Qualitative

While quantitative student growth provides teachers with useful numerical data that tracks progress and informs decision making, qualitative growth provides another useful component to successful teaching. In this case student writing was used to monitor progress. Although my Civics course is tested using a multiple-choice End-of-Course exam, students still practice writing daily. Writing is a critical ingredient to enhancing student thought and critical thinking. In my class I introduce a variety of writing methods and strategies such as C.E.R. (Claim, Evidence, Reason) and P.O.S.E.S. (Political Cartoon Analysis) to both organize student thoughts and provide them with different opportunities for dramatic student growth. During the course of the year I taught a direct unit on C.E.R. and another on P.O.S.E.S. to assist my students in grasping the concepts to demonstrate their growth in writing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. C.E.R. (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning)

2. P.O.S.E.S. (Political Cartoon Analysis)

1. C.E.R. (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning)

In reflecting on my students writing at the beginning of the year, I noticed that many of them did not have the foundation in place to respond to questions clearly and consistently through writing. While often times I knew that the student grasped a concept, their writing did not always align with what they were trying to say. I realized that I needed to implement a system to help students be more intentional with how they structured their thoughts through writing. I decided to use the C.E.R. (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) framework to help improve my students writing which follows this structure:

Claim: A declarative statement that answers a question or poses a stance on a topic.

I found that most students were comfortable in stating claims in their writing. The biggest issue that I ran into pertaining to this portion of student writing was that students were unclear in the structure of their claim. A critical element of constructing a claim is restating the preceding question so that the reader is aware what the writer is responding to. In the beginning of the year I recognized that many students were not used to restating the question in their writing as outlined in the sample below:

Before: There is no clear claim made in this sample. Furthermore the reader cannot follow the students line of thought because the question was not restated.

After: While the answer to the question may be incorrect, the student did a much better job of restating the previous question to provide context for their claim.

Evidence: Sufficient data/information to support a claim.

The second step of this framework requires students to elaborate on their claim by providing some sort of textual evidence. Whether it be through statistics, quotations or references to course materials, providing evidence is crucial to credible writing. When explicitly teaching this skill to my students, I frame it using the example of a court case. Would the judge or jury care about anything you had to say in court if you had no evidence? Of course not; and writing is no different.

Before: In this statement the student makes a claim about impeachment but does not cite evidence for how they know this information.

After: In this assignment completed weeks later by the same student, the writing sample is much more comprehensive. After making a definitive claim, the student refers to the First Amendment of the Constitution as a basis for her claim. Furthermore the student reaches back for textual evidence from the reading passage to connect to further strengthen their claim.

Reasoning: Providing a connection between the claim and the evidence.

In order to tie together this unit on the C.E.R. framework, I finally introduce the concept of including reasoning in student writing. It is paramount to include reasoning in succinct student writing because it bridges the gap between claims and evidence. Once students begin to master this skill, their writing becomes much more well-rounded and they are able to express critical thinking through their writing.

Before: This writing sample shows only portions of the C.E.R. framework. The student fails to restate the claim and attempts to provide some evidence out of context. What this student is missing is a statement declaring the reason for supplying the evidence that they did. This student is certainly on the right track but needed to build the skill of walking the reader through their thought-process through providing reasoning.

After: This statement was created by the same student two months after initial instruction during exam review. The student was instructed to answer the same question as above only this time having mastered the C.E.R. writing framework. The student successfully makes a clam with related evidence. Finally the student ties it all together using deductive reasoning, walking the reader step by step through their thinking process. Although the student could have elaborated slightly on their final points, they demonstrated successful reasoning in this sample.

Florida Standards Assessment Writing Rubric

When assessing the effectiveness of the C.E.R. writing strategy, I reference the Florida Standards Assessment (F.S.A.) Writing Rubric. As elaborated in my Assessments section of my portfolio, student writing in my class is assessed using the 10-point F.S.A. rubric. As labeled on the rubric to the left, there are three primary categories. The first is called Purpose, Focus and Organization and is worth four points. The second category is called Evidence and Elaboration and is also worth four points. Finally the last section is called Conventions and is worth two points.

The C.E.R. writing method was designed to help students earn additional points in the second area of Evidence and Elaboration. As evidenced by the writing sample in this section, C.E.R. assisted students in convincingly supporting their claims using the evidence provided. C.E.R. assisted students in not only making a precise claim, but in deciding which evidence would be most applicable. Finally students learned varied elaborative techniques that would earn them additional points in the Evidence and Elaboration category while writing across curriculum.

The student writing tracker included on the left shows student writing scores from a diagnostic writing assignment as well as scores from an assignment given at the conclusion of the C.E.R. introductory unit. As was the intention, the C.E.R. writing method was effective in improving student scores in the area of Evidence and Elaboration. Nearly every student improved at least marginally in providing related evidence to support their claims and ultimately in explaining the significance of the evidence provided. The C.E.R. writing strategy conceivably moved all the students in this tracker into the area of proficiency in terms of Evidence and Elaboration. This skill will help my students to be successful writers in not only my class but throughout their academic careers.

2. P.O.S.E.S. (Political Cartoon Analysis)

Political cartoons are a common use of graphic stimuli used on the End-of-Course exam as well as in broader popular culture. Since political cartoons are so relevant to our topic area, I found tat it would be helpful to find a strategy that would assist students in deducing the message of the cartoons. Towards the beginning of the year, I introduce a strategy called P.O.S.E.S. that guides students towards detailing the people, objects, setting, engagement and significance of the cartoon before drawing their own meanings. Essentially P.O.S.E.S. is a brainstorming strategy for students to organize their thoughts around a cartoon before building them out engage in more formal writing. First students are to take a few minutes to carefully review the cartoon making sure to pay fine attention to detail. Then, they are to go through each letter of the P.O.S.E.S. acronym and record their findings next to the respective letter. "P" stands for people in which students are to record what animate characters they see in the cartoon while paying attention to everything from posture to clothing. "O" stands for objects in which students record all relevant objects in the cartoon that they feel may be important in deducing meaning. "S" stands for setting, where students will analyze where the cartoon may be taking place and create some context. "E" stands for engagement in which students will inspect how the different figures in the cartoon relate to one another in the cartoon. Furthermore engagement asks what kind of actions are taking place in the cartoon. Finally "S" stands for significance, which similarly to the Reasoning portion of the C.E.R. framework mentioned above, pushes the writer to connect the dots and interpret the meaning of the cartoon given the gathered information. As students continue to practice the P.O.S.E.S. technique, they grow more adept at analyzing cartoons as they begin to ask themselves the right internal questions to lead them to the meaning of the cartoon. Later, students are able to synthesize these thoughts and take them to writing.

All cartoons were pulled from a teacher created booklet on political cartoons designed for exam practice. Typically cartoons were assigned as home learning to be typed for the next class. At the beginning of the following class, students would share their answers and discuss their findings. Excerpts from the booklet are featured below:

Below are some examples of student work both before and after employing the P.O.S.E.S. strategy.

Question #1: Analyze the following cartoon to determine areas of difficulty in the lawmaking process.

Cartoon #1:

Student Response Before P.O.S.E.S. #1:

Student Response Before P.O.S.E.S. #2:

This student response fails to properly identify the characters in the cartoon and because of the lack of attention to detail, fails to draw connections between the words and figures.

This student makes predictions about the meaning of the cartoon but lacked the context to properly identify the characters. This student was successful in identifying the words in the cartoon but mis-characterized their meaning.

Question #2: Using the following cartoon analyze how Congress negotiates a bill into law.

Cartoon #2: *(This cartoon covers the same benchmark as "Cartoon #1" but was given later in the year after teaching P.O.S.E.S.)*

Student Response After P.O.S.E.S. #1:

Before beginning to answer the essential question the student filled out their P.O.S.E.S. planning sheet to guide their thorough analysis of the cartoon. The student was able to carefully identify the four figures in the cartoon noting that the bill looked "tattered" and even recognizing the facial expressions of the Congressmen. The student noted the "crutches and band-aids" as relevant objects that could further explain the symbolic condition of the bill. The setting was identified as Congress due to the signs on the walls. The student was successfully able to put together that the bill was transitioning from the Senate to the House. Finally the student was able to put together all of the essential information to recognize that the lawmaking process is difficult because bills move back and forth between chambers of Congress and are drastically changed along the way. All in all this framework assisted the student in formulating their ideas and guiding their critical thinking. After completing this template, the student is in a much stronger position to write a strong response to the essential question.

This time around the student produced a much stronger piece of writing. The student was able to pick up on minute details of the cartoon due to their careful planning. The P.O.S.E.S. framework gave the student the tools needed for a analysis and synthesis into a more comprehensive piece of writing.

Evaluating P.O.S.E.S.

Ultimately student success when evaluating political cartoons is measured on whether or not P.O.S.E.S. helped the student to answer the E.O.C. multiple-choice question properly by assisting them in analyzing the meaning of the cartoon. When evaluating student writing samples related to political cartoons, writing is assessed using the Florida Standards Assessment (F.S.A.) Writing Rubric in order to maintain consistency in evaluation across all assignments in my class. As I teach the P.O.S.E.S. strategy in my class, it is also important to assess how well students are grasping the strategy. In order to capture this picture I created an informal rubric for my class that will tell me as a teacher how well a student is adhering to the different aspects to the P.O.S.E.S. analysis strategy.

0-2 Points

The informal rubric to the left shows the number of points assigned to each category of P.O.S.E.S.. Since each political cartoon is different and has arbitrary content, this rubric was created in an attempt to standardize evaluating the effectiveness of the P.O.S.E.S. strategy. The rubric further breaks down as follows:

People:

0- No characters properly identified

1- Some characters properly identified

2- All characters properly identified

Objects:

0- No objects properly identified

1- Some objects properly identified

2- All objects properly identified

Setting:

0- Setting incorrectly identified

1- Setting partially identified correctly

2- Setting identified correctly

Engagement:

0- Character actions misinterpretted

1- Character actions partially identified

2- Character actions identified

Significance:

0- Student does not comprehend cartoon

1- Student partially comprehends cartoon

2- Student comprehends cartoon

Dramatic Academic Growth Quantitative

Dimitri Syros

Social Studies Teacher

Qualitative