Engaging the Gears: A Presentation for Teachers in Improving Writing Instruction St. Bartholomew School Yonkers, New Yo

1. Engaging the Gears: A Presentation for Teachers in Improving Writing Instruction St. Bartholomew SchoolYonkers, New YorkOctober 31, 2007 • Today’s topics: • Three kinds of writing • The writing process • The NYS Standards and Scoring Guide (Rubric) • Differentiating tasks • The NYS Standards • Writing instruction procedures • Breaking down the writing task to solve problems and build skills: • Framing the task • Guiding the task • Following up • Amy Benjamin • Today’s visuals are available at www.amybenjamin.com (See “recent presentations”)

2. Grade Level Sessions • Vocabulary development • Sentence Skills: Building simple and complex sentences • More on creating and guiding Standards-based tasks • Spelling, punctuation • Grammar within the writing process

3. Three Kinds of Writing • Writing to learn; writing for self-understanding • Audience: Self • Writing to prove knowledge or to demonstrate the ability to write • Audience: Teacher 3. Writing for social communication Audience: peers, family

4. The Writing Process Pre-writing: Gathering knowledge and readiness to write Drafting: Going from plan to paper Revising: Forming a cohesive whole Editing: Consideration of the reader’s needs Throughout:Awareness of audience and purpose

5. Key for Success: Prewriting From speech to writing Use of resources Make a Plan: List Draw Map Talk Read Awareness of question

6. NY State Rubric (Scoring Guide) 1. Meaning: Addressing the task 2. Development: Providing reasons, examples, details 3. Organization: Introduction, body, conclusion, transitions 4. Language: Use of formal language tone 5. Conventions: grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization

7. Scoring Guide (Rubric) M: Meaning: Addressing the task Answering the question Focus on the task verb What are some of the task verbs that you ask your students to do? “Teacherly” language habits: What do we call this? There’s a name for that. We call it… Tell us about that.. Say more about that… Encouraging and modeling complete sentence answers

8. Scoring Guide Development: Reasons Examples Anecdotes Supportive details Textual reference

9. Scoring Guide Organization: Sequence Transition

10. Scoring Guide Language Tone: Proper formal diction

11. Scoring Guide C: Conventions: Grammar Spelling Punctuation Capitalization Handwriting

12. Where do I need help? Writing the Introduction Getting Started Addressing the question Organizing 1.Definition of a key term 2. Rhetorical question 3. Anecdote Vocabulary Writing the Conclusion Development Spelling, Grammar, Cap, Punct Other Time Management (Meeting Deadlines)

13. New York State ELA Standards Standard 1: Language (reading, writing, listening, speaking for information and understanding Task Verbs: Explain, describe, summarize, paraphrase… Resources and Models: Subject area textbooks, newspapers, graphs and charts…

14. New York State ELA Standards Standard 2: Language (reading, writing, listening, speaking for literary response and expression. Task Verbs: Create (a poem, a story, a skit…) Resources and Models: stories, poems, plays, magazines

15. New York State ELA Standards Standard 3: Language (reading, writing, listening, speaking for critical analysis and evaluation. Task Verbs: Compare, persuade, convince, argue for or against, explain why, show how… Resources and Models: Letters to the editor, persuasive essays

16. New York State ELA Standards Standard 4: Language (reading, writing, listening, speaking for social interaction. Task Verbs: Write a social note that: thanks, invites, requests Resources and Models: Thank you notes Invitations Blogs IM’s and TM’s

17. Inform Persuade Topic: P I E S Entertain Socialize

18. Differentiating Writing Tasks: More complexity Less complexity Evaluate Compare & Contrast Recommend Persuade Draw conclusions Make generalizations List Define Describe Identify Put in order Create categories Apply Illustrate Give examples of Summarize, paraphrase, restate Analyze (take apart + put together)

19. Writing Instruction Procedures • How will I frame the task? • How will I guide the students through the task? (reading, socializing, modeling, brainstorming, drawing, word banks, sentence stems, drawing, mapping, using a graphic organizer) • How will I follow up? (assessment, follow-up lessons, transitioning to the next writing experience)

20. The Language Tree Adjective Branches: very___________ Noun Branches: Verb Branches: very___________ very___________ can___________ the______________ very___________ can___________ can___________ very___________ the______________ the______________ can___________ can___________ the______________ can___________ the______________ the______________ Prepositional Phrase Branches: in________________ on________________ at_______________ for________________ with________________ Topic: ______________________________

21. The Language Tree Adjective Branches: very___________ Noun Branches: Verb Branches: very___________ very___________ can___________ the______________ very___________ can___________ can___________ very___________ the______________ the______________ can___________ can___________ the______________ can___________ the______________ the______________ Prepositional Phrase Branches: in________________ on________________ at_______________ for________________ with________________ Topic: ______________________________

22. Story Summary Somebody wanted something but, so….

23. Story Summary So… wanted Somebody but

24. Story Summary II So… wanted Somebody but What went wrong? What got in the way? How did it all work out? Who? Where? When? Why?

25. Story Summary II So… wanted Somebody but What went wrong? What got in the way? How did it all work out? Who? Where? When? Why? Conflict Obstacle Main character Setting Resolution Motivation

26. Designing a Writing Task Four Parts: 1. The Prompt: The situation, what to do, the audience and purpose, the genre 2. Some scaffolding questions 3. A word bank 4. A few sentence stems (fill-in-the-blank sentences to develop)

27. Word Banks A word bank is a list of useful words and phrases for a writing task. We teach the word bank as part of the pre-writing process. An effective word bank has a combination of familiar words, familiar words morphed in new words, and new words and phrases. Word banks allow students to brainstorm, stretch their thinking, and practice spelling. Develop word banks with students in class as part of the pre-writing phase.

28. Sentence Stems Sentence stems are frames for sentences that will be useful for a writing task. Ex: An example of __________ is ______. _____________ happened because_____. To devise sentence stems, ask yourself: “What kind of sentence(s) do I want to read for this writing task?”

29. Creating Well-Developed Writing Tasks: A Collegial Activity Round 1: With your partner(s), decide which of the writing tasks you’d like to develop for your class. Decide which Standard this writing tasks meets. Decide whether or not the task needs to be simplified, re-worded, or made more complex. Decide if you need to modify the layout. (5 minutes)

30. Round 2: Discuss how you would build the students’ knowledge to prepare them to write this task. (reading, socializing, modeling, brainstorming, drawing, word banks, sentence stems, drawing, mapping, using a graphic organizer)

31. Round 3: Establish a word bank for the task. Include words that the students probably know as well as some new words or words that they have not used before. About 10-12 words and phrases (5 minutes)

32. Round 4: Create 3 sentence stems for this task (5 minutes)