FAIRVIEW Elementary Fox Chapel Area School District Improve Student Writing Through a Systematic, Progressive K-5 Writing Plan Governor’s Expanding Excellence Grant 2014 Fox Chapel Area School District; Dr. Gene Freeman, Superintendent Fairview Elementary; Mrs. Rebecca Stephan, Principal
SPP Indicator: Writing Implement teaching of writing strategies built upon grade appropriate techniques and school-wide expectations.
Key strategy Systematic Progressive K-5 Writing Plan The key strategy is teaching defined progressive grade level writing skills supported by communicating clear expectations, utilizing tools for organization, teaching the writing process, and administering common assessments.
Clear and high Expectations • Clear and High Expectations were vital in eliciting the best writing from students • A fundamental commitment to a “You Can Do It!” attitude • A cultural shift in thinking for professional staff as to what was needed and what could be accomplished by each student
Clear and high Expectations • Clear expectations in every grade level focused on consistency of implementation, teacher modeling, teacher-student writing conferences, examples of exemplar writing, and student accountability and independence as they write every day. • Collaboration among specials teachers, support teachers and staff, and classroom teachers ensured that students received the support that they needed to achieve these high goals.
Clear and high Expectations Tools: Rubrics • Rubrics stated the expectation of the quality elements of writing. The quality elements included Focus, Content, Organization, Style, and Conventions. Reviewing the rubrics with the students assured that the students realized what they must include in their writing to achieve a score of 4. Posted rubrics allowed the children to read the rubrics each time they wrote and to self assess as they write.
Clear and high Expectations Tools: Checklists • Teachers gave students checklists so that they could review their writing “to check” that they had included what was necessary for quality writing. Checklists made the expectations more clear and concise for the students. For example, students could look for number of details, transitions, punctuation, capital letters, a hook, number of paragraphs, and a thesis sentence.
Clear and high Expectations Tools: Exemplars • Exemplars showed students exactly what high quality writing looks like at a level 4, a level 3, a level 2, and a level 1. Teachers concentrated on the exemplars at a level 4 so that the children could see and hear good writing. The quality elements of writing; Focus, Content, Organization, Style, and Conventions, were highlighted and discussed to demonstrate to students that they, too, could write at this level. Each year exemplars were collected from the district writing assessment.
Clear and high Expectations Tools: Peer Editing Checklists • Peer editing checklists gave students specific elements to look for when they were editing another student’s writing. For example, they could look for misspelled words, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, descriptive words, a thesis sentence, an introduction, and a conclusion.
Clear and high Expectations Tools: Graphic Organizer • Students used graphic organizers throughout the grade levels for pre-writing. • The most crucial tool to simplify the clear and high expectations.
Graphic Organizers • The use of graphic organizers enabled writers to organize material logically. • This purposeful, spatial arrangement enabled essential information to be structured; therefore, a very important tool for successful writing. • This prewriting tool facilitated the communication of thoughts and ideas effectively and efficiently.
The writing process • Each teacher had to be committed to following the same writing process outline so that students were given a consistent approach from year to year. By breaking down the major task of writing into simple, attainable steps, students could find success in their writing. As the students practiced and applied these steps throughout the year, the process became automatic for the summative assessment.
The writing process 1. Read and Understand the Prompt • Reading and understanding the prompt or directions to an assignment was a crucial starting point to the process. The student had to determine the genre of writing (informational, opinion, or narrative) and took into consideration what specific tasks must be accomplished for that specific genre. Students were taught to go back to the prompt to read it multiple times, highlighting or underlining the important words or phrases.
The writing process 2. Brainstorming • Brainstorming took on many different forms. Some students preferred to make a list; others preferred to make a web. There truly wasn’t a wrong way to brainstorm as long as students were letting the free flow of thoughts make it onto their paper. It was important to remind students that having more thoughts than needed was always better. Pairing down, or finding a way to combine ideas, could be done in the prewriting process. In writing informational pieces or works that were connected to a text, note-taking was a form of brainstorming for the students.
The writing process 3. Prewriting • The use of a graphic organizer helped students organize their thoughts from the brainstorming process. We used a five-paragraph graphic organizer that the students were taught in third and fourth grade. At the fifth grade level, our goal was to develop more mature writers, so some subtle nuances were added to the overall organizer. The graphic organizer laid out the introductory paragraph, with a hook to engage the reader, followed by two to three detail sentences, and then was finished with a thesis statement
The writing process Prewriting continued • The thesis statement simply stated what the three body paragraphs would be. The student then wrote their main idea sentences for each of the three body paragraphs, as well as bullet pointed notes in phrase form on what the three supporting details for each of those paragraphs would be. The first and second body paragraph ended with a transition sentence that led the reader into the next body paragraph. The final body paragraph should have one additional detail since there wouldn’t be a need for a transition into the concluding paragraph. The concluding paragraph should restate the thesis and should wrap up the writing piece with an additional 3-4 sentences.
The writing process 4. Rough Draft • The graphic organizer was created in the prewriting step to flow right into the rough draft. Students could seamlessly transition their work from the graphic organizer into complete thoughts and sentences in their rough drafts. We often discussed how easy the rough draft was to write due to the attention that was given to the prewriting process. Students often had the opportunity to type their rough draft in order to save time and effort in the final product phase of our writing process.
The writing process 5. Revise/Edit • Students first needed to revise for themselves. Following the checklist or rubric as a guide kept the revision process flowing smoothly. Students could then revise with peers following the same pattern. Multiple clean copies using the word processing program were encouraged once the paper got “inked up. ”
The writing process Revise/Edit continued • Throughout the process students were encouraged to read their work out loud in order to catch mistakes their eyes missed. Reading to their locker, an iPod/iPad, or a video program were options. Once major structural improvements were made, then the students were ready to edit their work. Looking for conventions mistakes was the intended work. The major focus throughout this step was to improve the written piece more by content than by perfect spelling.
The writing process 6. Final Draft • After the editing process, students made the necessary revisions to their work. (Not all suggestions from peers had to be made… it was still that individual student’s work.) This led to the finalized version of their writing. The final piece was almost always in word- processed form.
The writing process 7. Read/Revise/Edit • A final read, revision and edit proved very beneficial. Finding errors in homophones and homographs, spelling and conventions, helped a writing piece turn from good to great. This last step was often most beneficial after a break in time.
The writing process Assessments • Diagnostic: Students responded to a district created prompt at the end of the school year. District grade level teachers scored and analyzed the student writing to plan instruction. • Formative: Teacher-teacher coaching through critique of student work during the writing process, peer editing and critiquing among students and teacher- student writing conferences evaluated writing and guided instruction.
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