Literacy Project 1-Analysis

1. The title of M’s fictional story is My Dog Kunoa. It was created after his class was given a prompt to write a story about animals that can talk. The story is about a talking dog that goes to the zoo on its grand opening day. Their adventure is cut short when Kunoa gets injured, loses his ability to talk, and has to be taken to the vet. After x-ray tests are done, we learn that Kunoa is alright and just needs some rest.

2. 6 Traits

Ideas: M’s story is clear and focused, and it definitely holds the reader’s attention. His writing contains a lot of details to support his main ideas. As the reader you can also tell that he wrote from experience, “The guy in the box office gave us our tickets and a catalog,” but yet his ideas are fresh and original, “Kunoa wanted to stop at the Dots Ice Cream stand which left me thinking that he was very spoiled.” The piece of writing also displays a high level of insight, demonstrating an understanding of life, “Doctor Yakamoto came in to show me Kunoa’s x-ray.”  

Organization: There is an inviting introduction to M’s story, drawing the reader from the very first sentence. His story has a clear beginning, middle, and ending displaying careful thought and organization in the structure of his story (sequencing is logical and effective). His conclusion was thought through carefully, letting the reader know that his dog Kunoa’s health was in good condition, but also reminding the readers of the main idea of the story with the last sentence (main idea-the day all animals could talk), bringing the story to a smooth closure (Routman, 2005).

Voice: M’s strong focus on his topic speaks strongly to his audience. His use of detail is appealing, and the language that he uses to do so is natural and engaging. His story flows, and his use of specific details lets the reader know that there is an inclusion of personal details and sense of familiarity behind his words, “The guy in the box office gave us our tickets and a catalog” (NWREL, 1992).   

Word Choice: The word choices made by M give the story a very interesting touch, while enhancing the meaning of the story. He uses a lot of lively nouns, verbs, and phrases such as fainted, Doctor Yakamoto, snoring mode, and knocked out like a rock. He even used a simile in his writing, “Doctor Yakamoto came running out like a deer.” The beginning and middle of his story contained a lot of lively word choices, but the ending seemed to lack them a bit. By this point in the story, the audience is already used to a certain level of description and the conclusion paragraph doesn’t support this strongly. He does contain some striking words, “…he went into snoring mode,” but more detailed wording would have been better (NWREL, 1992, p. 5).

Sentence Fluency: The sentences in the story vary in length from short to long, make the story easy to read aloud, and they enhance the meaning of the story. He added dialogue where he felt it expanded the story, “I wish I could swim like you,” and “My dog has hit his head.” His thesis sentence in the beginning paragraph clearly communicates to the audience what the story is about, “That’s the start of the day all animals could talk.” An area we felt he should improve on is preventing run on sentences, “Kunoa went crazy he jumped up, and down yelling, “I wish I could swim like you.” ”

Conventions: Overall, M’s story displayed good capitalization and paragraphing, reinforcing the organizational structure. There are some areas where we feel he needs some improvement and practice. In order to avoid run-on sentences in his story, he needs to learn the proper use of commas and where to start new sentences. His overall spelling was great, with the exception of one misspelled word, eventully.

3. M definitely displays ownership of his writing. He said he likes writing and coming up with creative things, but he does need a title or an open-ended prompt to get started. When asked what makes him want to write, he responded with, “It’s fun thinking of all the action stuff to write about. I’m better at understanding nonfiction.” His fondness of writing even went as far as attempting to write a chapter book at one point. He continued with, “Action makes stories more fun, and since every story has a problem, there needs to be a solution for kids to come up with… but they also have to come up with the fun stuff in between.” M appears to be very proud and confident in his writing, loves to let his imagination take over, and he ended this portion of our questions with, “I think I’m good at writing.”

4. When looking over M’s spelling words from our first session, Sarah and I believe he is a good speller. The only words he missed were ‘cattle’ and ‘fortunate’. He spelled them as ‘caddle’ and ‘fortune’. In terms of misspelling cattle, he spelled the word the way it sounds and he knew the double consonant rule for the word, but he chose ‘d’ instead of ‘t’. For fortunate, he got stumped on the ending sound, changing it entirely to fortune. He showed that he knew how to spell the root word but struggled when spelling the ending. He was also aware that he misspelled the word but wanted to move on. All the other words were spelled correctly and he seemed to have no problem with them, writing them quickly and automatically.

During these two short sessions with M, Sarah and I have learned what it is like to work with and learn from an enthusiastic reader and writer. He is a student that takes pride in his writing and enjoys taking his stories to the next level. We feel that in order for his writing to continue flourishing, he should work on sentence structure to prevent run-on sentences, as well as the proper use of commas. We look forward to continuing our work with him.  

Connections to Readings:

6+1 Trait Writing

Routman, R. (2005). Writing essentials: raising expectations and results while simplifying teaching. Greenwood International.