Hi Ben!
I don’t know if you remember a few weeks back I wrote in to the PLC worried about a county writing PTA that all level 1’s have to take, and I was concerned about my students not being well enough prepared. You gave me some very good advice to keep going with the story I was working on and incorporate the readings and timed writing with that, and to not give a rat’s @#$ about an artificial, forced output assessment. (I’m paraphrasing) I went along with what we were doing with fun stories and trying out some vPQA, and tried not to lose sleep over it.
Anyway, we scored those this morning and my kids rocked it! They far outperformed the old school grammar teachers’ students. When I had mentioned attending the NTPRS conference this summer before we began scoring, the teachers looked at each other and snickered. Then they went back to talking about verb conjugations. I can’t tell you how happy I was seeing my kids long, detailed, imaginative essays (while grammatically imperfect) receiving 3’s and 4’s next to the others 1’s and 2’s. They didn’t scoff at my methods by the end. One teacher even commented that she was excited to get my kids next year.
Yet another of my Ss successes reminding that I am doing right by them. Thanks for your advice and encouragement. I am so glad that I did not pull out my old verb exercises and BAGS rules and ruin class with them. They clearly don’t need them.
Have a great day!
Cherie