ELL Writing Assignment-Reflection and Documentaion

Working with my ELL student (pseudo name: Sam) was an enriching experience. I gained so much from being able to converse with his teacher Mrs. Strauss. She gave me a fresh view on teaching and I was inspired by her enthusiasm and dedication. When discussing Sam with Mrs. Strauss, based on her input and my observations we decided that Sam scored high on the writing rubric and scored 4s on the SOLOM Matrix in every area except for grammar which was a 3. Since Sam lives in Israel he does not have an IEP.
Sam is a bright boy with creative ideas. We decided to ask him to write about his Passover vacation as a way to motivate him to write about something that he had a personal connection with. When I asked Sam if he went on any special trips over his Passover break he responded "Yeah, why?". So I told him that we were going to write about his vacation. He seemed a bit skeptical but he began to tell me about how he went repelling in the park near his house. He also had his grandparents over for the holiday. His sisters went to sleep at his cousins' house nearby. He also played a game with his parents and had a great time. I wrote down all of these points on the board. Then I asked him to put the points in the order that they happened in. He put a number by each point. Next I asked him for a list of words that he thinks he is going to use in his writing that he wanted to know beforehand how to spell. He could not think of any. I wrote down a list of transitional words like then, next, when etc. I asked him if he thought that this discussion and plan was going to be helpful when he started writing and he said that he was not sure. When Sam picked up his pencil he started to write very slowly without paying much attention to our plan. I asked him if he was planning on looking on what we developed together and he responded that he didn't need to since he remembers what we said. After a few sentences Sam did look at the plan and used to it to write.
I was impressed with how diligently he was working. In my observations and conversations with Mrs. Strauss I gathered that he did not generally spend time to make lengthy journal entries. Yet now I was seeing him putting in a lot of effort to add detail to his work. At the end he used his plan but smiled at me and said that he decided to add more details than what we discussed. I was thrilled since this meant that he was writing for reasons beyond following his planning map. The quality of is writing was somewhat improved from his past work. This time he definitely added more detail than usual. His spelling can use some extra help. I feel that he did not ask for the correct spellings of the words or try to use the portable dictionary because he did not feel that he needed it. When I corrected his spelling mistakes he seemed a little surprised that he made them. All in all I think that this was an eye opening experience for everyone involved. One of the most beneficial outcomes was that we discovered the need to teach Sam that when he has even a small trace of a doubt on a word's spelling or usage, he should ask the teacher or use his dictionary. He can be rewarded with a point system for every fifty times he uses his dictionary to look up a word he can get a treat. At the beginning this may cause to look up words without purpose but at least the message of the importance of researching words will get across. Mrs. Strauss agreed with my proposal and said that she will try to implement something similar to help Sam in his studies.