ROUTINE WRITING EXPERIENCES: BUILDING THE INSTRUCTIONAL CURRICLUM ONE SHARING SESSION AT A TIME.

COLLECTED BY THE TEACHERS OF USD 500 KANSAS CITY, KANSAS

Strategies and successes:Group One:Weekly Reflection Writing. Honest Reflections settling into the day. Formative Assessment tool10 minute writes to daily reading before, during, and after instruction. For example, frontloading “What does It was prison really mean? Getting brains working

Music…Mix… and Match with Journals

Sentence Writing Strategies. Giving them to topics. (Directed and not up in the air)

Grammar connected to literature

Students have been posting the poems they have been drafting onto Edmodo. They ask for ideas to improve one specific thing. Other Kids post suggestions

Summary Activity called 25 words or less. It is an exit slip and an exercise in brevity. Kids have to learn what important and plan ahead.

Writing daily for emotional check in and goals setting. Checking in to see if they had made previous day’s goals.

Exit Slips that pertain to important and “a-ha” moments

Journaling with “Thinking Outside the box” Prompts. WHAT ARE YOUR PROMPTS?

Daily Journaling with mentor texts and modeling.

Narrative Writings

Blogging

Independent Note taking

Group Two:ACE JournalingAnswer the question by restating it.Cite evidence from the text

Elaborate by explaining the evidence. Ace has improved sentence structure, length of responses, and the quality of the response. (Citing supporting evidence)

Journaling that activates prior knowledge Builds StaminaEstablishes personal relevance

Writing with them and exhibit my thought processes, mistakes, and corrections by modeling aloud. Modeling on the projector and document camera

Using student examples prepared for annotating and editing. Great. Students that allow students recognize their own mistakes in other’s works.

Creating a low-pressure atmosphere for writing. This is great for students with identified learning needs

Prompting the writing using better and thoughtful questioning.

Express and Reflect Lens from Kelly Gallagher.

Have students write on the Focus Questions answering them.

Responding to quotes from either characters or other famous people

Writing about Discussion…

Edmodo discussion threads and responses

Free writes…

TOP 5…(WHAT IS THE TOP 5)

Group Three:Picture prompts…it can break away from always asking questions.

Blogging… Students seem to give more sustained answers when I allow them on blogger.com

Using Graphic Organizers to think about writing before writing

Designated writing time that is sustained frequently

Being very specific about the number of words expected. Word minimums have seemed to work better than giving paragraph minimums.

Forcing students to defend their positions on a paper rather than simply asserting an argument.

Portfolios for writing. They allow students to see growth in writing rather than just a grade

Writing Responses to music and videos.

Everyday doing reflective writing

I have my students read blogs and respond to the blogs thoughtfully

Editing that is embedded within their routine writing.

Using our vocabulary words in their writing.

Note-takingSummarative Writing (WHAT IS THIS?)

Group Four:Focus on constructing good simple sentences making sure they are using a variety of nouns and verbs.

Writing that is connected to reading

Grammar Lessons that are connected to the Routine writing.

Structured Writing time daily.

Format for content and process of writing.

Daily journaling with topics based on the current novel we are reading.

Fun Write Fridays…Story starters

Quick Writes that can be the focus questions or text based answers

Short answer questions that scaffold to essays.

Truly utilizing the writing process of brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing.

Rewrite something you have already done with a different perspective.

Journaling with routing writing, editing and explicit grammar and punctuation instruction embedded.

Do not underestimate the power of Creative Writing. (Playing around with different structures of writing.)

Group 5:KU sentence strategies

Using groups on school loop for students to collect store and share writing.

Replying to students writing is a powerful affirmation.

Dialogue Journals

One truth and one lie

Kelly Gallagher’s purposes for writing have been awesome.

Sentence beginnings (using no nouns)

Daily Journals that require at least a half a page.

Journals a routine. Pose topics for opinion and facts…creating an atmosphere of writers

Writing Stems to get students unstuck when they get writers block.

Daily response to channel one or any other type of news source…responding to current events in text as well as other media through writing.

The Creation of power points in response to research. (Minimizing the amount of words students use.

Open-ended questioning to get them thinking and writing.

Entrance and Exit slip daily by writing paragraphs identifying their understandings and confusions.

Writer’s Notebook…. Brainstorming ideas for a polished piece of self-chosen writing.

List generation of various topics.

Writing note to friends explaining what was covered in class.

Summarization strategies. (You name it…)

Group 6:Reactions to daily reading

Summaries using Graphic Organizers

Using Writing to prepare for speeches

Round Table Writing.

Requiring students to uses sentences that entail new vocabulary that is taught.

Constructed Response items

Poetry is a great way to get students to reflect on readings, emotions, etc.

The CLOZE as a writing activity

We know we will continue to have our struggles with students writing. Here are some of our common struggles that will continue to inform us what supports we need.

Struggles

We are still not writing enough.Students are still apathetic to writingSpelling and vocabularyWe are not making connections to sentence writing to daily writingWe are still getting some “it was good, or I liked it a lot jibber jabber” I am doing a fair bit of prompting for better responses and it can get exhausting. I think if I stay the course and keep modeling, it will be awesome.Writer’s BlockRegular feedback to studentsACE writing: Students who resist. Some struggle with elaboration on the evidence and providing inaccurate evidence.Finding topics that kids know enough to write about.Computers have lead to poorer partner work.Finding Interesting promptsKids still hate to develop writing fluency.