Troutman Middle School
And
Write To Learn
Presented by: Debbie Craven, Perry Justice, and Jeff James

Why the initial interest in WriteToLearn?
• Our district writing scores needed improvement-we were seeing little growth from year to year in our middle schools and high schools
• Even after the change to “Moodle” our students lacked engagement in the process
• We felt a 21 st century approach was needed to engage students in a formative learning process versus a summative approach

Initial Success and Electing to Move Forward
• Began pilot at TMS in the 2008-2009 school year- pilot group versus standard writing group results showed tremendous growth (70-72% for non-pilot versus 95% and above for the pilot group)
• Special education students saw similar successes
• District elected to purchase a 3 year contract for all middle schools based on pilot results
• Our district after the release of 2009 data found the
10 th grade writing scores necessitated a need for change-we elected to pilot the program at
Statesville High School

General Education Student Example

Special Education Student Example

Comparing Moodle versus WTL
Comparing
Moodle versus
WTL
Spell Checker
Moodle
Limited
Main idea and supporting arguments
Grading none
Labor intense
Grammar checking none
WriteToLearn
Comparable to
Microsoft word
Compares what is written and makes suggestions if needed
Has proven in over 140 papers to be 95%+ accurate-eliminates subjectivity
Advanced-offers rules and suggestions for correcting

Comparing Moodle versus WTL
Comparing
Moodle versus
WTL
Sentence
Fluency
Feedback
Moodle
Limited
Summative
WriteToLearn
Advanced-offers suggestions to correct
Formative
Word Choice none Compares what is written and makes suggestions if needed

Why choose WTL?
• The program lends itself to 21 st century learners (digital learners) who expect immediate feedback
• Best practices from “Marzano” suggest the more immediate the feedback the better
• Best practice also informs us as educators that formative assessment (assessment for learning) has a greater impact on skill acquisition

Why choose WTL?
• Constrained budgets are requiring us to look outside the box in order to continue if not improve our education system
• WTL eliminates hours of redundancy while increasing the literacy skills of our students
• Moodle can be eliminated and WTL adopted as an all-encompassing source for the North
Carolina writing thus eliminating the duplication of effort