Taking it to Writing

1. Taking it to Writing January 10, 2014 Weber School District Make sure you are sitting with your team from your school

2. Housekeeping Be sure to sign the roll Please turn off cell phones and keep them put away Write down ideas to share during discussion times There will be a 20 minute break at 9:50

3. Warm-up Activity Write down your strengths and weaknesses in teaching writing

4. National Commission on Writing (2003) “Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many.”

5. Writing is Difficult Writing is the most difficult of all language skills. It is acquired the latest, mastered by the fewest, and learned with the most effort over the longest period of time. (D. Johnson & H. Myklebust, 1967)

6. Teaching Elementary School Students to be Effective Writers Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Dept. of Ed, 2012 http://ies.ed.gov/ncee and http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/ wwc/publications_reviews.aspx#pubsearch.

7. Write Traits in a Process Model

8. Writing Process Writing well involves more than simply documenting ideas as they come to mind. It is a process that requires that the writer think carefully about the purpose for writing, plan what to say, plan how to say it, and understand what the reader needs to know. Teachers can help students become effective writers by teaching a variety of strategies for carrying out each component of the writing process and by supporting students in applying the strategies until they are able to do so independently.

9. Generating Ideas • Develop goals and generate ideas • Gather information from reading, prior knowledge, and discussions with others • Organize ideas for writing based on the purpose of the text • Write these goals and ideas down in order to refer and modify them throughout the writing process • 6 Traits Connection: Ideas • Strategies: • POW (Pick ideas, Organize their notes, Write and say more) • Ordering Ideas/Outlining

10. Drafting • Create a preliminary version of a text • Select words and construct sentences to accurately convey ideas • Skills such as spelling, handwriting, and capitalization and punctuation are important when drafting but should not be the focus of students’ effort at this stage • 6 Traits Connection: all traits except conventions and presentation • Strategies: • Imitation (models of exemplary text) • Sentence Generation

11. Revision • Make content changes to clarify or enhance meaning • Reorganize • Add or remove sections • Refine word choice and sentence structure • Word processing can make this easier for many students • 6 Traits Connection: Organization, voice, sentence fluency • Strategies: • Peer revising (?, ^)

12. Editing • Make changes to conventions of written English • Make the text readable for audience and intended meaning clearer • Spelling • Grammar • 6 Traits Connection: Word Choice, Conventions • Strategies: • COPS (Capitalize, Overall appearance, Punctuation, Spelling)

13. Publishing • Occurs at the end of the writing process • Purpose is to share publicly in written form or oral form, or both • Not all student writing needs to be published but students should be given opportunities to publish their writing and celebrate their accomplishments • 6 Trait Connection: Presentation • Strategies: • Peer Sharing (in pairs, listen and read along as the author reads aloud) • Authentic audience(s)

14. Writing Sage Assessment • Writing testing window: March 24 – April 12 • 90 minutes: two 45 minute sessions • Prompt – responding to a text • Informative/explanatory • Opinion • Students will be held accountable for any conventions from Language Standards 1 & 2 • Spell check will be available

15. Writing Sage Assessment

16. Writing Sage Assessment

17. Oral Language • Before a student can be expected to write formally, they must be able to speak formally. • Ways to support this: • Require students to use formal language to answer questions asked in lessons • Require students to restate part of question in responding • Use sentence framing to support writing formally

18. Utah Core Standards • Utah Core Standards (added components) • Manuscript Handwriting (K-2) • Cursive Writing (3-5) • Reading cursive writing (3-5) • www.uen.org

19. Handwriting Resources are included in Treasures! Page 168 in your Teacher Resource Book

20. Unpacking Writing Standard 1

21. Text-Dependent Prompts http://blog.wsd.net/reading/ What sea creature interests you the most? Think about why you like it. Share your opinion on that animal and tell why it is the best. (opinion) Rewrite these prompts to be text-dependent!

22. Organize Your Writing

23. Unpacking Writing Standard 2

24. Text-Dependent Prompts Comprehension Check page 529 Question 5: Read “Coral Reefs” on pages 510-511 and page 514 of At Home in the Coral Reef. What did you learn about hard and soft coral from each selection? Explain.

25. Building Excellence in Student WorkModels, Critique, Descriptive Feedback http://vimeo.com/38247060 Teaching kids about revising (writing workshop lesson)

26. Support at Home… http://www.readingrockets.org/pdfs/edextras/59261-en.pdf