Teaching Strategies
Writing and Revision Cycles
After students read and analyze texts through the lens of the 6+1 traits, students will write narratives mimicking the technique of focus of the day. The work will begin in class and if students do not finish writing their 250-word narratives before they leave, they are expected to complete them as homework. After the weekly to biweekly writer’s workshop, students will revise their pieces based on feedback from their peers. If we are able to get access to a computer cart on these days, students will have the opportunity to type their revised pieces. Students will go through several writing and revision cycles throughout the unit. Their final piece will be a revised daily writing prompt that takes into account all of the traits and is expanded in length to 400-500 words.
As a backup for students who haven’t completed their writing, I will have a teacher model of the prompt and excerpts from the mentor texts for students to analyze. After students have completed their workshop of these texts, they will be required to write their own pieces.
Writing Conferences
Culham in Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide for Middle School recommends that students write every day of the week for 30 minutes per day.44 Since I don’t see my students every day due to our schedule, I want to ensure that the time they do have to write in class is productive. The more students write, the more confident they will become about their work, which may increase an overall sense of well-being.
Students crave feedback and while they will be getting some from their peers, it is important for the teacher to conference with each student on a regular basis from the brainstorming to the drafting to the revision and the editing stages. Culham suggests that the teacher circulates through the room during the writing period. Not every writer on each day will need the same amount of attention. Therefore, not every stop will be of the same type or duration.45 She proposes the following types of conferences for writers.
- “The Quick Stop (for students who are working well and don’t have questions, 1 Minute)”46 -- When you ask students how their writing is going and the respond that it’s “Fine,” you simply need to recognize them by telling them an affirming statement and letting them know that you’re available to work with them if they need you.
- “The Stop and Chat (for students who have a quick question or straightforward problem, 2-3 minutes)”47 -- Students who are “slowing down or looking concerned, or who [have] her hand in the air” need a bit more attention. They may need more clarification or may have a particular question. For this student, chat with them until they are ready to write again. Culham suggests leaving a sticky note with them with bullet point about your discussion.48
- “The Stop and Stay (for students who need a lot of help, 4-5 minutes)”49 -- For students who need serious intervention, Culham suggests stopping and listening to the writer. This would be a good time to scribe for the student as they express their ideas or to brainstorm with the student.50
Writer’s Notebook
Students will maintain a writer’s notebook as a space for writing their narratives. We cannot depend on having access to computers in our classrooms when we want them, so it will be especially important to have a space for students to write. A benefit of this analog method is that I will know the writing is not generated by artificial intelligence. The notebook will be a composition book so students are not permitted to tear pages out. I will periodically do writer’s notebook collections and checks to give students feedback on their pieces.
Furthermore, the writer’s notebook will serve as a repository of excellent sentences that students find. At the beginning of each class period, students will be required to read for 10 minutes in an independent reading book. At the end of the silent reading time, they will record a sentence that stood out to them from the book in a specified section in their writer’s notebooks. Similarly, as we read the mentor texts, students will record lines they greatly appreciate. We will leave space for diagramming the sentences to understand the syntax as well as the effect. As students learn about the different traits, they will label the sentences.
Writer’s Workshop
The writer’s workshop is a teaching strategy in which every student is given a photocopy of their peers’ work. During the workshop, students listen as the writer, or another reader that the writer designates reads the piece in question. As they listen to the piece, they pay attention to the expectations of the assignment and note specifics about the strengths of the piece. As Linda Christensen notes in Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, the purpose of a workshop or read around is two-fold: 1) Writers receive positive feedback about what they are doing well from their peers and 2) student writers who have been blocked are able to learn and "steal" what works in their peers’ writing to help them on their own writing journey.51 After the writer finishes reading their piece, they must remain silent while their peers give specific positive feedback as the writers notes what is said. They should take notes on their narratives as they listen to the feedback.
Christensen suggests having students respond in following ways to their peers’ writing on slips of paper:52
Respond to the writer’s style of writing. What do you like about how the piece was written? Do you like the rhyme? The repeating lines? The humor? (Later, these points can change, particularly if I am focusing on a specific skill – verbs, lists, repeating lines, etc.)
Respond to the writer’s content. What did the writer say that you liked? Did you like the way Ayanna used a story about her mother to point out how gender roles have changed?
Respond by sharing a memory that surfaced for you. Did you have a similar experience? Did this remind you of something from your life?
As the writer reads, write down lines, ideas, words, or phrases that you like. Remember: You must compliment the writer.53
As the unit progresses and students become more confident as both sharers and listeners, I will introduce the idea of giving constructive criticism about content. We will not focus on conventions, but instead on the trait of focus.
Differentiated Reading and Writing Instruction
Given the population of MacFarland, I will likely have a number of students who are learning English as a second language. I may also have some students who are very low readers. Since some of the texts are quite complex, I plan to give these developing readers an excerpt of each mentor text that highlights the technique of focus. For some texts, this may be as little as one paragraph, while for others, it may be several shorter paragraphs. Since students will encounter new vocabulary, I will work with my multilingual co-teacher and special education co-teacher, depending on the class period, to identify challenging vocabulary or abstract concepts in the excerpts. These teachers, in small group, will pre-teach vocabulary and review relevant figurative language terms.
In the excerpts, I will underline any figurative language and students will be responsible for choosing from three options to identify the type. The WIDA Consortium, which is housed in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, argues that teachers need to scaffold learning about new words by “prompting students’ curiosity about words” by asking questions such as, “’Let’s notice how the writer uses the word react in this sentence. What are some examples of how you use the word react? Do you think we’re using the word react in the same way or a different way?’”54 If words are cognates to the words in their home languages, teachers will point this out to make the connection and to make the learning stickier. Students will then record the words in their writer’s notebook on a chart where they will write the same word in their home language, give a definition of the word, write the sentence in which they found the word or phrase, and draw a simple drawing to show their understanding of the word or metaphor. WIDA notes that teachers need to take an asset-based approach to teaching multilingual learners.55 This means that educators need to build on what students already know, expand their word knowledge, and provide meaningful opportunities for them to use vocabulary.56
After students have read the text, teachers will ask questions about the meaning of the excerpts and how they know what the author is saying.
For the writing prompts, students will be instructed to make graphic novel panels to draw and caption a story. They should also use one of the new vocabulary words they learned that day in their story. They should also draw the figurative meaning of the figurative language they studied.
Similarly, their final piece will look different. Students will be required to tell their personal narrative using 10 images. They will accompany each image with a sentence and are required to use a minimum of five of their new vocabulary words and three pieces of figurative language. The story should be in a sequence that makes sense to the reader and the story.
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