The National Writing Project has launched a social network that all writing and reading teachers should consider. At a time when writing and writing instruction is generally neglected it is important for all of us to find others who understand and share the vision of what a truly literate person can be.
NWP Connect: Don't go it alone! Join NWP Connect!
This is a new project for the NWP. You have a chance to be an 'early adopter' as you connect with other writing teachers from around the world.
I discovered this site today. I'm in the process of setting up my profile. 10 years of teaching online lets me know instantly how important the new NWP Community can be. I believe in the reality of online community and the support of virtual writing teachers. All it takes is a willingness to share and think.
See you online!
Dennis
Monday, August 22, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
6-Traits Bulletin Boards
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- Teachers have been introducing the trait language to students in a variety of ways. Here are some of my favorite 6-Traits introduction strategies. Thanks to all of you who have sent in new pictures! If you would like to email digital photos of how you have introduced the traits into your environment, we’ll post them on our website for all to see. Click on some of the photos below for a larger view of the bulletin board.
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Saturday, August 20, 2011
Color Coordinated Traits! by LaRae Kendrick
Color Connections with Revising & Editing
"At what point in the writing process do you work on correcting & editing?"
After a student has written their rough draft on a big assignment, I ask them to use the first five traits to revise (less than 5 traits for smaller assignments).
My characters, "Our Six Writing Friends," are color-coded and organized by the colors of the rainbow, ROYGBV. To begin the revising process, I ask students to use crayons, pens or digital highlighting and read through their work 5 times.
Examples:
Ideas-Red: Circle sentences that go off topic.
Organization-Orange: Draw an arrow that moves a sentence to a better place.
Voice-Yellow: Highlight a sentence that shows good voice or the author's personality.
Word Choice-Green: Draw a box around words that are used repeatedly.
Sentence Fluency-Blue: Read to a partner and have them mark a sentence that flowed well.
Once they have gone through the revision steps then they can start editing. Conventions-Purple.
Conventions is always checked in 4 separate steps.
Now they are ready to take the colorful draft and create a clean and polished final draft. "Polished, not Perfect!"
This step-by-step revising is best for assignments that the students have spent a fair amount of time on, usually the types of writing required by the grade-level standards.
For example, my 3rd grade class was required write research reports. When they had already spent up to two weeks researching and writing their first drafts, it made sense to spend extra time revising and editing.
When they were done with their rough draft, they would start with the first color, ideas/red, and read through their paper looking for details that didn't fit. When they were done, they would move on to the next trait/color. Sometimes a student might take one writing period just to check their ideas and organization.
At the beginning of our writing time together, we would review each color and what the students should be looking for. They knew that their peers may be ahead or behind them. Some may even still be writing! No one seemed to mind reading their stories more than once, because they knew they were looking for something new each time.
Sample:
The sample displayed is the appearance paragraph of a rough draft from a report about chameleons. Notice how the student sees that he repeated chameleon, green/word choice, so he changes the second occurrence to "lizard." (This is all resulting from a mini-lesson that was taught before one of the writing periods.)
He also used orange/organization to draw an arrow moving the first sentence about the lizard's skin next to the other sentences about its skin. Again, this is not something that he naturally knew, but that he learned from a mini-lesson.
Because "Our Six Writing Friends" visual aids are color-coded on the bottom, students are quickly able to refer to which color to use.
Whichever visuals you use, I suggest color-coding them for quick reference. It could be as simple as attaching pieces of construction paper to the back.
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LaRae Kendrick, M. Ed., is a native of San Jose, CA who now lives in Gilbert, AZ. She is an experienced writer and educator specializing in language arts education. She was the director of curriculum development for A Plus Educators and has presented teacher workshops on a variety of topics nationwide. LaRae has served as a leader for numerous state and district writing committees and as a former classroom teacher, she understands the need to master state standards while being realistic about life in the classroom. As the author and creator of Our Six Writing Friends™, she is dedicated to the goal of helping all students become better writers. Her areas of expertise are Six Traits Writing, writing assessment, utilizing interactive whiteboards and the writing/technology connection.
LaRae is a teacher’s teacher who energizes and inspires her fellow educators. A participant in one of her professional development sessions recently stated, "Your workshop was so motivating for me… I couldn't even sleep last night because I could not wait to get back in the classroom and start teaching writing. You have inspired me."
Visit LaRae at HelpKidsWrite.com to find out more!
"At what point in the writing process do you work on correcting & editing?"
After a student has written their rough draft on a big assignment, I ask them to use the first five traits to revise (less than 5 traits for smaller assignments).
My characters, "Our Six Writing Friends," are color-coded and organized by the colors of the rainbow, ROYGBV. To begin the revising process, I ask students to use crayons, pens or digital highlighting and read through their work 5 times.
Ideas-Red: Circle sentences that go off topic.
Organization-Orange: Draw an arrow that moves a sentence to a better place.
Voice-Yellow: Highlight a sentence that shows good voice or the author's personality.
Word Choice-Green: Draw a box around words that are used repeatedly.
Sentence Fluency-Blue: Read to a partner and have them mark a sentence that flowed well.
Once they have gone through the revision steps then they can start editing. Conventions-Purple.
Conventions is always checked in 4 separate steps.
- Capitalization
- Punctuation
- Spelling
- Grammar
Now they are ready to take the colorful draft and create a clean and polished final draft. "Polished, not Perfect!"
This step-by-step revising is best for assignments that the students have spent a fair amount of time on, usually the types of writing required by the grade-level standards.
For example, my 3rd grade class was required write research reports. When they had already spent up to two weeks researching and writing their first drafts, it made sense to spend extra time revising and editing.
When they were done with their rough draft, they would start with the first color, ideas/red, and read through their paper looking for details that didn't fit. When they were done, they would move on to the next trait/color. Sometimes a student might take one writing period just to check their ideas and organization.
At the beginning of our writing time together, we would review each color and what the students should be looking for. They knew that their peers may be ahead or behind them. Some may even still be writing! No one seemed to mind reading their stories more than once, because they knew they were looking for something new each time.
Sample:
The sample displayed is the appearance paragraph of a rough draft from a report about chameleons. Notice how the student sees that he repeated chameleon, green/word choice, so he changes the second occurrence to "lizard." (This is all resulting from a mini-lesson that was taught before one of the writing periods.)He also used orange/organization to draw an arrow moving the first sentence about the lizard's skin next to the other sentences about its skin. Again, this is not something that he naturally knew, but that he learned from a mini-lesson.
Because "Our Six Writing Friends" visual aids are color-coded on the bottom, students are quickly able to refer to which color to use.
Whichever visuals you use, I suggest color-coding them for quick reference. It could be as simple as attaching pieces of construction paper to the back.
-----------------
LaRae Kendrick, M. Ed., is a native of San Jose, CA who now lives in Gilbert, AZ. She is an experienced writer and educator specializing in language arts education. She was the director of curriculum development for A Plus Educators and has presented teacher workshops on a variety of topics nationwide. LaRae has served as a leader for numerous state and district writing committees and as a former classroom teacher, she understands the need to master state standards while being realistic about life in the classroom. As the author and creator of Our Six Writing Friends™, she is dedicated to the goal of helping all students become better writers. Her areas of expertise are Six Traits Writing, writing assessment, utilizing interactive whiteboards and the writing/technology connection.
LaRae is a teacher’s teacher who energizes and inspires her fellow educators. A participant in one of her professional development sessions recently stated, "Your workshop was so motivating for me… I couldn't even sleep last night because I could not wait to get back in the classroom and start teaching writing. You have inspired me."
Visit LaRae at HelpKidsWrite.com to find out more!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Five Card Flickr
- "This quasi experimental web site is designed to foster visual thinking. It is based completely, or more loosely... copied, from the Five Card Nancy game devised by comics guru Scott McCloud and the nifty web version at 741.5 Comics.
However, rather than drawing from a hand of randomly chosen panels of the old Nancy comic, my version draws upon collections of photos specified by a tag in flickr. You are dealt five random photos for each draw, and your task is to select one each time to add to a selection of images, that taken together as a final set of 5 images- tell a story in pictures.
When you are done, you the option to add a title and explanation, then you can save the story so you can put a link in your resume or send to your Mom (she pay print it out and tape it to the fridge, or she may criticize your creativity, your mileage and mom may vary). Plus we offer the ability to tweet your story or use an embed code to add it to your own web site."
Five Card Story: A Nice Fall Day
a Five Card Flickr story created by magster400
flickr photo by katerha
flickr photo by krutscjo
flickr photo by krutscjo
flickr photo by katerha
flickr photo by krutscjo
One day, a couple was went on vacation. Their plane flew them to an area in Canada where it was pretty chilly. They saw a leaf that they thought was very beautiful. They continued walking around and touring the area. Everyone they talked to was very kind to them, but they were always saying things about an amazing castle that was rumored to have been home to a great king 569 years ago. No one had seen it since a ferocious animal had forced them to leave the area. Now, the couple had been sent to find it. They set off and traveled for many days. Just as they were about to give up hope, they found a garden with sculptures and fountains. Positive that this was the castle they drove back to their original destination through lots of snow to tell the waiting natives of their success. By the time they got back there were many more leaves on the ground. They told the people all about their adventure and were so tired that they immediatly hopped on a plane and headed home. This had been a vacation they could never forget!
Pic Lits : Playing with word choice
Inspired picture writing
Drag and drop words on to pictures
possible poetry, idea generation, word choice applications
Drag and drop words on to pictures
possible poetry, idea generation, word choice applications
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Color Poems Word Choice & Fun!
| Hailstones and Halibut Bones & Color Poems by Karen Grunder | ||
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That old Hailstones and Halibut Bones book motivated me to develop a lesson for color poems! We brainstormed ideas for one color (red) as a class, sense by sense. The students would do it individually first on their own paper, then we would share and record all ideas on chart paper. The next day we picked the ideas for each sense we thought were the strongest, and worked on putting a poem together and making each image even more powerful. We balanced the amount of sense images (didn't want to overload on the visual). Hearing and feeling (emotion) were frequently the challenging ones for 10 year olds, but sometimes ended up being very effective parts of their poems when they later wrote their own. "Showing, not telling" was a big part of this lesson. Finally, the children got the chance to choose their own color, and brainstormed their own ideas. Lots of excitement! Yellow is.... the smile in my mom's eyes whenever she looks at me the first notes of the ice cream song - "Run! Find the truck!" huge fields of daffodils rippling like waves as each gust hits… These poems were little treasures. The majority of children in the class got their poems published in a poetry book through a contest I entered. (Not a thing I regularly do, but someone handed me the poetry contest sheet just as we were doing the activity). This is an easy and effective way to get children to play with words to paint pictures and evoke emotions. A lot of talk went into the most effective way of sequencing ideas. Mood, balance, dynamics, and the importance of leaving the reader with a strong, final image/thought also came up. Such fun! So much covered in one much enjoyed writing activity! This year I'd like to get them to take digital pictures or use the web, and create a collage of any images or emotions from their poems that could be caught with a camera. I would tell them this after they finished their poems, though. I wouldn't want their inspirations to be restricted by practicality. Karen Grunder (Summer 2008: Teaching and Assessing Writing with the 6-Traits) Lesson Extension from Read Write Think:
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