Teach Writing Right

Crazy, busy, end-of-year activities abound at my school.   Yours too?  I have numerous posts to make-up for this weekend since last weekend was all about grading papers.

Last week, we celebrated Sydney's metaphor about springtime; she is one of my eighth graders, and I'm struck at how they are really applying both good "showing" skills and sentence fluency tricks (Which we've been practicing with!) to these metaphors they are writing for this weekly extra credit contest in my classroom. 

Guillermo, a seventh grader in the same class as Sydney, applied those same skills to his metaphor about life, which I was really impressed by.  Guillermo's metaphor will be seen by all my students starting Monday morning.

Enjoy the two metaphors below!

Sydney's metaphor

Gil's metaphor

--Corbett

I like to save voice as the final trait of the year we look at.  I find Springtime to be a time when students start catching the "lazy worker fever," and I have to brag that I have great voice lessons: fun and engaging.

We have been enjoying Voice as our "Trait of the Month" since right before Spring Break.  The students were mostly appreciative, I think, of my wife's famous J. Peterman Voice Lesson, which I did on a Smartboard for the first time this year.

My classroom trait bulletin board & poster set.

After spending December and January "boning up" on our ORGANIZATION skills, I've officially switched my trait of the month.  We are now studying SENTENCE FLUENCY skills to use in our next two Writer's Workshop papers.

My classroom trait bulletin board & poster set.

We have also been studying/writing poetry to improve our ability to write sentences that have rhythmic sound to them; in particular, I have used my friend Holly's Four-Metaphor Poetry lesson (from WritingFix) and a brand new variation of my "Start & Stop Poems," which is part of my classroom set of Bingo Cards.


Check back soon!  I will be developing a few more sentence fluency activities that I will post, along with some new student samples.

Been catching up on posting pictures from my classroom; my wife had back surgery earlier this month (thanks for all the good wishes, friends), and I have many digital shots on my camera but haven't had time to upload!

My student aide helped me a few weeks back change the Trait of the Month bulletin board to ORGANIZATION.  Our state writing test is certainly looming (February), so all my students are going to be working on two things:  1) designing their own advance/graphic organizers for both expository and persuasive writing tasks and 2) creating thorough and sensible paragraphs.  Because we lose so much instructional  time in November & December, this TRAIT will be our focus for both those months.

Order Trait Bulletin Board Materials from Amazon.  Find student samples at WritingFix!

--Corbett

I did switch my "Trait of the Month" Bulletin Board while my students worked in writer's workshop this week.  We're following IDEA DEVELOPMENT with WORD CHOICE so that I can focus them on VOICE next month.  Why?  Because these are the three traits that work best together when teaching students to "Show more, and tell less."

Here's my photo!  Here's the bulletin board set I used to make this!

--Corbett

A teacher once told me he was able to teach the six writing traits in a week.  I acted impressed, but I wasn't really.  I have to wonder at what cognitive level he was teaching them if he could be done in a week.

In my classroom, the language of the writing traits is the most important academic language I give my students.  Without it, my students' ability to talk about quality writing versus average writing would not exist.  Of all the academic vocabulary I give my students, the traits language is the most important.

Each trait has its own academic vocabulary associated with it.  When you really teach idea development, your students are learning multiple things: relevant details, topic, showing, imagery, main idea, subtopic, etc.  There is no way you could really teach the six writing traits in a week. 

In my classroom, I have a "Trait of the Month" bulletin board.  Once a month it changes, but only after we have had dozens of discussions and mini-lessons focused on that trait.  Even with a month, my students discover they still have much more to learn about how to use/improve upon each writing trait.

I don't ever use conventions as the "Trait of the Month."  Conventions is always in the background when we work on the writing process.

I've decided this year--because SHOWING writing is going to be one of my focuses--that we will use Idea Development as September's Trait, Word Choice as October's Trait, and Voice will be November's Trait; these are the three traits most needed when learning to "Show instead of tell."

Above, you can see my just-hung "Trait of the Month" bulletin board.  It not only features one of trait posters I purchased through Amazon, but it also features the idea development chart from WritingFix's Building with the 6 Traits poster set, and various student samples I found at WritingFix that were strong with their use of idea development skills.  The question at the bottom of the bulletin board asks students to analyze those student samples, looking for specific idea development skills that the writers excelled with.

My classroom copy of "Show; Don't Tell" will be displayed in the near-by chalk tray near the bulletin board for September-November!

I spent a great afternoon yesterday, working with a group of sixth graders in Reno.  As part of my expository project (to be finished this June), I am gathering expository samples from 6th-8th graders.  Four weeks ago, I had this group of sixty sixth graders write an expository sample inspired by this prompt: If you could switch places with someone else, who would you switch with and why?

The students' samples were assessed by two of my favorite state scorers (my wife and our friend, Campbell), using the rubrics that are applied to our eighth grade writing test.  Yesterday, I returned to the sixth graders where we looked at the rubrics, we predicted what score we think we each earned, then we analyzed our actual scores.

I had them graph their own scores, using a tool (see below) created by some very wise fifth grade teachers a few years back.  These sixth graders began understanding where their skills as writers specifically shine, and they began understanding how they could set some personal goals based on their weaker traits.



Click here to access this data sheet from WritingFix.

It was great fun watching students "map their data out," and listening to them ask questions about what it would take to move a specific score higher.

With the rubrics in hand, they then set two very specific goals for specific writing skills they will work harder on to increase their score (even if just by a half a point) for the next expository prompt we will be practicing with.  We're going to have a little contest for the 5 or 6 writers who successfully raise their scores the most by following the goals they chose for themselves..

I return to them on March 24th to begin pre-writing for their next prompt.  Before they write, each student will be required to look over the two goals they set.

Gotta love intelligent uses of data in the classroom.  It really can motivate learners.

--Corbett

I'm probably biased, I'm sure; I really love my Seven Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson.  It's a framework I use in all my trainings now.  It's designed to inspire writing teachers to think about what they're already doing well to help all learners become better writers, as well think about what they could be doing better.  We could all be doing things better.  Great writing instruction is a life-long learning topic for teachers, if ever there was one.

I've been working as one of the coordinators of the Northern Nevada Writing Project's next great print resource: Teaching Narrative Writing.  The guide will contain a great variety of mini-lesson-inspired resources as well as ten complete lessons on teaching narrative/descriptive writing in elementary school.

The guide, which comes out this March, is being marketed as a tool for collaborative teaching teams, and the ten lessons are included to inspire great conversation among like-minded teachers.  To help guide the conversation, we've decided my Seven Elements framework will be the basis of the discussion the guide is trying to promote.  Each of the ten lessons in the guide (like the one pictured above) will feature a discussion prompt (see the gray box) that asks teachers to think specifically about the seven elements.

This post is focused on three of the Seven Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson from my Teacher Workshop: Teaching Authentic Revision Skills, Focusing on Writing Skills (more than focusing on the end product), and Discussing Writing Samples at the Analysis and Evaluation Level.

The new Post-its are up!  Here's one of them!

In 2005, we created our first set of response/revision Post-its for the WritingFix website.  These tiny notes, when given to students, had them analyze five different skills from one of the writing traits, and they could actually be printed on Post-it notes (an optional extra step), if you fed them through your feeder tray a second time.  Instructions for printing them on actual Post-it Notes.

During response group time, these Post-it notes can serve as miniature "scripts," containing language we wanted our students to use when they looked at their own and each other's writing.  We explicitly taught our students to rank the skills (not rate them), because we wanted to truly push them to the analyze and evaluate level of Blooms.  When ranking the five skills, a student has to decide which skill stood out the strongest (and give it a five), which was next strongest (and give it a four), next strongest (give it a three), etc.  To rate, a student could give all the skills the same score, which they often did to be lazy.  Ranking was harder to teach the students, but it proved such a worthwhile extra step because--to do it well--they had to re-read the draft several times and really focus on a specific trait's skills. 

With the skills ranked by each reader on a Post-it, student response groups then discuss their rankings with each other, especially in areas where the scores differed.  After a thorough group discussion, the writer of the draft usually has a pretty good sense of which skills stood out not quite as strong as others, and with that knowledge, a revision plan can be made for the paper. 

The original Post-it Notes at WritingFix have been tweaked over the years, and these new, revised Post-its reflect some of the best slight changes we have made and recorded.  In addition to revising the popular 6-trait Post-its, I have also added some new genre-specific Post-its, which I have been personally using (and loving) since October in my workshops.

I meet a lot of teachers who use the Post-its, but they allow their students to rate the skills, instead of rank them.  Here is a challenge to start forcing them to rank because it's a more sophisticated way to think about writing skills.  Students would prefer to rate, so I no longer allow them to do that!

And for those of you who've never used the Post-it Notes at all, here is a challenge to start.  Remember, you need to model their use, you need to supervise their use in the beginning, and you need to practice using them on writing they don't have a connection to. 

As far as tools that force your students to start using the academic language of writing, I've never come across anything better than these Post-its.  Click here to visit WritingFix's Post-it Resource Page and to access all the online versions.