Dynamic Writing Strategies

Write On!

Integrating Dynamic Writing Strategies Across All Subjects

start

Session Agreements

1. Permit yourself the luxury of doing just one thing
2. Take what you need and offer what you can
3. Listen (to yourself and others) with curiosity, compassion, and withholding judgment
4. Allow ourselves to be learners

index

Supports

Articles

Writing and Reading Ropes

Learner Goals

The Writing Revolution

Writing Examples

Simple Strategies

Resources

01

Reading and Writing

Understanding the connections between reading and writing, and how to leverage those connections with your learners.

01

Writing Supports Reading

Reading Supports Writing

• Writing about materials they have read enhances the learner's comprehension and reading abilities.
• Writers gain insight into reading by creating their own texts, allowing, in turn, for better comprehension of texts produced by others.

• Reading like a writer: annotate a text based on how the author is writing, attention to the text features to let learners see examples to help them write similar texts.
• Reading exemplars supports learners ability to learn text structures, organization, grammar, spelling, literary devices, and syntax.

02

IMAGE

COMPARISON

Writing Next

Reading Next

Writing to read

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Scarborough, 2001

Sedita, 2023, pg3-8

Content Writing Teaching and Practice

The Writing Rope

Strands woven together for skilled writing

Sneak Peak

The Ropes Work Together

Writing

Reading

• Background Knowledge, Verbal Reasoning

• Critical Thinking

• Language Structures, Syntax

• Syntax

• Literacy Knowledge

• Text Structure

• Writing craft

• Vocabulary

• Word Recognition

• Transcription

Writing is Thinking

when we write we:

OrganizeClarifySolidify meaningExtend our thinkingEngage

Learner goals with writing

• To process and learn the content given
• To grow as a writer and develop new skills
• To integrate information from other sources into learner writing projects
• To develop strategies for preparing to write assessments
• To organize thoughts to produce meaningful writing

The 6 Principles of The Writing Revolution

Click the images to explore further

When embedded in the content of the curriculum, writing is a powerful teaching tool.

Sentences are the building blocks of all writing.

Students need explicit instruction in writing.

The two most important phases of the writing process are planning and revising.

The content of the curriculum drives the rigor of the writing.

Grammar is taught best in the context of student writing.

Sneak Peak

Writing to learn examples

Press on the title to see description and examples.

1. Quick writes2. Responding to narrative text3. Taking notes about reading4. Summarizing5. Responding to questions/prompts - Aligned to the Writing Process - Review the Details - Analyze the Prompt - Annotate the Prompt - Question Generation

Simple but Powerful Strategies with minimal effort to include

Use the Buttons Below to Navigate to each strategy

Add conjunctions or appostives

Brain Drains

How to Create a Kernel Sentence

Summaries

Informational Text Frame

Expanded Sentences

Additional Resources

Anita Archer Short Writing

Reading and Writing in the Disciplines

Video- Sentence Expansion (Elementary)

Sentence Expansion Example Lesson (Elementary)

Sentence Expansion Example Lesson (Middle School)

The Writing Revolution Website

CAIU Writing Resource Padlet

Content Writing Support

thanks

Book Study: Writing Rope

Grab a copy of The Writing Rope

What:

When:

October

Traci and Jenn are leading it for K-12

Who:

Why:

Learn more about the book with peers and facilitators and earn 7 hours of COMET!

Link to Purchase

Sentence Expansion

Once the learners have kernel sentences and basic expansion down, you can introduce conjunctions and appositives. This will also allow you to start leaving directed feedback on their writing, like an appositive here will assist in overall understanding.

appositives

appositives

Transition Outline

Full Outline 2

Multiple Paragraphs

Book Report

When your learners get comfortable with the single paragraph, it is time to move them into the essay. Here are some helpful transition templates and full templates to use with your learners.

Full Outline

Learners will not pick up writing skills by reading.

Learners need practice with how written language differs from spoken language.

For example, transition words are generally not used while speaking, but are often needed in writing.

While it is good to allow writing to help express who the learner is, they need focus on writing skills beyond narration.

Best Practice

Research has found that teaching grammar in isolation does not work

✍️

Sentence Combining

What does work is teaching grammar in the context of the learners writing.

Students will need to mine the material for information to complete the sentence stems.

Building on Principle 3

Example Elementary

Connecting writing to your content area allows you to use the same activities for any grade or content area, and still challenge your learners. Let's breakdown the conjunction strategy. Give learners a sentence stem and have them exapnd on it with the conjunctions because, but , and, or so

Changing the stem allows for it to be used cross curricullar, which will help cement both content and writing skills.

Example MS

Example HS

Your students will be exercising their own judgment but in a structured way.

Brain Drain

Retrieval Practice

Useful for ending a class, or beginning the next class after a topic was already introduced. Learners use the time to write everything they remember about the topic prompt you give them. A great opportunity for Peardeck, Classkick, or Padlet's newest update where each learner has their own remade Padlet to work with.

Student facing example!

• You can add rigor by:
• After the brain drain occurs, have the learners go back and work on the grammar of their sentences.
• Ask a follow-up question of why they think they remembered what they did.

Writing is a powerful learning tool, helping to move information from short-term memory into long-term storage. Having the learners write content area-specific writing and practice, will help them increase their writing skills and content knowledge

Wasted Opportunity

Personal writing is great to allow the learners to share their experiences and who they are, but to maximize their writing skills, they need to be practicing on topics embedded in their content areas

Expository Writing

Even if the learners learn through explicit instruction how to write persuasive essays, those skills will likely not transfer out of ELA class to help them explain what was fundamentally wrong with slavery

Writing Skills

Prewriting and Revising

While some learners can write on the fly, many learners need to plan out and outline before they can begin a draft. Using a good outline template will allow them to easily move from the outline to the draft phase of writing. From there the next most important part of multi-paragraph writing is the revision stage. This is where all the sentence-level skills will shine through when the work is done to build that background.

Summarizing

What is a summary?

Support Ideas

- shorter, condensed statement of the main ideas or events - important life skill -NOT retelling or paraphrasing - length varies depending on text - can be used as formative assessment

• MIST
• Transition Words
• Scaffold: Summary Template
• Partially Completed Summary

How to Teach Summarizing

- Teach: what a summary IS and IS NOT, how to identify main idea skills, how to create summaries from both non-text and text, how to use scaffolds to support - Model and use think-alouds - I Do, We Do, You Do - Provide scaffolds

Quick Writes:- Less than 10 minutes to complete - focus is to process, reflect or assess the learning content - not typically revised, graded and evaluated on an informal basis - use for formative assessment

Explicit Instruction of Note Taking

Book Study

When: Probably January!

Link to the book!

STEP 1

Summarize

Sentence

builds on sentence expansion work

Skills needed to be taught:

• Distinguishing between essential vs nonessential information
• reducing text to notes
• organizing points they want to make
• rephrasing topic sentences as a concluding sentence.

STEP 2

Paragraph

Your learners need:

• sufficient information to summarize a topic
• who the audience is
• what the purpose of the summary is
• what the format of the summary is

STEP 3

Paragraphs

Hone in on mechanics

Length of writing is not more important than quality

Learn basic building blocks

One well constructed sentence is more important than a grammatically incorrect essay.

Lowers cognitive demands

A sentence is manageable for the learners still struggling with written articulation and syntax, as well as manageable for the teachers providing specific and directed feedback.

Can be used to expand skills to lengthen writing

Short Answer Strategy

Provide the kernel sentence to the learners, and have them add to it to respond to questions

Example:

In Section 2, you learned about life in the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom. How were the classes of Egyptian society organized?

Sentence Stem: The Middle Kingdom was peaceful...

Learners would then add to this sentence stem by answering what caused that peace, how it was caused, and how it compared to the Old Kingdom.

ES because

What, Where, Why

Because, But, So

Kernel Sentences

This sentence is a basic sentence that the learners' will use as their foundation for the expansion strategies. It is important to make sure it is a complete sentence, even though it will be basic with a singular verb. Something like. "The candidates will debate." "The phenomena teaches the concept."

Once the learners can craft a kernel sentence for the lesson, you can have them expand on it with the next few strategies.

Sentence Template

Fragment Template