math standards, but writing scores also are of concern to educators. Just 43 percent of fourth-graders passed the state writing exam last year.

Results were worse in the Lebanon School District, with 33 percent of fourth-graders passing the test. Cascades School was the exception: 56 percent of its students passed, 18 points above the next highest achieving school.

The key to Cascades' success is in both its reading and writing programs.

Cascades principal Susan Straight said that about three years ago a group of education specialists began taking an intensive look at each student twice a year to see where they are struggling. As a result, more students who were having difficulty reading have been identified and given additional help.

“There's a direct connection between reading and writing,” Straight said. “The more we had kids who were able to read at grade level, the more they were able to do their writing.”

Last year, Cascades started looking at its writing program, focusing on the conventions of writing: spelling, grammar and punctuation.

The Oregon Department of Education tests the writing abilities of fourth, seventh and 10-graders annually. Brenda DeBates, who taught 30 of Cascades 50 fourth-graders last year, said the first two years she taught she gave students the test and hoped for the best. Then three years ago she decided to take a more pragmatic approach to helping her students achieve better scores.

“I really started looking at the test, asking what is it they need to pass. I started analyzing work samples, and talking to people who grade the work samples.”

The state grades writing samples on four criteria: ideas and content, sentence fluency, convention and organization.

Conventions, DeBates concluded, were the biggest obstacle to students doing well on assessment tests.

“You wouldn't believe how many fourth-graders still don't put in periods and capitals,” DeBates said.

Students in DeBates class receive plenty of practice and instruction on how to edit for the proper use of writing conventions. She has them highlight the first capital letter and go all the way down to the first period.

“Some of the sentences go half way down the page,” she said. “I make them go sentence by sentence because if they don't have periods they're not going to pass.”

Reading aloud also helps catch mistakes. The young writers are taught to ask themselves, “Is it a sentence? If it is sentence, can I make it two sentences?”

Like most things in life, becoming a good writer takes practice and Cascades plans to increase writing time to daily sessions.

“Writing is a skill like any other, you have to write to be able to write,” Straight said.

Straight and DeBates agree reading is one of the keys to making good writers.

“Kids who read widely 90 minutes a day have a huge vocabulary compared to kids who read less than 90 minutes,” Straight said.

“If you read a lot and you read good literature, you're going to be a much better writer,” DeBates said.

Debates' students read 30 minutes a day to themselves. DeBates keeps a selection of “high interest” books on her desks. She eschews book reports as taking the fun out of reading.

“I tell kids if there is one thing I can do for you, it's to make you love reading,” Debates said.

When it comes to choosing books to read aloud to her class, “Captain Underpants” type stories are out; DeBates insists on literature by authors such as Jerry Spinelli and Jack Gantos.

Spinelli's Maniac Magee character follows a young homeless boy dealing with racism while Gantos' series chronicles and the adventures and misadventures of Joey Pigza as he deals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

“You can read two or three grade levels above where kids can read themselves and they understand. It helps extend their vocabulary,” DeBates said.

Through the read-aloud sessions, DeBates believe students learn to recognize the writing styles that appeal to them and emulate it in their own writing.

Conventions and literature contribute to better writing, to be sure, but DeBates is convinced that the Oregon Department Education's rule change letting students use a word processing program and online dictionaries to compose their writing submissions has made the single largest difference in her students writing scores. Ideas and content flow better when they don't have to worry about erasing and starting over, she said.

“I try to tell people, ‘get your kids on word processors,'” Debates said. “A third-grade teachers said, ‘I took my kids to the computer lab, are you sure that's legal? They wrote so much better, and they wrote for so long.'”

“I think the word is spreading slowly,” DeBates said.

Straight, who reluctantly made the switch to word processing in the ‘90s after vowing to be forever a paper and pencil writer, can attest first-hand how word processing improves writing.

“I finally started word processing, and my experience is what I think the kids are experiencing, Straight said, “All of a sudden I was free to try anything out and know that I didn't have to erase or rewrite it. And, so I became a much more adventurous writer.”

To continue its focus on improving students' writing skills, Cascades is melding the Northwest Regional Laboratory's 6+1 writing program, which emphasizes ideas, organization, voice, word choice and sentence fluency with a program by writing expert Lucy Caulkins. Caulkins' material focuses on the various genres of writing, how to think like a writer and how to interest readers.

Straight said, and expects state assessment scores to reflect the effort.

“If you have kids who are good writers, they're going to pass the test,” Straight said.

Cascades's success has not gone unnoticed. Tami Toombs, one of the district's teaching coaches, said she is working with Straight to see what Cascades has done to improving writing skills and provide that information to other schools.

“What they are doing I'd like to duplicate,” Toombs said. “I'd like to have a common vision and approach to writing.”

As part of the district's emphasis on writing, all fifth-grade teachers have been to the NWRL 6+1 writing training, Toombs said.

Writing has been the focus of staff REV - Renew Energize Vitalize - meetings this year, Toombs said. Teachers who have not been able to attend NWRL training are being provided with the training material and input on best teaching practices from other instructors.

Additionally, examples of student papers that have been judged to be good, average, and not so good work are being provided to teachers in every grade level. These “anchor papers” give teachers concrete examples to use in identifying writing strengths.

“It's easier when you can see an actual paper rather than just applying guidelines,” Toombs said.