Elementary Writing PD

Supporting students to build strong writers in the classroom

Fostering Writers

Get into groups of 4-5 Do not touch the legos until we begin. In a moment, you will be asked to build a structure that follows one of these prompts. Each of you will be given a task you and you alone will have to complete while your team is building their structure. You may NOT tell or show anyone your task! You have 20min to build your struture. You must keep building until the time is up.

Yes...and Icebreaker, but with LEGOS!!!

• Legos are a fun way to help reluctant or struggling writers develop stories or informational pieces of writing.

• They are a low floor, high ceiling activity.

• The tasks you each had to do remind us of the hidden struggles some of our kids face when it comes to writing.
• What should be a simple task becomes much harder for both the student and teacher. We need to remember this as we provide instruction.

Why?

Our goal today is to establish a baseline for our writing instruction based on student work, target our writing standards and the 3 forms of writing, and discuss ways to integrate writing into our daily instruction.

What is the goal?

Look at data from SBAC and WIDA to inform instructional needs

Establish a baseline of students' current writing strengths and needed supports

Identify grade-level writing standards and the 3 forms of writing within

Discuss resources to support writing instruction

Establish a data-informed and assets-based approach for looking at student work

Objectives

SBAC & WIDA DATA

Where We Start....

Identify writing standards in your grade level. Spend 8-10 minutes reading over your writing standards. Think about the ways you're already teaching these standards... -How do you integrate that form of writing throughout your day? In each subject? -What is working? -What is not? -Where are students exceling in their writing process? -Where do you see the potential to include more writing?

Know what we are teaching....

Baseline... Where are We?

Fifth+

Second Grade

Kindergarten

Writing Continuum

Analyzing & Scoring

Find a partner in a grade other than your own. Each of you bring 2 student work samples. 1 writing sample should be one you think is an exemplar (or close). Together, work to identify where the student is on the writing continuum based on their writing sample.

Analyzing Student Work

Getting There....

• Lucy Calkins Writing
• GLAD/AVID
• Integrated Units
• Supplemental Resources

What do we have to make writing work in our classrooms?

Resources

Writing across the grades....

• 1st Grade
• 3rd Grade
• 4th Grade

Look Arond

“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” – Larry L. King

Your time is important to me and I really appreciate you giving it to me today. You will receive a follow-up satisfaction survey regarding this presentation. Or you can use the QR code here -----> If I can help you in anyway with either your own writing instruction or through instructional coaching support, please reach out at epage@wellpinit.org

Thank you!

Lucy Calkins Units of Study

• Can be dense to read through/less user-friendly

• Helps provide a deeper understanding of the different types of writing

• Scoring /continuum comes from her work

Yes it is an icebreaker but you get to play with Legos! So that should make up for it at least a little. We are going to work in teams to build something that illustrates one of the prompts I have here. You are going to work together however, each of you will have a hidden task that you are responsible for completing. And you cannot tell anyone else what your task is. The goal is to see which team is able to complete not only the build to match their prompt, but also their individual tasks.

Presentor's Notes: Icebreaker pg. 2

Integrated Unit Template

Look at the writing continuum. It shows us a spectrum of growth. Locate your grade level, that's where we'd like all students to finish their year at right? So when we score our writing samples, a student whose writing falls largely in that area would have what we call "on grade level" or an "exemplar" piece of writing. One way to ensure that we are placing students on the continuum with accuracy is to first identify an exemplar pieece of student writing. Once you have that, you can work backwards/forwards to place students on the continuum.

Presentor's Notes: Continuum pg 11

It is always helpful to look at student work through a different lens. It helps refine our practice and while there will always be nuance, it is important that we are all on similar pages when it comes to assessing student work.Using your 2 student work samples, the continuum, and the scoring sheets, find a partner not in your grade. Work together to score each other's student writing samples. We are going to work together for about 15-20min.

Presentor's Notes: Student Sample/Continuum pg 13

Cooperative Strip Paragraph, Team Tasks, Independent Writing

There is a wealth of knowledge in this room about how to teach students to become good writers. I asked a few colleagues to share what they are doing to teach writing. Would anyone else like to share what they are doing or using to support students in writing instruction?

Presentor's Notes: Look Around pg 16

Look at your writing standards and the clusters that support them. Next to each one, write down how you are addressing that standard or cluster. If you haven't begun teaching a standard, note how you will or could teach it. Think about how you could be integrating writing into math, science, and social studies. We'll spend just 8-10 minutes on this and then share with an elbow partner.

Presentor's Notes: Standards pg 9

Writing is not just a valuable life skill needed for effective communication, but it is an art form our students should have access to for the mere sake of its ability for us to express thoughts, tell a story, or change minds. Additionally, writing is a critical piece of the SBAC test however, is not assessed by I-Ready. So we need to be creative in how we are going to prioritize writing throughout our daily instruction.

Presentor's Notes: Goal pg. 4

"So, what I am trying this year (after realizing the things they get marked down for on the test) is to have my kids practice typing up parts of their writings. This also helps with the pre-write, draft, final concept as well as teaching basic keyboard concepts like to hold the shift button down to make a capital letter, instead of losing points for a capital letter on a sentence. I am hoping to eliminate some of the simple mistakes for why they are losing points."

Ms. Abrahamson's Class

We know the end goal, the types of writing our students need by the end of the year. Now we need to know where they are. Again, as teachers we have multiple forms of data available to us. But it does us no good if we don't actually know where our students are. We have done this before with our writing rubrics and scoring but I wanted to touch on the writing continuum a bit before we start scoring.

Presentor's Notes: Baseline pg 10