Rhonda Alves
Assistant Academic Director
The 21st century is not much like the "future world" of the Jetsons, an "old world" cartoon. In the society in which the Jetsons lived, robots cleaned houses, served food that materialized at the push of a button and generally took care of everyone. Mrs. Jetson and her daughter Judy had plenty of time to get their hair and nails done, and they always looked perky and energetic. The son, Elroy, did not return home after school to an empty house because the robot was there and usually his mother, too, since she had all day to jet around doing whatever she wanted to do. Doesn’t sound like our world.
We rush to get the kids fed, dressed and to school. We rush to get to our jobs. We rush to make copies, grade papers, and get home in order to start all over again. All this rushing around is exhausting, and we have little time for leisure. I don’t know about you, but just writing about it makes me tired.
So, how do you add one more thing to your duties, like UIL? The Merriam Webster’s Intermediate Dictionary defines efficient as "capable of producing desired results especially without waste (as of time or energy)." You have to be efficient when working on UIL activities just as you have to be in your daily life. Why should UIL be reserved only for those students on the actual academic team? The contests are curriculum-based, and, therefore, appropriate for classroom use. Someone suggested that using UIL materials in the classroom might be "double dipping." I hope it is!
While I’m not advocating avian murder, Mark Twain’s adage fits: you can kill two birds with one stone. How efficient is that? Why not accomplish your UIL goals in the context of curriculum goals? All students write, perform math operations, speak and listen — which are focuses of UIL contests.
Making your life easier is not the only advantage of using UIL materials in the classroom. Students benefit. Not everyone will compete at UIL district, but all children benefit from challenging writing and math assignments. And it is all right that students will perform at varying levels and for you to dispense with the contest timeframe; you can impose this later on the academic team. Who cares if someone is obviously not in contention for a medal? The educational benefits from the activities are far more important than the hardware. The second grade creative writing contest in relation to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) is the focus of this column.
Promotion of creativity in an academic format and encouraging writing skills in an early grade level are the UIL goals for the contest. Contestants receive a prompt comprised of five captioned pictures. In 30 minutes or less, they must write a story or essay using at least one of the pictures.
Creativity is one of the criteria for evaluating the contestant’s story. It is worth 60 percent of the student’s overall rank. The criterion itself is divided into categories: substance, clarity and specific details and examples, which individualize the story and are an outgrowth of the writer’s experience and character. This portion of the contest incorporates the following TEKS for second grade language arts: (14) Writing/purposes. The student writes for a variety of audiences and purposes, and in various forms. The student is expected to:
(A) write to record ideas and reflections;
(B) write to discover, develop, and refine ideas;
(C) write to communicate with a variety of audiences;
(D) write in different forms for different purposes such as stories.
(18) Writing/writing processes. The student selects and uses writing processes for assigned writing. The student is expected to:
(A) generate ideas for writing by using prewriting techniques such as drawing and listing key thoughts;
(B) develop drafts;
(C) revise selected drafts for varied purposes, including to achieve a sense of audience, precise word choices, and vivid images.
The second criterion for evaluation of the student’s writing involves organization and counts for 30 percent of the overall rank. The competitor must write in a logical and coherent manner. The story or essay must have a beginning, middle and end. The second grade language arts TEK supported by this section of the contest is (20) Writing/inquiry/research.
The student uses writing as a tool for learning and research. The student is expected to:
(B) record his/her own knowledge of a topic in various ways such as by drawing pictures, making lists, and showing connections among ideas.
The last criterion for evaluating contest stories or essays is style, which counts for 10 percent of the overall evaluation. The divisions for this criterion are avoiding errors in sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, spelling and word usage.
While not heavily weighted in the contest, this evaluation portion of creative writing supports several language arts TEKS:
(15) Writing/penmanship/capitalization/punctuation. The student composes original texts using the conventions of written language such as capitalization and penmanship to communicate clearly. The student is expected to:
(A) gain increasing control of aspects of penmanship such as pencil grip, paper position, stroke, posture, and using correct letter formation, appropriate size, and spacing;
(B) use word and letter spacing and margins to make messages readable;
(C) use basic capitalization and punctuation correctly such as capitalizing names and first letters in sentences, using periods, question marks, and exclamation points;
(D) use more complex capitalization and punctuation with increasing accuracy such as proper nouns, abbreviations, commas, apostrophes, and quotation marks.
(16) Writing/spelling. The student spells proficiently. The student is expected to:
(B) write with more proficient spelling of regularly spelled patterns such as consonant-vowel-consonant, consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e, and one-syllable words with blends;
(C) write with more proficient spelling of inflectional endings, including plurals and verb tenses;
(D) write with more proficient use of orthographic patterns and rules such as keep/cap, sack/book, out/cow, consonant doubling, dropping e, and changing y to i.
(17) Writing/grammar/usage. The student composes meaningful texts applying knowledge of grammar and usage. The student is expected to:
(A) use singular and plural forms of regular nouns;
(B) compose complete sentences in written texts and use appropriate end punctuation;
(C) compose sentences with interesting, elaborated subjects;
(D) edit writing toward standard grammar and usage, including subject-verb agreement; pronoun agreement, including pronouns that agree in number; and appropriate verb tenses in final drafts.
(18) Cited above:
(D) edit for appropriate grammar, spelling, punctuation, and features of polished writings.
While I’m not the model of efficiency, I just killed two birds with one stone: I started my contest-TEKS correlation project and wrote my column. I hope you will use UIL contest materials with all of your students. It creates a win-win situation.
Two for one special
By using UIL contests in classroom, teachers can help students master TEKS Please note:
*1994-2003 editions of the Nystrom Desk Atlas may be used for the cmaps, graphs & charts contest.
*The Merriam Webster’s Intermediate Dictionary is the official dictionary for the elementary and junior high dictionary skills and spelling contests.
*The UIL contest tapes for music memory must be used at the UIL district meet. You may not make your own contest tapes.
Contestants who adopt such an organizational pattern will find themselves to be more successful at district and regional as well as ranked higher by the very experienced judges at the UIL state meet.
Finally, basic concepts of an organized speech are essential to either of the extemporaneous speaking events: a creative introduction rather than the statement of the topic as the opening words of the speech; a preview that establishes not only the points to be covered but also establishes the appropriate organizational pattern for the purpose and the topic (as well as stating the position that the speaker is taking in persuasion); a body that adequately develops the topic using signposting and internal summaries and previews as transitions; and a conclusion that includes an appropriate summary and a concluding statement with a note of finality.
These organizational elements are key in a winning extemporaneous speech.