Inquiry: Acceleration v Remediation

During the last several years, our Intermediate Department has grappled with accelerating our students in writing. We have viewed our writing data with concern and have tried many different strategies to accelerate our students progress. We ran our inquiries for a year and got some small shifts, but no true acceleration.

Then.....I read the book by Suzy Pepper Rollins titled 'Learning in the Fast Lane" and I knew that this could possibly be the game changer for both our students and ourselves. We began to implement some of the strategies outlined in the book. We developed our own learning walls and vocabulary (word, meaning, picture) that we front loaded the students with.

 We shared exemplars and the AsTTle rubrics to develop student agency in the learning process. We wrote with Chromebooks and used our Google Site to share the learning with our students. Our Writing Inquiry ran for 10 weeks and when the teachers met to look at our data pre and post inquiry, we were amazed by what we found. In 10 weeks, our students moved several sub levels, with one moving two curriculum levels! All students made huge shifts (up to two curriculum levels) in vocabulary, spelling and punctuation rubric scores.

As a team of teachers, we are excited by this collaborative inquiry and will continue to use these new strategies that have changed our practice and accelerated our students achievement in writing. Collaboration and new learning for both teachers and students is vital for acceleration!