The Art of Writing and Revision

Demographics

I teach third-grade English Language Arts at Pittsburgh Dilworth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We are an Arts and Humanities magnet school that accepts students from across the City of Pittsburgh. Dilworth is located in the Highland Park neighborhood of the city.  Our schoolhouses students from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade. We have an in-house gifted education program. We also offer full-time art, general music, and instrumental classes. According to the Pittsburgh Public Schools website, Dilworth has a population of 448 students. Our student demographic is 56% Black, 28% White, 11% mixed race, 3% Hispanic, 1% “other”.⁹  All of our students are entitled to free meals at school.

I teach two ELA classes with a total of 50 students. Of those 50 students, 6.25% are in special education and 5% are in gifted education. My students take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) every year. This allows educators and parents to see a snapshot of their students’ overall proficiency levels in ELA and Math. Third grade is the first time that students in Pennsylvania take this assessment. This past year, my students’ scores were: Below Basic: 10%; Basic: 31%; Proficient: 27%; Advanced: 31%.  Exploring this data at the school level, I can see that 3 students with IEPs are Below Basic; 3 Students with IEPs are Basic; 4 students with GIEPs are Advanced, and 6 students with GIEPs are Proficient in the English Language Arts. I had no English Language Learners at the time of this assessment.

In the Pittsburgh Public School District, students are evaluated throughout the year by various assessments. Through the curriculum, we do weekly lesson assessments that offer vocabulary and spelling tests. Students also have a reading and written response weekly that corresponds with that week’s story. After each unit, students take a unit test that reviews aspects of each lesson in the same way that weekly lessons do.

Our school goal is 100% proficiency in reading and writing. By looking at our current scores, we know that close to half of our students have not met that goal.  The curriculum offers intervention materials for each lesson to assist students with reading and writing gaps they struggle with. With my curriculum unit, I will offer further engagement for a writing unit. Reading scores are monitored several times throughout the year before our state testing. DIBELS  (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills)¹⁰ is a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of literacy skills. DIBELS testing represents the culmination of decades of research into supporting students in becoming successful readers.¹ DIBELS are aligned with Common Core Standards and are used to monitor the progress and success of students as they read and respond. If a student does not meet their reading benchmark, DIBELS has a progress monitoring tool to assess students more often than four times a year. Reports are sent home to parents so that they are aware of their students’ progress. Our district also utilizes CDT (Classroom Diagnostic Tools) testing.¹¹ These assessments, given a few times per year, offer a snapshot of diagnostic data to use when preparing lessons for intervention and enrichment. These assessments are not a true measure of a student’s writing abilities. Their purpose is to see if students can respond to questions with knowledge from the text. There is no way to measure writing from these assessments. You can only look for an understanding of content.