2023 STAAR Extended Constructed Response Analysis, Interpretations, and Recommendations

The extended constructed response seems like a hinge-point because success depends on what kids DO while they are reading and responding. Success on these items can be a gateway to success on the other items. 

So - here's some things to think about as you are interpreting results, designing interventions, and planning initial instruction. 

By the way - If you didn't know, you have access to ALL the writing students have done on the exam. It's important to print those out for the kids you have. Revision is the best way to improve writing. And it's a good place to start in helping students become aware of their thinking and reasoning. Eventually, we'll have pdfs of it all. Right now, we're having to clip, cut, and paste. Your testing coordinator will be able to give you access in the system to see student results and will have the pdfs eventually. 

Here's a hyperlinked pdf of the analysis that you can use in your plc's. 

 

Deliberate, Effortful Strategies under Conscious Control become Skills under Automatic Control

Judy Wallis: And what we hope is these deliberate, effortful strategies under conscious control become skills under automatic control. 

 I'm always honored when Judy Wallis reads and considers my efforts. She always seems to dive into the basis and research underneath what I'm experiencing. And when she references an article, I know that it is something worth serious consideration. 

My friend Bama Coward used to say: A strategy is not something you do with a pencil. As usual, Judy has the research at her fingertips. Clarifying Differences Between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies is a must read for practitioners of critical and transformative ELAR pedagogy. Afflerback, Pearson, and Paris nail important considerations about how we initially teach and what our goals are for helping kids internalize and use those strategies in ways that become automatic skills in their comprehension and composing processes. Where are my kids on the continuum of strategies and skilled reading? 

Time, Talent, and Treasure: Lessons Learned about ABC

 Each week, I will be donating one day of service to a local school district. I have been given so much and want to share in my blessings. Working in a district - where teachers have to make all the acronyms of public education meet the "rubber of the road" in the classroom - are different that the "theory" of best practices. There are so many adjustments you have to make in responding to how kids think all of that means as they do their work. 

Here's a simple report of what Micah taught me during STAAR bootcamp. The curls peeked out from his rose bucket hat as we sat together while he described his reasoning process in selecting an answer for a question. 

He reviewed A and the evidence to discount A. I didn't necessarily agree, but listened to his process as he shared his thinking. Same for B and C. Once he had removed those as possibilities, he immediately circled D as the correct answer without reading the stem. 

I asked, How do you know that is correct?

Micah: The others are wrong. 

Me: But why is D right? Do you know? 

Micah: Uhhhhh. 

Aha for me. The kids don't necessarily understand that one question is three questions. They don't know when their reasoning is off. 

Solution: I need to model a think aloud about a similar reasoning error. Here's my rough draft of the think aloud of the reasoning process. 

Lesson Title: Reasoning through ABCD multiple choice answers.

TEKS: Author's Purpose, Main Idea, Summary, Inference, Text Evidence, Argument

Objective: I can use reasoning strategies to determine author's purpose. I can evaluate all answer choices before selecting an answer. I can change my original thoughts after considering the collective evidence and lack of evidence to justify the correct answer. I understand that just because I have considered A, B, and C, that D is not automatically the right answer. 

Step one: I need to find the main words in the stem to guide my thinking. I'm going to underline 14 so I know where to look. I'm going to underline infer so that I know that I have to use the text evidence to make a decision. I'm going to highlight author to help me understand that I'm going to be thinking about the author's perspective or purpose and not mine or a character. 

Step two: Now I need to process the answer choices. I'm going to highlight the words to help me focus on the verb and the distinctive details. In "enjoys reading books by international authors," I'm focusing on enjoys reading because I need to look and see if the author enjoys reading. But that's not enough. The important detail here is "international authors," so I'll focus on that. I'll do the same with all three answer choices. Here's what my question looks like now.  

Notice how c is a choice that asks me to compare printed books to e-books. We have to look for those kinds of thinking charges as well. 

Step three: Now I am ready to process each question with each choice. 

A - Here's what I found in the paragraph. There are two international countries mentions. But it doesn't say that the author LIKES to read them, just that you find them in the LFL. So I think this one is wrong.

B - Here's what I found in the paragraph. 

The passage discusses finding something depending on what neighbor's like. But that's not really the same thing as discovery is it? I think this one is wrong too. 

C - So this is the comparison of topics between ebooks and printed books. The text mentions topics for printed books, but doesn't say anything about the topics on the e-books. This has to be wrong. 

Now, I'm tempted to to say that D is the right answer because I've already done a lot of work. But that would be a mistake. I'm not totally sure that my decisions were the right ones. I know that often there is a good answer and a best answer. I won't know until I see that D is best or wrong. If it's obvious that I am wrong, I've made a mistake in my reasoning. I still have to look at D even though I don't want to. 

D - I'm supposed to look for limitations of a free library. So I'll look at each sentence and see if it is talking about limitations of a free library. 

"Though they owe their spread largely to the internet" that's a concession about how they spread, but really is not a connotation about something that is lacking. 

"Little Free Libraries serve as an antidote to a world of Kindle downloads and data driven algorithms" So I have to translate this into words I know. What the heck is an antidote? After looking it up, I can rephrase the sentence to see if it matches limitations. "LFL are a solution to a disease of ebooks and technology." Solutions to a disease has a positive connotation. That can't be a limitation. So D is wrong. 

Step Four: That means I need to re-see my previous thinking. ABC might be right. I'm reminded that the Title helps a lot with Author's Purpose: "The Low Tech Appeal of Little Free Libraries." So this author priorities/favors printed books because they are low tech. So his focus isn't really about liking international stuff. I can disregard A. 

As for B, the line in the text that uses antidote to Kindles matches the contrast with the ebooks. He also talks about "refreshingly human" and being "physical." That fits with the title in being better than high tech. Serendipity - had to look that up. It's a happy chance. That fits with "appreciates the opportunity" in the answer choice language. Now I just need to find a match for "discovery". I'm wondering if "neighbor's taste" and "dictates what you find" match the serendipity because you just don't know what you will find. The topics are a surprise. B is sounding like a better answer than I originally thought. 

Now I just need to make sure to reconsider c. There is just no evidence that the topics are the SAME for both ebooks and printed ones. C is still wrong. 

So, after further reflection and testing my original reasoning with text evidence that supports or refutes the answer choices collectively, B is the best answer.

Bottom line learning: I cannot rely on making a decision about the right answer before I consider all answer choices in light of the text evidence about all the choices. And I have to be willing to change what I originally thought. 

*Note that if students were using the fact tracker and understood that this passage was argumentative in nature, they would have noticed that this paragraph is a major reason that LFL are superior to ebooks. It is a critical paragraph that supports the thesis implied in the title low tech appeal and in the thesis statement in the first sentence:  The “take a book, return a book” boxes are catching on even in places where Kindles and brick-and-mortar libraries abound.  We noticed that kids using their strategies did MUCH better on inference questions than those who did not. I'll explain why in future posts. 

Progression of Success Criteria for (STAAR) Informative Writing

Kendall Wright, Jamie Brigman, and I were working on assessment capable learners (Fisher, Hattie, Frey, ) . After a baseline writing prompt and a comparison of sample essays, Kendall wanted students to be able to determine where their essay fit in the progression of papers and to evaluate where they were in their own progression of learning. After doing so, she wanted students to be able to set goals. 

Yet, she felt that leaving them open to crafting their own goals might be too vague and might drift from the unit goals and expectations. We brainstormed some statements, organized them into a progression, and then created this document as a resource. (Kendall will be using the blog post referenced here as her lesson progression and approach to the writing assessment.) 

The draft of the document we created is below: 

Progression of Success Criteria for Informative Writing

 

Writing is supposed to DO something to the reader...Feedback Protocols

When you write something, it's supposed to DO something to a reader/audience. Giving students authentic opportunities to test their ideas on real readers just makes sense. It blends reading and writing. It involves everyone in literary analysis and critical thinking. It gives writers a reason and focus for revision. 

Joyce Armstrong Carroll and Edward E. Wilson shared powerful grouping strategies to structure how we can create communities of writers in our classrooms (2007, p. 67-89). I started collecting these feedback strategies and groupings in my digital portfolio.

Over time, I've collected other strategies for the collection. This week, I am working in The AP Vertical Teams Guide for English (2002) to create a session on the penultimate chapter of this incredible resource.

I've adapted three of the strategies as feedback protocols and included them here for you:

PAMDISS
The Four Bases of Effective Writing
Peer Evaluation: Hitting the Target

Armstrong-Carroll, J. & Wilson, E. E. (2007). ACTS of teaching: How to teach writing. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

The College Board. (2002). The AP Vertical Teams Guide for English, 2nd Ed. College Entrance Examination Board.

Feedback Spirals vs Loops

Costa and Kallick (1995) favor a model of feedback spirals over Argyris and Schon’s (1978) feedback loop. Conceptualizing feedback as a loop is problematic because a loop is closed. This implies that students are the same place at the conclusion of their learning as when they began. Improvement, Costa and Kallick (1995) insist, must be continual process.  Spirals indicate a more recursive and continued progression of learning. Furthermore, feedback spirals can be used as decision making protocols for “the professional teacher who continually improves instructional practices in the classroom” (Costa & Kallick, 1995, p ?). Feedback Spirals also match Hattie and Timperley’s (2007) conception that feedback must “feed-forward.”. Fisher and Frey (2009) go even further, stating that feed-forward cannot be neglected because it it the very element that helps teachers respond to student learning and plan new lessons.

In the model below, I describe how feedback spirals will be woven into the research design and conversation between teachers and students about their writing. Using the spiral model fits the research design because the research questions are about how a high school teacher uses feedback from students to improve his or her approach to giving feedback that improves the quality of student writing. Using the spiral model to lay out the steps in the study mirrors the decision making protocols recommended by Costa and Kallick (1995). The spiral design also allows the teacher to respond to student attempts and plan lessons to continually address improvement.

Since the study is about how the teacher learns from the feedback continuum with writers, it might be confusing since the teacher is also giving feedback to students. In the model below, I lay out the research design in the spiral and then follow with a description of specific places where the research will focus on the teacher’s learning and use of feedback and not on the student learning. The teacher will evaluate the improvement of student response to her feedback, but the focus of this study is on the teacher’s perceptions and not on the student perceptions.

The feedback spiral begins at the bottom of the chart with the student composition. This study focuses on the teacher’s selection, use, and evaluation of feedback given to students about their writing. I’d like to highlight specific places in the feedback spiral where the study will have the greatest opportunity to reveal the teacher’s perceptions. In step 2, the teacher will read the student’s paper aloud as reader. This will allow the teacher to show how he or she is thinking to comprehend the text and digest the ideas. The think aloud will help the student writer see where the reader struggles to make meaning and how their text impacts the reader.

In steps three and four, the student will respond to the teacher’s reading of the text to clarify his/her intentions, ideas, and approach to writing. This discussion will be a primary place for the teacher to gather information about what the student was thinking and how he/she went about composing.

In step five, the teacher will use the feedback tool developed for the study to select the appropriate level of feedback to give to the student (surface/deep) and the type of feedback (task, process, self-extending) most appropriate for the student and the current writing performance. The teacher will think aloud to describe the choices he/she is making to select the feedback. The recordings and transcriptions will be useful to describe how the teacher uses the data in the previous steps to make a decision about what will be most helpful to the writer.

In steps 6-8, the teacher will deliver the feedback, check for understanding, and clarify if necessary. Before the student leaves the writing conference, the teacher will already begin to evaluate the effectiveness of her feedback. By recording and transcribing the exchange and collecting the artifacts, the teacher will be able to return to his or her decisions to evaluate how the student applies the feedback, collects evidence, and shares progress with the teacher in steps 9 and 10.

In steps 11-16, the teacher helps the writer set goals for the next writing performance and then evaluates how the feedback used in the first writing transfers to the next writing performance. This information can be helpful in learning what kind of feedback works best for particular students, writing situations/genres, etc. The teacher grows in the feedback loop by learning more effective ways to give feedback or searching for solutions to help students become better writers. When the writer grows because of what the teacher did, the teacher can identify his or her own effective practices for future feedback in writing conferences and receive guidance about restructuring lessons for initial instruction or whole class reteaching. Steps 17-19 extend the spiral to more and more sophisticated forms of teaching expertise.

Argyris, C., and Schon, D. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. New York, NY: Addison Wesley.

Costa, A. L., and Kallick, Bena. (Eds.). (1995). Assessment in the learning organization. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. I ordered the book, but the introduction is online here: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/195188/chapters/Process-Design@-Feedback-Spirals-As-Components-of-Continued-Learning.aspx

Fisher, D. and Frey, N. (2009). Feed up, back, forward. Educational Leadership. 67(3). 20-25.

Murray, D. (1982). Teaching the other self: The writer’s first reader. College Composition and Communication 33(2), 140-147.

Sacks, O. (1989). Seeing voices: A journey into the world of the deaf. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. A. Kozulin (Ed). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wilson, M. (2018). Reimagining writing assessment: From scales to stories. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.