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Dear Teachers, Thank you for sending questions and comments to Dear Write With Me. I hope you will find this helpful in supporting the writing progress of your students. Please post your comments, questions, and suggestions here. Sincerely, Write With Me. |
I am working on plans for next week and I have a transparency activity to use with the Minerva Louise story. It is a brain storming web that I copied onto a transparency sheet and will use to review the story and then relate it to our world by having them find things in our room and then tell what those items are used for. I would attach it, but I don't think you can do that with blogging, so if anyone is interested, please email me and I will send it to you. Email cwoodward@waynesboro.k12.va.us |
Hi, just wanted to say thank you to everyone for participating in our staff development activity today. If anyone would like to have their students write to me, I would be glad to write back or read their stories etc. I also can skype with a class.
To Jeremy, let me know what you decide to give to the staff member who uses this site the most! |
So what if it is a Friday night, and I am blogging?! It was good to look at K-6 writing SOLs today. As a 5th grade teacher, I like knowing what KC expects students to be able to do so that I can take those who are ready on to bigger and better things. Question: what does "purposefully selected" mean in reference to information that students choose to use in their writing? Wouldn't anything they include be considered that? Just wondering on a Friday night... Thanks to everyone involved in organizing today! |
Hey Diane, The words "purposefully selected" do seem a little obvious, but I think that sometimes our students do not consider words that create a feeling in their writing. The poem that Jenny, Joy and I read on Friday is an excellent example of the use of words to communicate the stark differences in two settings. The poet's last sentence was also a great choice of words. "And that's just it: heroes don't care about the credit they just care." I hope this answers your question. Thanks for writing in the blog!! That's the thing about teachers, even though its Friday Night, we can't stop thinking about our craft. |
Hello everyone, Friday is here. I love the Fall Weekends!! I am writing to all of you to let you know about a meeting that I attended today for reading specialists and instructional coaches. Waynesboro Public School teachers are doing so many things to improve writing instruction. For instance, some grade levels at Westwood have gotten together with their coach to insert the writing rubric into the writing pacing guide. In other words, they've made these two documents teacher friendly and specific for their classroom needs. Berkeley Glenn teachers partnered with William Perry Teachers to examine the different writing skills introduced at each grade level. Their instructional coaches have created a chart that "illustrates the changes to the writing expectations at each grade level." Wenonah teachers are working to increase writing instruction by using specific parts of their week designated to writing and by using writing in other areas of instruction. The middle school is using writing prompts on a regular basis to track student progress and adjust instruction accordingly.
Anyway, everyone is interested in sharing ideas and in articulating the expectations of WPS. We are also interested in supporting each other. So, my question to you is . . . How do you share the writing rubric with your students? |
I taught a lesson today that had students revising the beginning of a story. I am curious, how have you introduced the process of revision to your students? |
One way I think you could share the rubric with your students is... First, show them the rubric and explain what it is (the expectations for their writing at the end of the year) and explain how it is used.
Then as you teach different components from this rubric you could bring the rubric back out and highlight which aspect you are working on. For example, if I am a third grade teacher teching a mini lesson about descriptive words. I would pull out the rubic (maybe project it on a smartboard or screen so everyone can see it) and then highlight the Vocabulary section and discuss what it says, what it means, and what a score of 3 would look like for that section. I hope this long explanation makes some sense.  |
Yesterday the English teachers at Kate Collins looked at student writing together, talked about the best ways to use the rubric at each grade level, and also did some scoring. There were some great ideas shared, and some interesting questions came up as well.
I thought I would post a couple of those questions to see what thoughts others might have.... Is it important that we all use consistent instructional strategies and models, or should teachers have flexibility to use whatever they choose as long as everyone is working towards the same goals and rubric standards? Struggling students who see different models and methods every year just get confused. On the other hand, would we want to tie teachers' hands by mandating instructional strategies? What's the role of research here? Are ANY instructional methods OK, or should we look at what methods appear to be most effective? At Kate Collins, all grade levels work on the standards in the grade 8 rubric, building those skills from grade to grade. So, is a sixth grade "4" paper the same as an eighth grade "4" paper? Surely there must be differences... but do we know by looking at the rubric what those differences are? |
I had a great lesson a few weeks ago that helped my kids with getting a good "hook" in their beginning writing. We had our mini lessons on the introductions and then I had the kids take a piece of thier writing and re-write the beginning using the strategies to get their reader interested. I then took them up, had the kids put their heads down and listen. The rules were to listed with their heads down and then we would raise our hands if we would read on. If the piece I was reading was theirs, they were allowed to look at the responses. This allowed the kids to see if their intro was good and still remain anonymous! I loved it! |
I found this great web site for writing a five paragraph paper. Check it out.
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/1437/index.html |
Dear Teachers,
I thought I would share with you this really cool project the 5th grade is doing with ART. Margaret Morris, our Art teacher, used a three dimensional program to teach her unit on architecture. We are going to use this art piece, that the studnets created themselves, and have our students write about what is inside thier house. We plan to use this to create a pod cast to share with other schools. We are very excited to see what our students come up with. Let us know what you think! |
I am in the process of getting my students to write a complete essay for the SOL test. Right now, we have some wonderful beginnings but they are losing it in the middle. This has been a problem for many years, and all my tricks are used up. My kids tend to think they have everything in the beginning and start grocery listing in the middle. Any new, fresh ideas someone could send my way???? Thanks Renee |
As we were scoring our first grade students' writing we began to wonder what "Number Inflections: sound plural nouns" means exactly on the first grade writing rubric. The entire statement says, "Number Inflections: sound plural nouns -s, -es, spelling change (introduced)"
Thanks for your help. |
Tammy and Margaret, I can't wait to see the Podcast. I bet students will be excited to write on this topic. Please keep us informed. |
Renee, do you have the book, "The Art of Teaching Writing" by Lucy Calkins. On page 223 she has some ideas to try "When a Student Says, 'I'm Done,' What Can We Say." I thought they were pretty good. You can borrow my copy if you like. |
Renee, I found a website that has EuroTales. The neat thing about this is that some of the tales allow you to write your own story using their illustrations. The site is www.eurotales.eril.net |
Just wondering if anyone still does journals out there? In first grade at BG, we see these as a tool to show how much the child has grown throughout the year. And what a great way to individualize writing for each child. While one child might be working on the mechanics, you have another who might be on details, and still another working on inflection. We were just curious to see who still does a daily journal, and their goals for this activity. |
I just saw a great thing this past week at VASCD. You can have the kids type their story on the computer and then cut and past it into a program called Wordles. Every time a word is used more than once it becomes bigger. Therefore the more times used the bigger it is. This will quickly show the kids the overused words in their story. I thought this was neat!! |
Edy , was the site called Wordles.org?
My students are famous for using the same word over & over. I wish I had a thesaurus to put in everyone hand. This sounds like a great way to call overusage to their attention ! |
Hi Jenna, I found the site at Wordles.com |
Second grade at Berkeley Glenn is planning a movie maker project for January. I would like every student to be able to do their own project. I am wondering if anyone else has tried movie maker with students this young and what the challenges were. I am looking forward to starting this project after break. Any suggestions? Thank you, Hollie Bergeron |
Recently, in my second grade art classes at Berkely Glenn, I had the whole class create a story while working together. The students chose their own groups and wrote a sentence or two then passed it to the next group to continue the story, and so forth. Once the group had finished their writing they were to illustrate their part of the story. Not only was this a collaborative art project with twenty students working together but they also collaborated on creating a story that had a beginning middle and end. |
I have enjoyed reading the Dear Write With Me blog! I have recently enjoyed getting my second grade class to blog about Native Americans. They wrote a paragraph explaining the adaptations they would need to make if they were a Sioux, and moved to the Woodland Forest. Rosemary Wagoner helped me get things going by setting up the pages for me. We spent a very long session in the Quick Reads lab, but everyone ended up posting their writing! I was especially excited because this activity was focused on higher level thinking skills, while getting technology directly into the hands of students. I am excited for our next blogging adventure, and hope to set something up soon for an upcoming unit! |
I have been wanting to do a blog with my sixth grade Language Arts class but I was having hard time getting all the permission forms back so they could use the internet. So instead of doing a blog on the web I set up a discussion forum in Moodle. Each student prepares a response journal to what they are reading and then they post to the forum. Each student can then read the other posts and respond to at least one. I was having my students do the response journals earlier on paper but I was not getting any turned into me. When we started doing the response journals on Moodle everyone is coming to class prepared. We have only done it twice because lap time is hard to get right now but we are going to hopefully do it at least once a week during February. |
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