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More Large Abstract Results At The Bottom Of The Page

Ways to Improve High School Image: Reflections on Secondary Students, Large-scale Literacy Test & Writing Instruction (Author: Tom William, Ph.D.)

Abstract: High stake large-scale standardized literacy test results affect high school students and function as reflections of English teachers and secondary schools. This paper looked at instructions of a writing assignment in a Province-wide standardized literacy test, reflected how students performed, their needs, and discussed writing instruction to meet student needs and improve the quality of education.

Introduction

Large-scale standardized literacy test affects both high school students and English teachers. I enjoyed teaching writing in the secondary school, and over many years, I noted that stakeholders are curious to learn from where the teachers gain leadership in teaching writing. Secondary school teachers prepare students who go to universities; undergraduate English departments prepare students who go to teacher education; and teacher education prepares teachers who go to secondary schools. As you can see the cyclical order and triangle, and whichever body is responsible for preparing under prepared students, the responsibility to well-prepare students with writing and reading skills lies among all of us. The results of a high stake large-scale standardized literacy test not only affects high school students, but also functions as reflections of English teachers and schools.

It is common to hear from university instructors that secondary schools send us under prepared and semi-prepared students. Similarly, it is common to hear from teacher education that undergraduate English departments do not prepare students with adequate writing skills as they engage graduate students, adjuncts, sessional instructors who do not have a Ph.D. in English composition to teach undergraduate writing courses. Likewise, it is common to hear from secondary school teachers that teacher education rarely prepared us how to teach writing and grammar. Many secondary school teachers even say we cannot offer what we have not received from the undergraduate English departments and teacher education.

I have formally taught high school and middle school students, undergraduate students, and co-taught teacher education students, which enabled me to see the intersection of teaching writing in the secondary school, university, and teacher education. We become teachers and professors not just for teaching but also for learning; thus, whether we were adequately prepared for teaching writing, grammar, and reading, we can teach these areas as we have gained a framework through our teaching, learning, and studies. With this spirit, this paper looks at a large-scale standardized literacy test and reflects how students are doing, what their needs are, and how we can provide improved instruction to meet student needs.

Collaborative Scoring Experience

This year, 2010, I was honoured to receive an invitation to score the long writing section of the Ontario Government’s Province-wide Standardized Literacy Test, known as OSSLT (Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test). All scorers received rigorous training; they had to pass the qualifying test and follow the established Topic Development Rubric and Use of Conventions Rubric. I have scored collaboratively about 2000 booklets along with other teachers, educators, administrators, and so on. I made some notes, and I wanted to share my understanding with schools, communities, parents, guardians, tutors, and others who help students with writing and reading.

Based on my scoring experience, I see that a vast majority of students need help in the areas of how to write a good paper and develop English language. More specifically, teachers, educators, parents, guardians, tutors, and others have opportunities to help students with how to draw a brainstorming map before writing, and explain its importance in organizing a paper; reveal the art inside an essay; and teach grammar in context, including subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, run-on sentence, singular and plural possessives, and homophones. I have observed these major characteristics in the OSSLT papers.

In April 2010, over 150,000 Ontario secondary school students participated in the test. Since I have scored only a fraction of the total, I would not know exactly what percentage of students passed at what level, but on the basis of what I have scored, I see that about 10% passed in the A category, 20% in the B category, 50% in the C category, and 20% in the failed category. I noted that there were students who did not answer the test question, and students who turned in their papers with one, two, or a few sentences. I wonder, whether they read the question or read without comprehension.

Decoding Instruction: The Art inside an Essay

Length & Content

Both length and content of a paper affect the grade. The 2010 OSSLT booklet contained three signals regarding length and content, and hence the importance of length and content. First signal, “Writing a series of paragraphs” (above the rectangle instruction box, p. 2) and “Write your series of paragraphs on the lines provided on the following two pages” (below the rectangle instruction box, p. 2). These instructions, even though are outside the rectangle box, suggest writing several paragraphs and filling in two or at least one and a half pages. Because both length and quality of a paper affect the grade, I would strongly suggest that classroom teachers emphasize these two factors. While scoring collaboratively, I have seen that many students received that message as they paid attention to the length of their papers and the quality of content. As well, many students did not get the message or deliver the expectation, which suggests that many of our students need explicit instruction (a.k.a. direct instruction), or guidance and training on a regular basis.

Second signal, “Task: Write a minimum of three paragraphs expressing an opinion on the topic below. Develop your main idea with supporting details (proof, facts, examples, etc.)” (p. 2). The first part of the instruction implies that if a student is going to write only three paragraphs, then fill in the two pages and these paragraphs are supposed to be an introductory paragraph, a body, and a concluding paragraph. In other words, if a student addresses one point (property) in the essay, then it has to be deep (or the given space may not fill in). Alternatively, if a student addresses more than one point, then each point may have lesser depth considering the space available. The second part of the instruction will be addressed shortly.

Third signal, “Length: The lined space provided for your written work indicates the approximate length of the writing expected” (p. 2). Many students filled in the two blank pages and there were students who either wrote a little, left blank, or did not pay attention to the instruction. Again, someone needs to train and guide the students in our schools. Students write essays or learn to write essays not just in the secondary school English classroom, but also in other classes. Therefore, the responsibility to train students does not solely reside on English teachers.

Organizing the Essay

The instruction below the rectangle box states, “Rough Notes, use the space below for rough notes. Nothing you write in this space will be scored” (p. 2). Most of the students did not use the space drawing a brainstorming map – and, of course, this has affected negatively both organization and clarity of their essays. I recall some B. Ed. programs included a course related to teaching English in the secondary school. When teaching students how to write an essay, it not only requires an introductory paragraph, a body section, and a concluding paragraph, but also organizing the essay. Part of this organization comes from drawing a brainstorming map, which needs to be done before writing an essay. The brainstorming map is also helpful in finding a thesis for the paper. Many students in the test did not offer a thesis and their papers lacked structure.

The instruction in the booklet (re the second part of the second signal) suggests, “Develop your main idea with supporting details” (p. 2), meaning the student needs to provide a thesis sentence with supporting details. Put differently, the student needs to provide in the introductory paragraph a thesis sentence and points (properties) that circle around the thesis statement. The number of properties determines the number of paragraphs needed in the body section. For example, if a student claims that frequent use of cellphones causes poor academic performance, cancer, and low sperm counts, then these are the three properties that he/she ought to elaborate in three paragraphs in the body section.

Why do we not teach our students what makes a piece of writing an essay? Traditionally, we have seen that one offers an introductory paragraph that includes a topic sentence, a thesis sentence, and one or more properties, so that audiences know what is coming up in the following paragraphs. Next, to support the thesis sentence, the writer expands the properties in the body section. For example, if a student has one property, the body section will have one paragraph, or if the student has two properties, then he/she will have two paragraphs in the body section, and so on. Finally, the concluding paragraph sums up the contents of the introductory paragraph and the body section paragraphs, and points out how the thesis statement is justified. Indeed, some variations of these outlines are quite acceptable. Briefly, a guideline that helps students remember what makes a piece of writing an essay (and not a story, report, grocery list, or something else) is essential.

The Connection between Audience & Appropriate Language

The instruction indicates, “Purpose and audience: An adult who is interested in your opinion” (p. 2). Who is this adult? This person is a teacher, educator, administrator, or another similar professional. This means that the essay is not a place to play with everyday foul language, such as “4you” and “LOL,” etcetera, which I have seen in student papers. As I continued scoring, I saw many students have used non-standard language (e.g., “Not really, I do not think cellphones are necessary in a teenager life.”), drew pictures of anything they felt like, or left the space blank. Somebody – whether a classroom teacher, parent, guardian, or tutor – needs to train and guide the student how to carry out a formal written assignment. Our students are our mirrors. Somehow, they reflect what we produce as teachers. Teachers should not be blamed as they work with inadequate resources, large classes, and come from a triangle (as mentioned in the introduction).

Grammar: Students need to learn the subject-verb agreement rule, pronoun-antecedent rule, what makes a sentence a run-on sentence, and singular and plural possessive forms. Teaching basic grammar in the context of writing is useful and students can grasp what corrections are needed and why. In contrast, teaching grammar without context gets boring and one is likely to lose his/her audience. A large number of students used singular and plural forms when the topic was in a plural form (e.g., “Cellphones are necessary in a teenagers life.”). Many students have used a wrong third person plural reflexive pronoun “themself” for “themselves” as in “Some teenagers may pay for their phone themself” and failed to notice subject-verb disagreement and run-on sentences; e.g., “Cell phones causes cancer, cell phones are a distraction in school and school work.”

Correct use of English comes from lots of reading, writing and speaking. These three areas need to be practiced as much as possible. There is no magic that will help students demonstrate correct use of English without regular reading, writing, and speaking. The topic in the test used the word “necessary” and only a very small population of students have used the word correctly. The vast majority of students have used “the reason why” in their papers. These examples from the test suggest that classroom teachers can help students not only in developing vocabulary in the reading and writing contexts, but also in showing “distinctions among words” (Littell, p. 2), and how to use correctly the words “reason” and “why.” As well, students would benefit from learning when to use and how to use the words “conclusion” and “briefly.”

Mechanics & Punctuation

The instruction in the rectangle box states, “Topic: Are cellphones necessary in teenagers’ lives?” (p. 2). Notice that the topic has used the plural form of cellphones, teenagers, and lives. Thus, this particular language suggests thinking of the topic as a collective or broad picture, where, of course, the student can use his/her experience and observation. Many students have written excellent essays and there was a large population of students who often failed to use correctly the plural possessive form teenagers’ — and this is an area that we ought to point out in our classroom instruction.

Many students have used an apostrophe to refer to a decade, namely “1990’s” when it should be written “1990s.” In contrast, many students did not use an apostrophe in such cases as “A persons [person's] overall health and wellbeing is more important then texting.” I have noticed that only a few students have used the semicolon punctuation. Many students had problems with homophones; for example, they wrote “there” for “their,” “your” for “you are,” as in “When your texting, your not aware of other things around you” and so on.

Students will learn the mechanics as they write more and more. A colleague of mine keeps a folder with writing samples of each student and follows up on whether progress was made on the items of feedback. This works well, though this is not the only way to help students achieve mechanics. My teaching experience confirmed that students have the ability to acquire the mechanics of academic writing. They, however, need regular feedback, follow-up, and practice.

Spelling

Spelling is at the heart of writing. If you cannot spell correctly, you will have hard time to write. These are my suggestions to my students along with an emphasis to depend on themselves rather than on spellchecker. A large population of students, I see, have used in their test papers “alot, highschool, incase, now a day,” and “then” for “than,” which suggest that they have needs to be aware of the frequently used words. Because the standard language does not match with how students have written, it raises a question: Do they pay attention when they read? Every high school has its name in big letters and carved in stone. How could they not see their own school name where they go everyday? These examples give teachers an opportunity to focus on spelling. When I teach spelling, I let the syllables in a word guide students as to how to spell a word. However, as you know, there are exceptions, namely words that are spelled differently from how they sound. In short, working five minutes everyday on spelling produces remarkable results.

Writing Requires Reading

We all know that before we can write about something, first, we have to acquire the topic knowledge; and it is only then are we in a position to be able to write. Most often, we gain our topic knowledge through reading, and reading is a pre-requisite to writing. Nonetheless, either reading is the thing that is most often left as the last thing to do, or in the end, it is never read. Reading is, in fact, work – and it is the hardest work. Through regular persuasion, I try to convince my students to read, and it is never done just by explaining it one time. They hear through one ear and it gets out through the other. Thus, a solution to reading is to work with students every single day; and once they internalize that you are not going to give up reading, they embrace reading. My teaching experience tells me that this is the way to go about it for most students, because they will not read just upon hearing one time from their classroom teacher. The efforts we make to help students succeed in writing also need to include efforts for reading, because a higher level of reading comprehension translates into a higher quality paper.

Instructional Suggestion

My teaching experience with high school and middle school students suggest that they need regular guidance and repetitive training to understand the written instruction of an assignment. I observed that the majority of a given class do not pay full attention to the written instruction of an assignment. Some simply do not understand the instruction, or their teachers, parents, or tutors do not train them adequately. Explain to students how to decode the written instruction of an assignment. Train them over the years. Assign tasks to see to what extent they have digested or carried out the instructions. Suggest that there is nothing wrong to check with your teachers when something is not clear to you. Point out the consequences of ignoring the instructions. I instruct my students to read the written instructions of an assignment, and if necessary, read more than once and get clarifications from your teacher. Try to understand what the assignment expects you to do. Pay attention to the key words, the use of singular or plural form in the topic, and the context. All of these suggestions work for the majority of students.

As you can see, reflections on the 2010 large-scale high school standardized literacy test have given us directions to improve our leadership in teaching writing in the high school and meet the needs of our students. Our willingness to work in harmony and cooperation from all stakeholders will improve the quality of education and test results.

 

References

April 2010 Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (2010). Ontario: Education Quality &

Accountability Office.

Littell, Joy, ed. (1981). Building English Skills. Purple Level, Rev. ed. Evanston, IL:

McDougal, Littell & Co.

Shaw, Harry, and Dave Carley (1986). Handbook of English. 4th Canadian ed. Ontario:

McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd.

Topic Development Rubric for Writing a Series of Paragraphs Expressing an Opinion, EQAO

OSSLT (2010). Ontario: Education Quality & Accountability Office

Use of Conventions Rubric for News Report and Series of Paragraphs Expressing an Opinion,

EQAO OSSLT (2010). Ontario: Education Quality & Accountability Office

About the Author

6+ years of solid formal experience teaching university, college, and high school students

Ph.D. in English Composition & Reading, University of Toronto, Canada

M.A. in Academic Writing & Curriculum, University of Toronto, Canada

B.A. (Honours) in English & Linguistics, York University, Canada

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