see below for the classroom writing strategies shared during PD in spokane the week of july 20:
- give examples of 1, 2, and 3 quality writing (per the rubrics) for relatively simple tasks
- have students turn in “rough draft” of practice PTs and give feedback on what needs to change to turn a 1 or a 2 into a 3.
- classroom writing should reinforce technical writing standards, specifically:
- being precise
- giving detailed descriptions
- avoiding unnecessary “fluff”
- work with an english teacher so you can reinforce one another and build off of the work happening in one another’s classrooms
- save time by co-assigning projects with the english teacher
- look for dual credit opportunities across CS and english
- read and critique good writing samples so students know what good writing is
- use a rubric for the critique so students become familiar with the process of using a rubric and following directions
- use precision in our own language as teachers, particularly with the words used in the performance tasks (e.g.: don’t use describe and analyze interchangeably).
- provide frequent opportunities to analyze and review models
- activity: provide students with a description that they rewrite as an analysis (move from a 2 to a 3)
- activity: read an article and provide either and analysis, description, or evaluation and have students identify which they have.
- start small and work to more complex writing
- teach students to self-evaluate their writing
- do live demos of writing-- teacher responds to student prompts in front of the class and talks through what she is doing and how she is constructing her response
- use sentence stems to help students get started
- allow for typed or handwritten, and for ELL students early in the school year, allow for verbal responses while they become more comfortable with writing.
- 6 trait writing http://www.plattscsd.org/parents/6+1overview.pdf
- follow this helpful research paper structure: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B21d4g64Z62YdTY2MC1ub1ltd1VhRnRGajBqN09GT2tIcW1N
- peer editing
- group editing
- whole-class checklists
- task deconstruction
- timelines (planning out the writing process)
- iterative writing with a partner
- PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!
- reflective writing in small chunks, starting early in the year
- students analyze each other’s work (maybe anonymously?)
- what is one good thing?
- what is one thing that can make it even better?
- focus here on growth
- students writing in journals
- analyze the rubrics with students.