Ayana's Site On Teaching and Learning!

In my work with first-year teachers, I was recently asked some questions about teaching writing.  Of course, new teachers ask the best questions; so here are answers, links, and some resources from my hard drive.

How did you become a writing teacher?

According to amazon.com, I bought The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins in September of 1998.  That September, I had begun teaching general ed and had a first grade class.  At the time, I was in need-lesson-for-tomorrow mode and I abandoned it a couple of chapters in for a Scholastic book of minilessons.  Much later, I’ve gotten back to it and can clearly see why the approach in this book is used by so many teachers.  In a rush?  Go directly to your grade-level chapter in Section 2.  Then try Section 3 tutorial style – e.g. read about classroom environment (Chapter 11), then try what’s suggested, and so on. 

I think the best way to learn anything is in the company of others.  If you can, get into some kind of class, workshop, or study group on teaching writing.  I’ve been fortunate to have some really great PD from my school’s AUSSIE literacy coach and from AUSSIE workshops (http://www.aussiepd.com/).  However, even with this support, you may find, like I did, that problems keep cropping up during writing instruction.  The best book I’ve found to help with those nitty-gritty practical questions is Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi. 

I didn’t start feeling like a writing teacher until 2002.  I remember the moment exactly.  It was June and I was in training to get ready to teach summer school.  The training was being conducted by a fabulous PD person.  Paraphrasing Donald Graves, she said that if we wanted our students to keep a writer’s notebook, then we needed to keep one ourselves.  If we wanted to teach writing, then we needed to be writers ourselves.  I immediately felt rather terrified, but I went ahead and started keeping a writer’s notebook.  That effort led to my first heart-based writing minilesson during which I shared with my students why I was terrified to keep a writer’s notebook.  I used my feelings as a basis for creating a safe space for writing in our classroom.  A beautiful thing that has happened for me is that by committing to write in order to become a better writing teacher, I freed my muse and she has been prolific ever since.

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Links and Resources

Three 2nd Grade Lesson Plans

I wrote these using the Philly standards for teachers at the 2005 Teach for America Summer Institute.

WritingLessonPlans.PHI.2.DRAFT.doc

How do you assess writing?  Are there rubrics or checklists that you have found useful?

A website taught me how to assess writing.  Well, a website in conjunction with classes, and other teachers, and teaching books, and trying and trying.  If you’ve heard of 6-Trait writing, or even if you haven’t, the NorthWest Regional Education Lab is the source of this excellent performance-based assessment approach.

http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/index.php : Overall assessment site.

http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/department.php?d=1 : 6+1 Traits homepage… Use the links on the left to get to places like the scoring guides page -http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/scoring.php?odelay=3&d=1. Here’s the overall rubric – do the practice; it helps.

If you teach K-3, check out the Beginning Writer’s Continuum here: http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/beginningwriters.php?odelay=1&d=1.

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More Links

Northwest Regional Education Lab - Topics - Writing Articles on teaching writing.

K-12 Writing Anchor Papers- ME See writing samples by grade level.

http://www.unitsofstudy.com/samples.asp Sample primary lessons.

http://www.bcsd.com/cipd/stories/storyReader$32 Writing prompts and scoring guides, K-8.

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For Assessing Word Study

Our word study program, and books about teaching reading, discuss the importance of students being able to identify various sounds and spelling patterns, such as common rimes.  However, phonics assessments generally don't assess all the common sounds, or the rimes.  So I developed these assessment sheets to bridge that gap.

Phonics Assessment Sheet.doc The letters and sounds.

Spelling Pattern Assessment Sheet.doc These are common rimes.

The student has the student sheet in front of them, while the teacher has the assessment sheet.  The teacher asks the student to point to each letter or letter cluster and say what sounds that letter makes.  For letters which have more than one sound, like c, the teacher asks, "Is there another sound that that letter can make?"  Ultimately, when seeing a 'c' it would be great if students know that c says, /k/ like in cake and /s/ like in city.  

To record how the student did, the teacher writes on the assessment sheet what sounds the student actually made.  Note that a teaching assistant or a classroom volunteer can help give this assessment, once you go over with them what sounds you're looking for.  For more on teaching rimes, see On Solid Ground: Strategies for Teaching Reading K-3 by Sharon Taberski, (Heinemann, 2000).

 
Thank you Ms. B, for the questions about these assessments!

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Paper

The smaller the hands, the bigger the space needed to write.  Here's some ruled paper.

paper- primary-ruled-horizontal-large.doc Top line, middle line, bottom line, space.

paper- primary-ruled-horizontal-smaller.doc

paper- primary-ruled-portrait-large.doc

paper- primary-ruled-portrait-smaller.doc

paper- transitional-ruled-landscape.doc Top line, middle line, bottom line, no space.

paper- transitional-ruled-portrait.doc

paper- regular-ruled-half-inch-landscape.doc Much wider than college ruled!

paper- regular-ruled-landscape.doc

paper- regular-ruled-portrait.doc

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