A writing program in the Greenwood Public Schools is generating results after less than two years, and the district's curriculum director says it can do even more.
The four-year "Write From the Beginning" program was set up in the district in November 1999 to help students develop writing skills and prepare them for the writing portion of the Mississippi Curriculum test. Now its principles have been implemented at all grade levels in all courses.
The program already has had an impact on the students' test scores, said Barbara Corbett, the district's director of curriculum, instruction, testing and professional development.
On the writing portion of the Mississippi Curriculum Test, administered in the spring, about 94 percent of the district's 327 fourth-graders tested and 92 percent of the seventh-graders tested earned passing scores.
And this is after less than two years of the program, Corbett said. The next district practice tests will be administered Jan. 7, 2002, and the state tests will be administered in March.
If the students and teachers stick with it, the district's numbers should be among the best in the state, she said.
"If we're getting this kind of results after a year and a half, what's going to happen after four years?" Corbett said.
The foundation of the program is a system for helping students organize thoughts, Corbett said.
In kindergarten, students are taught eight "thinking maps," or visual strategies for organizing their writing.
For example, a "flow map" can demonstrate a sequence of events; a "tree map" can show main ideas, supporting ideas and details; and a "bubble map" can help describe the qualities of something.
The district began using these maps six years ago, training teachers from kindergarten through third grade on how to use them. Then it was decided that older students could benefit from these techniques as well, and the writing program was extended through high school.
"It has done wonders," Corbett said.
In "Write From the Beginning," kindergartners learn to draw pictures illustrating ideas and possibly add some words. First-graders draw pictures and write about them, and second-graders learn to write three-paragraph passages. By fourth grade, they are sharpening their continuity.
Students learn a structure composed of an opening paragraph, a second supporting paragraph and then a third paragraph that leads back to the opening idea.
Then, between the fourth and seventh grades, in preparation for the next test, they learn to break the middle paragraph into subtopics. They also are encouraged to use a variety of sentence structures.
Corbett calls the writing program "the most systematic thing I've ever seen." It incorporates writing into all classes every day.
She said it is designed so that there are no surprises on the standardized writing tests for students in any grade.
Nancy Tollison, who teaches fourth-graders at Williams Elementary, said her students have improved their skills through the program. The "thinking maps" are useful for helping them plan, she said.
Tollison said she incorporates some journal writing and reading into class every day.
Students are given topics such as a favorite pet or a favorite time of year, and they develop them over a few days. They might start off with a map one day to plan their thoughts, assemble a rough draft the next day and then revise it the following day, she said.
They learn how to stick to a topic, create interesting stories and use appropriate vocabulary, Tollison said.
The students also like hearing teachers read their work and make suggestions, and sometimes the children read the samples to the classes themselves, she said. Some of the works are even displayed in the hall, she said.
The state suggests writing topics in its class materials, and so does the "Write From the Beginning" book that is used, she said.
Corbett said the program's benefits are apparent in the district's scores on the writing portion of the Mississippi Curriculum Test.
The writing test grades students on a scale of zero to 4, with 2 considered passing. A zero is given only to students who write off-topic.
The goal was to have as many students as possible score 2 or better, Corbett said. On the last round of these tests, 307 of the district's 327 fourth-graders tested scored 2 or better. That figure includes special-education students as well as those taking regular classes.
This includes 90 percent of the test takers from Bankston Elementary, 98 percent at Davis, 95 percent at Dickerson and 89 percent at Williams.
Bankston, Davis and Dickerson elementary schools each averaged a score of 2.6 on the fourth-grade writing test, and Williams' students averaged 2.3. Only three students in the district wrote off-topic.
Statewide, 12.6 percent of the fourth-graders tested scored below 2, and 499 students, or 1.3 percent, wrote off-topic.
In the seventh-grade writing test, 92 percent of the Threadgill Junior High School students who took it scored better thsn 2. Their average score was 2.3.
Only one student in the district received a zero.
Statewide, on the seventh-graders' test, 88 percent of the students scored at least a 2.
Corbett said she has been asked to lead workshops on the improvement of writing. People from schools in higher accreditation classes have called to ask what Greenwood has done to score so well, she said.
