Student Composition Case Study
The student that I have been working with this semester is an eleven-year-old girl who is in the fifth grade at a local elementary school. For the sake of privacy I will call this student Ally. Ally is the young girl that I mentor through the Western Youth Network. She has been placed in this program since I worked with her through my SPE3300 internship. Ally is apart of an individualized scaffolding program due to a difficult home life, and moving to five different schools within the past four years. Ally has experienced a difficult home life, in which she has been living in and out of homeless shelters with her mother, whose custody is under observation. Ally has recently been at the same school for two years now and her scores have shown improvement, but she still lags behind in grade expectation within all content areas. Ashley and I spend some time together every week. We spent a little bit of time during each of our “hang outs” working on her writing skills. We have worked on schoolwork together before, but this time was different because we were not working on homework, we could make it more personal for her.
I really enjoyed learning about Ashley through this writing process. With our first session, Ally and I began by talking about her feelings towards writing. Ally described that she preferred to type and she often felt anxiety when having to write for school. When I first asked her if she would work on this writing project with me, she instantly seemed embarrassed, as well as apprehensive. I have noticed in the past that Ally really struggles with spelling, and writing so I told her that even though she may prefer typing, I wanted her to try hand writing for practice. I gave Ashley a purple and blue swirly tie-dye notebook with her name written on the inside cover. Ally does not have much to call her own, so I think that she really appreciated having her own writing journal. I started with a small writing activity just to get pencil to paper.
We spent the next few sessions moving from making a simple list to her writing a lengthy story. Through out our sessions we would both spend some quiet time writing on a “prompt” that we chose together with some pre-planning on my part and then we would come together to discuss what we talked about. Ally and I would usually spend some time going over her work, sentence by sentence so that we could practice spelling some of her misspelled words. Ally really struggles with spelling, but she easily recognizes when she misspells words and is open to learning how to fix her mistakes. I think that Ally’s greatest strength is her willingness and excitement to learn. For as long as I have known Ally, she never seems to get frustrated with her learning progress. Ally is always willing to learn and wants to learn. By the end of our sessions she was the one who was asking to write with me and not the other way around.
Ally’s challenges as mentioned before are associated mostly with the technical side of writing. Ally struggles with spelling as mentioned before, which might be the greatest hindrance to her writing. I think that the other greatest hindrance to Ally’s writing is her confidence. Ally is not a comfortable writer, she is willing to learn, but she needs a lot of push to get her started. She has no confidence in her skill, which is due to the fact that she has struggled in and out of schools, difficult home lives and basically many of these factors that have just pushed her personal confidence to the side. Ally has a lot to say but she has never had to opportunity to say it.
I asked Ally to do several writing activities for me, including listing details, describing rooms, writing about small prompts, and even writing long stories. At first, Ally needed some help just to get started. I would have to help her with some examples or modeling. After a few sessions Ally did not need much help getting started, she would quickly begin writing. Ally would also ask for help when it came to spelling, grammar and organizing her story. It was clear to me that she needed more attention paid in these areas during her school time. Ally did not seem to have a strong understanding of basic writing process guidelines.
As mentioned above, Ally was apprehensive about writing at first but by the end of our last session she was volunteering to read her work out loud. Throughout the process Ally would never get frustrated, but she would begin to act tired or bored. I would have to draw her attention again by looking at her writing a different way or throwing in another quick writing activity that will spark her interest again. Ally is not a combative person and I would usually have to coax her thought process out of her through questions. She is already a timid child so I expected a timid attitude toward these writing sessions but I was happy that by the end of our last session she seemed to be somewhat interested in writing, and possibly have an interest in writing for fun at home.
When it comes to school, I have worked with both her and her teachers. It was obvious that Ally has clearly been labeled with the at-risk stamp. This means that Ally is taken out for extra practice time and she is separated from the other students as someone different. Ally is viewed as a less-than writer, a student who needs more help, but probably still won’t pass the state mandated exams. This attitude towards Ally as a writer and as a student I believe has stunted her confidence. Ally is a nervous writer and it would usually take a lot of effort to get her comfortable, and excited about writing. I tried to achieve this level of comfort by letting her write about what she is interested in like her friends, her life and a new developing interest in the weather; specifically tornados. At one point we watched a video on YouTube of Tornados, and then we wrote about what it would be like to experience the Tornado as if we were there. Ally really liked the assignment because she usually only gets to write about things she likes instead of just writing about school stuff.
I have really enjoyed working with Ally on this project; I have been her mentor for about a year now and learned so much more about her through this project. We had a lot of fun writing about things that interest us and then sharing it with each other. Ally took her journal home with her after our last session and she seemed excited to go home and continue writing. My hope for her is that I can be someone she can feel comfortable with to share her writing, but also that she will begin to become a comfortable writer in general, in school and out of school. I hope that she begins to feel proud of her writing, because she is a great writer.