Start At The Very Beginning

“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.”  This famous line, sung by Maria to the children in Sound of Music, was part of our early music education. 

The start of school is a time of beginnings.  The first days are filled with introducing students to the beginning of new classes, new routines, new expectations, and new classmates. Eager to jump into curriculum, it is easy for us to forget the importance of taking the time to start at the very beginning.

In writing, the very beginning is sentence writing.  Too often, the focus becomes on students writing complete paragraphs without mastering this fundamental building block.  Analyzing standards shows that sentences are considered an integral part of writing instruction.

So, what do students need to know about a sentence?  Prior to writing complete sentences, students must be able to recognize and speak in complete sentences. From kindergarten through 6th grade, students should be expected to respond in complete sentences at school, both orally and in writing.

Next, students need to know the components of a complete sentence.  While most children can tell you a sentence contains a capital letter at the beginning, punctuation at the end, a subject and a verb, they also need to know that a sentence must make sense.  (This is where handwriting and spelling come into play.)  Teach, apply and practice finding these sentence components with your students.  As a group, take a basic sentence and practice changing the subject.  For example:  The dog ran at the park.  The children ran at the park.  Repeat this changing the verb.  The dog barked at the park.  The dog jumped at the park. Provide students ample time to check their own writing to make sure their sentences are complete!

Teach students that not all sentences are created equal.  Playing with sentence structure helps students improve their sentences in a natural way.  Include time to experiment with language both verbally and in writing. Vocabulary can be increased when students explore varied word choices in completed sentences.  For example:  The turtle sat on a rock.  The turtle basked on the rock.  The turtle lazed on the rock.

Finally, reinforce that writing complete, interesting sentences is a requirement in class.  In primary grades, Write Now – Right Now uses colors when working on editing sentences.  Older students should be expected to write complete, correct sentences at all times. Provide time in class for students to correct their writing and then make it a habit in your classroom.

Sentence writing is a building block for all writing.  Please reach out for ideas on how to encourage more complete sentence writing in your classroom.  We love to talk writing!

Preparing for Successful Writing Instruction

The new school year is upon us, a time filled with anticipation, excitement, and a very long to-do list.  A quote from Benjamin Franklin always comes to mind in August:  By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.  Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful year of writing instruction, resulting in your students becoming confident, strong writers.

Tip #1

Plan a time in your schedule for writing instruction.  At Write Now – Right Now, we recommend primary teachers plan direct writing instruction for 20-25 minutes a day, 4 days a week.  Intermediate teachers should extend that time to 35-40 minutes a day, 4 days a week.  This instructional time should be spent teaching, modeling, practicing, sharing, and fine-tuning writing skills.  Additional practice of skills takes place in other curricular areas, such as Science and Social Studies.

Tip #2

Create a collaborative and supportive classroom community.  Writing does not take place in a silent vacuum.  Teach your students how to actively listen to one another.  Compliments need to be specific:  My ears perked up at the words you chose to describe the sluggish turtle.  Critiques should be given in a respectful manner.  I noticed you did not support your first big ideas with any details. 

Tip #3  

Build an organization system that works for you and your students.  As students are learning and practicing new skills, they need to collect their work to use during the next step of the writing process.  For example, students will practice planning to a variety of prompts and will need to collect those plans.  Later, they will use the plans to practice writing topic sentences. Composition books, spirals, and three -ring notebooks all work well.  Reach out to us if you’d like further organization tips. Darlene-and-terry@writenow-rightnow.com

Tip #4

Teach skills in a sequential manner.  Too often, we expect students to create a product before they understand the process and skills necessary to be successful.  Students need to be taught necessary skills before they can complete writing tasks. For example, students must be able to write a complete sentence, read a prompt, and organize thoughts before they are asked to write an essay.

Tip #5

Provide feedback on the go! Every time a student practices something incorrectly, that incorrect practice becomes a habit.  As students are working, continually circulate the room, providing feedback in real time. Students should frequently be hearing good writing, sharing their own writing, and listening to feedback on their writing.

Direct writing instruction is essential for all elementary students, no matter their age.  Research continually points away from the “just let them write” philosophy and recommends the use of direct instruction in the classroom.  Taking the time to plan the writing instruction in your classroom, and making it a priority, prepares you and your students to succeed in this important curricular area.  For more information on the research, click here.  http://www.writenow-rightnow.com/research

Happy Writing!

Writing Instruction - What the Research Shows

Spend time with a toddler, and you will find yourself answering the question “Why?” dozens of times an hour.  Spend time with teachers hearing about a new program or initiative to be introduced into their school, and you will hear the same question.

Understanding the why behind any change helps us both assess the relevancy of new ideas, form our own opinions, and determine the priority we will give to the initiative. One of the least understood areas of elementary standards falls under the area of writing.  Research is helping educators understand the importance of teaching writing, the most effective ways to teach these skills, and the surprising benefits writing has on reading comprehension.

Why spend time teaching writing?

For information on research in writing, click here.  http://www.writenow-rightnow.com/research

Teaching students to write does more than instructing students in composing an essay and writing a story.  Writing about content material increases students’ comprehension, fosters deeper level thinking skills, and improves communication skills. Students’ literacy skills are improved when they are asked to write about what they have read.

Students must be able to communicate clearly.  As we become increasingly more technology focused, the need for students to communicate their thoughts and ideas clearly is even more essential.

What is quality writing instruction?

Most students do not inherently know how to write well. Direct, strong instructional guidance is necessary for developing writers to recognize, practice and internalize the skills needed for effective and creative written communication.  Writing is not just writing down what we say but is rather a form of communication that is extremely important in the work force.

Writing skills must be taught explicitly.  Before writing an essay, students must be able to both speak and write in complete sentences.  Understanding the writing task, determining what needs to be learned from a text, and then taking the appropriate notes are all essential skills which need to be taught and practiced. Organizing any writing genre, from paragraphs, to essays, to narratives is a skill which benefits both the writer and the reader. Experts agree that asking students to write without proper instruction is one reason that writing scores across the country are so dismal.

Can writing instruction be engaging?

Students become excited about learning when their teachers are excited about teaching.  The writing classroom should be interactive, with many opportunities for students to share and receive feedback.  Instruction should be focused, with students engaged in practicing the taught skills.  While practicing writing, students should be frequently encouraged to stop and listen to peers’ work, listening to quality writing and providing feedback.  Teachers should be engaged with students during writing instruction, providing immediate feedback to students.

Writing is an essential component of literacy instruction.  Thoughtful writing instruction must be a part of every elementary students’ school day.  If we can help in any way, please reach out.

Happy Writing!

Taming the Grading Monster

“I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack at once.”

-  Ashleigh Brilliant

This quote can be applied to grading! It’s happened to all of us.  We start school Monday morning feeling all caught up – papers graded, lesson plans made, life in control.  By Wednesday, we have a teacher bag full of papers to grade.  The bag comes home with us in the afternoon, spends the evening in the car or on the family room floor, returns to school the next day, and repeat!  The pile of papers is a constant nagging in the back of our minds, but never rises to the top of the to-do list.  Finally, after two or three weeks, the papers are no longer relevant or needed, and are quietly buried in our home recycle barrel.

As we talk with teachers across the country, we continually hear teachers confess they neglect teaching writing as the grading can be overwhelming.  The following are some tips for keeping the “Writing Grading Monster” under control.

·       Grade writing after students have an opportunity to practice each skill.  For example, students are practicing composing topic sentences.  Provide students instruction, modeling, practicing and sharing while they are learning this skill. After students have had ample practice time, students will then choose the sentence they find most interesting.  Students can edit and recopy that sentence and turn it in as an assessment.  You are only grading one sentence per student (28 sentences), instead of 8 sentences per student (224 sentences.)  You can use this assessment for both a writing and a conventions grade.

·       Grade each part of the writing process.  Writing is a process, not a product. Let me say that again, “writing is a process, not a product.”  Each part of the writing process can be used as a valuable writing assessment.  For example, you may be sorting ideas into categories in your primary classroom.  As sorting is a part of organization, you can use this as a valid writing assessment.  If you are teaching planning, use students’ independent plans for writing grades.  Not only does this simplify grading, but you are able to discover students’ weaknesses and remedy them before they become an ingrained habit.

·       Grade only what you have taught.  If you are teaching planning, assess only planning.  Do not feel you need to grade students on items you have not taught, and they have not mastered.  As you are practicing speaking in complete sentences with your primary students, ask your students what they did at recess as they return to class after lunch.  As students respond, take note on who cannot respond in a complete sentence.  An assessment on speaking in complete sentences is done and graded!

·       Grade on the move.  Post a class list to a clipboard and keep it with you during writing instruction.  Perhaps you are practicing using transition words in big idea sentences.  As you circle the room, read students’ writing.  If a student is confused, stop and help him correct his work and write “NH” (Needs Help) next to that student’s name.  If a student has the skill, check in briefly with positive feedback.  At the end of your writing time, you have a completed assessment.  Any student without an “NH” has passed that skill, while your “Needs Help” are also noted.  You also have a ready-made small group created, showing students with whom you need check in with the next day.

·       Keep an ongoing list of skills students have mastered.  A Kindergarten teacher we visited used the following list of skills students needed to master, with the first letter of each month in the corresponding box.  As students demonstrated mastery of the skill, she marked the corresponding month.  At a glance, she could see who still needed to be assessed.

·       Combine writing across the curriculum.  As you teach writing short answers (Shining Star Answers), students should practice the skill in all curricular areas.  As students learn to take notes, look for practice opportunities in Social Studies and Science.  Notes taken in Social Studies can be used for a Social Studies, Reading and Writing grade.

Writing instruction and assessment should not feel that it “attacks all at once.”  Continually be on the lookout for ways to improve and streamline your assessment practice.  Remember that timely, specific and productive feedback is the very best for students and for you!

Community Helpers and Apples – Planning with Primary

This week I was privileged to spend time in first grade and kindergarten classes.  The enthusiasm and eagerness to learn displayed by these young students was a treat!

First grade was embarking on their unit on communities, beginning with community helpers.  They asked if I could co-teach a lesson introducing these community members which included a writing piece. Whenever someone mentions people who work in a community, the Sesame Street song “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” immediately begins to play in my head.  Is it possible today’s students would be as enraptured by these singing Muppets as my children had been years ago?

We began by labeling a two-column chart Community Helpers and What They Do.  We then played the first video clip of the Muppets singing about the Fireman and the Postman. (See chart below.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5cRukvx850

The characters had the same appeal to present day primary students! 

After the video, we looked at our chart.  What community helper was mentioned in the video?  What did we learn that he or she did as a job?  What else do we know about this community helper?  (We were careful to mention that these occupations can be done by both men and women!)  Together, we filled out our chart.  

It was now time to write!  Our notes were that – notes.  We discussed what we needed to add to our notes to make a complete sentence. The students eagerly chose a community helper and a job they performed.  The room was abuzz as students wrote their sentences and then shared them with both adults and other students. 

We repeated the process with another “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2bbnlZwlGQ

Students were able to glean the information from the video, complete the chart and set off on their writing.  Before we ended the lesson, we gathered to discuss what we had accomplished in our time together. We had asked a question, looked for the answer, taken notes on what we had learned and transferred the notes to writing!  Wow!

The same process - ask a question, look for the answer, take notes on what we learned and transfer the notes to writing – happened in kindergarten.  The five year olds had been observing apples and had created a map together on the attributes of an apple.  Their teacher and I wanted them to write about their findings in an organized manner.  As their science unit was on senses, we chose to blend the two. 

Looking at their attribute map, we posed the question, “How does an apple taste?”  Students discussed the words written on their map and chose the words they felt best described how an apple tastes.  As they chose words, we circled the words in pink and wrote them on the bottom of our chart.  After we finished choosing the taste words, students set off to write.  A sentence starter “An apple tastes ..” was provided for students who needed that structure.  The kindergarteners were happy to share their sentences with us.  We repeated the process asking the question “How does an apple look?”  Students debated if a word could belong to more than one category and if they could add words to their attribute map.  As they began to write a second time, many began to combine more than one attribute in a sentence – “An apple is red and shiny.”  Using a page for each sense, students were writing books on their own, which they could now read and share with one another.

As I left school on Friday, I noticed a stack of red construction paper books in my box.  The kindergarteners had completed their apple books and wanted me to read them.  They had an audience for their writing and were eager to share their knowledge!  What more could we ask of our young writers?

Your One Thing – Lessons from City Slickers

I love the movie City Slickers.   Three middle-aged men, feeling unsatisfied with their life circumstances, decide to go on a cattle-drive themed vacation.  In one scene, Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch, finds himself alone with the crusty old lead cattleman, Curly (Jack Palance.)  Trying to bestow some life advice, Curly initiates the following conversation:

Curly:  Do you know what the secret of life is?  (He then holds up one finger.)

Mitch:  Your finger?

Curly:  One thing.  Just one thing.  You stick to that and the rest doesn’t matter.

Mitch:  But what is the “one thing?”

Curly:  That’s what you have to find out.

I’ve been thinking about this movie the last few days as I’ve been preparing to have a student teacher during second semester.  Her supervising college follows a collaborative teaching model, so we will be sharing the classroom for the next 16 weeks.  Sitting down to plan our first week together, I began to compose a “Things She Needs to Know” list.  As the list grew, the need to prioritize became apparent. What was the one thing that would help her have a successful experience?

After reflecting, I’ve decided that I need to have two classroom“one things”- one for our classroom community and one for academics.  The first “thing” is being kind – me reflecting kindness to my students, students showing kindness to me, and students demonstrating kindness to one another.  Many other positive traits fall under the umbrella of being kind – respect, responsibility, compassion, and empathy. 

What is the “one thing” for our classroom academically?  It would need to be providing time for purposeful practice.  As human beings, we enjoy activities when we are given the skills and time to learn to do these activities well.  Time to purposefully and safely practice skills and concepts is a gift I strive to give my students daily.

I’m curious to learn how my 4th graders will respond to the “One Thing” question.  I will divide the question into three parts – what is your one thing for a classroom, what is your one thing for learning, and what is your one thing at home?  I’ll be sharing their responses with you. We would love to learn your response to Curly’s question about the secret of life (or teaching!)

Happy Writing!