Snow, snow, snow

My Backyard...Whoever said Spring was coming soon...lied. :-)

And no I'm not just repeating my last name over and over. Oklahoma experienced a blizzard on Tuesday, Feb.1, 2011. We got a record 17 inches and 6 more today.  They are predicting more on Sunday and Tuesday.  Ugh! We've been out of school since the storm hit. So I've been using technology to talk and discuss with my students.

At the beginning of the year I setup online blogs for my students through weebly.  This allowed for them to have a place to write at home and not worry about their notebooks. Then they print their writing and put it in their notebooks at school.  If you would like more info on this click here.

I've been emailing parents and having them respond on their blogs and on the classroom blog. Here are a few ideas that we've been working on this week as we sit and wait for the snow to stop.

• OCCT test prep
• summarzing in 10 words or less
• monitoring our thinking
• turning in reading minutes online (Might make this permanent for next year)
• framing our essays
• how to write to a prompt (our test is 20 days away)
• slice of life

 If road conditions and the weather doesn't improve soon, I'm thinking of videotaping some lessons and the posting them on the blog.  But I've never done that. However, I can always just google it and figure it out.

When there is NO Choice

Testing is a a part of a teacher's life. I detest the once and let's hope everyone passes way of accountability that NCLB has brought, however, it is still there. In September 2010 I guest blogged on Two Writing Teachers and discussed my journey with the state writing test.  If you would like to read it, click here.

Today's post is about how often my kids practice prompt writing after finishing their personal essay.

After I introduce the box and bullet frame, my students practice framing an essay until every child can accomplish this goal without teacher prompt or reteaching.  (It takes about 5-7 school days) Then I show the kids the practice booklet and we talk about flipping through the pages, etc.  I only practice writing two prompt essays. I have come to believe that teaching the writer great writing skills throughout the school year is what creates an accomplished writer and our data has proven it.

In addition, I teach my kids one more thing. What to do when you get stuck. Katherine Bomer in Writing A Life (chapter 9) explains how to use a well written memoir to fit any prompt. This is crucial to teach your kids. Every year I have one or two kids who use this method because of anxiety or drawing a blank on the day of the test.

Preparing kids for the writing test is simply done from the moment your students arrive in your classroom. It is nothing to fear because if you are teaching kids how to write well, they will achieve success.

Transitions

Transitions are the words that are used to join to things together...right?  I am all for easy transition words, but I feel they need to make sense so I give my students a lot of choices.  Most of my students stick with one reason, another reason, finally, in conclusion, and for example, but I give them this chart any way and sometimes I'm surprised. What I want my students to understand is that there needs to be something that connects the mini-story to the topic sentence.

Transitions

Mini-Stories

Mini-stories...really your students have been working on these since the beginning of the year. My kiddos have no problem writing them.  They are the personal stories the writer uses as evidence to back up their reasons aka topic sentences that support the thesis.

When Writing Mini-Stories to Support your Thesis and Topic Sentences

• make sure the stories have a beginning, middle and end.
• the story should begin with a transitional word 
• at the end of the story the writer should reexplain how it supports the thesis and/or topic sentence.

Building A Framework

picture attributed to http://www.flickr.com/photos/iboy_daniel/57331080/sizes/m/in/photostream/

When builders begin they start with the foundation and steel beams to support the walls of a building. Writers do the same with words.  We use a framework to guide our ideas so they make sense and blossom into the message to the reader.  Essay writing is organized. It must be structured in such a way that the writer knows that each paragraph will support the main idea.

Thesis:  A claim or idea

One reason
Another reason
Finally

The framework  helps outline what the writer will be discussing. My students are allowed to choose a topic of their own. Then they create a thesis statement.

We also worked on an essay as a class. We decided we wanted to write about our school. I purposefully choice to keep the thesis statement simple for whole class instruction.  I also modeled with my own essay which had a more complex thesis statement.

Our school is fun.

• One reason our school is fun is the teachers work hard to create lessons that are fun.
• Another reason our school is fun is we have two teachers, one for language arts and socials studies and one for math and science.
• And finally, our school is fun because we have many different choices on the lunch menu.

Without a framework it is difficult to begin essay writing.  This tool will end up being the base for all prompt writing that will happen one week prior to the Oklahoma OCCT.

How have you taught your students to frame their essays?

Essay Writing

Second semester is the beginning of a new genre study. One that used to bore me tears, however with Calkins' book Breathing Life Into Essays it's become one of my favorites.

Essay writing is a must do.  Students write essays all through high school and college.

How to begin. Really to begin essay writing begins with teaching stamina and descriptive writing effectively. This is done from them moment students enter my classroom in August.

A few important tips to writing essays

• teach a framework
• mini-stories
• transitions
• choice

Essay writing doesn't have to be painful, boring or scripted.  It can do exactly what writing should do...give students a voice.

December Daily Challenge

As my students prepare to start their new genre of writing-essay. I am challenging them to write Daily in the month of December. I got the idea from Ali Edwards. I sent a letter home to parents in regards to the expectations. I am really phrasing this more as a slice of life, but calling it December Daily Challenge. In March, we will do this again with the Slice of Life Challenge.

December Daily

The parent letter below also went home. I used some of Calkin's letter to parents and add more to it.

Essay Unit Letter

I will be writing alongside my writers. So the blog will be very active in the month of December. I am also challenging myself to take a picture a day that month. If you would like ideas to get this started you can also visit Jessica Sprague's site.

Goals In Writing

This week my students celebrated their first essays and then we spent time reflecting (thank you Stacey!) the work that was published. Next, my students completed a writing quadrant adapted from Ralph Fletcher's book The Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide. It was fantastic. Students were able to then come up with a class goal and then derived their personal goal from the class goal. This was teacher facilitated, but their ideas.

Class Goal:

Plan: By March 2009 we hope to master pushing our thinking forward, write using great detail in our mini-stories, using transitions, write interesting introductions, and good conclusions in our essays.

Study: Read rich literature, write many different essays, revise, get feedback from writing partner and teacher

Do: Reread/revise essays, study other peer's essays, work daily with writing partner, confer effectively with our teacher

Act: (we will reexamine where we are on March 1, 2009) Did I accomplish my goal? If yes, rewrite a goal for the rest of the year. If no, what occurred that kept you from accomplishing your goal? Rewrite Study and Do and attempt again. :-)

This form really keeps the students focused on the goal at hand. Writing the PDSA was easy because of the quadrant. If you would like a copy of the PDSA or Writing Quadrant, please leave a comment with your email address and I will send it to you.

After the class writes the class goal, each student picks one of the areas from the class goal to own and to focus on. I have seen tremendous improvement with their udnerstanding of where they need to improve since trying the PDSA two years ago.

Prompt Writing

My students have completed their genre study of essays and today I introduced how we write to a prompt. Thursday I watched my wonderful principal teach a lesson derived from Chapter 9 of Writing a Life by Katherine Bomer. I had tried this lesson about two weeks ago and it didn't really fly or maybe I rushed it. I tried it again with my morning group and got the same reaction she did the previous day. So now my students understand and know what do to if on the day of the writing test they are stuck. They have LOTS of pieces from their notebooks to choose from. I believe the key to trying Bomer's method is too hook them a highly engaging piece that the teacher wrote. I used a humerous one as my hook. Then I took a piece I had written with them and showed them how that would also work. Then they came up with prompts to try and 'stump' me. Everytime I could make it work. I highly recommend reading this book and trying this method if your state assesses writing.

Strategic Mini-lessons

Today students responded to a simple statement by writing their name where they felt they belonged. They had two choices: I have written at least 1 story to support each topic sentence and I am still writing stories to support each topic sentence. Yesterday's lesson was on revising so I sent the first group to continue and I will confer with them tomorrow. The second group continued working on the importance of writing specific stories to support our topic sentences. I was able to confer with all 12 of the students in the morning group. In the afternoon, I was only able to confer with six of my kids, but was able to reteach the importance of specific stories to support our topic sentences.

Tomorrow we will have a whole group lesson involving using other sources to gain examples to support our topic sentences!

Love Lucy's Units of Study. I just found out today that one of Lucy's developers is coming to our site at our professional day on Feb. 16. I am so excited. After seeing Lucy in November and in my second year of the Units of Study...I can't wait to see what other exciting things they have to offer.

Great Conferences

What a fantastic Monday! My conferences were fantastic as I visited with over half of my class. I had one other teacher come in to help, so that all who wanted to talk with a teacher today could. I really tried to keep in mind the points Ruth and Stacey made last week. I made sure that each student received what I liked best and the teaching point. Most students were still not restating their topic sentence at the end of their mini-stories. I don't believe anyone felt deflated...all kept writing even after I left.

One funny story...one of my young ladies was writing about her favorite pet and that you can't leave them alone. Only in my classroom would you hear about a dog peeing on the carpet, but that being said...I wish you could have heard her voice in the piece and it was an essay piece. It just goes to show you can have great writing even within an essay. Genre does not matter; creating great writers matters.

Flooding with Teachers

On Monday, my classroom will be trying something relatively new. I noticed last week there was not enough of me to go around during conferring time. They were excited about their essays and wanted to confer, but I wasn't able to get to them. So on Monday I am "flooding" my classroom with teachers for my students to confer with. Three other teachers will be coming into my room to confer with students. I have identified some that I was not able to meet with last week and those that need to meet again. We will be looking for the following

1. Are the thesis statement and topic sentences clear and concise?
2. Are the mini-stories supporting the topic sentences?
3. Does each story end with a restatement of the topic sentence?
4. What other ways do you feel you can grow your essay?
   

My students loved being able to talk with their writing partner and with me and I found this time was very valuable. I hated to not provide everyone an opportunity to visit with a teacher and hopefully my solution will help identify any problems they are still having with building the frame of their essays.

Framing Our Essays

Today the students and I framed our essays for drafting. I really liked the lesson. I had the students work on the floor and it seemed easier to work with them today. Usually, I let them choose where to sit. They seemed to be focus better closer to me. At the end of my morning block a few were still struggling with the framework of boxes and bullets and I color coded the process of writing the frame and it seemed to help. My afternoon block has more writers who struggle so not only did we take it slower, but I introduced the color coded organizer before I sent them to write. I was very pleased with their thesis statements. Over all they are very simple, but I keep telling myself that it isn't about depth of the subject, but that they are authentically writing and writing on a topic they chose. Tomorrow we will begin the organization and, hopefully, composing mini-stories. I will try to remember to take a picture of the boxes and bullet frame color coded and post tomorrow.

Writing Thesis Statements

As I mentioned last night, my thesis statement lesson went great! I modeled for them my process. Then as I was "touring" the room, nudging those that needed help I realized what I was missing from my thesis statement. Tonight I will use my thesis statement and make a frame for my essay.

My thesis for my personal essay

People should look at others and see only a person who has a heart and soul, not our differences.

Our class essay will be

West Intermediate is a fun school.


We will frame this together after we look at mine and then they will work on their own to frame their essay.

I have to say I am was not a fan of the essay, but I really like the way Lucy has us teaching it. I feel like it is still connecting to them instead of answering a bunch of prompts. We will work on prompt writing, but only 2 weeks before the test.

Thesis Statements

Tomorrow I am teaching Session 6 from Book 3 of Breathing Life Into Essays. It is a very simple lesson on narrowing your focus into a thesis statement to prepare for drafting an essay...basically asking yourself "What is it I am trying to say?"

As I looked through my own entries for the personal essay, I wrote many meaningless entries. At the time it seemed significant, but now a few weeks later they aren't inspiring. Which I am sure some of my students will feel tomorrow. So I went back and looked at my small moment entries from earlier in the year. My last published piece with my students was about the day I found out my daughter has Down syndrome. Many entries are about my experience whether positive or negative with the community. So I tried Amy Buckner's Try 10 strategy from her book Notebook Know-How. Here goes.

1. Don't view people by what you think you know, but what you actually know.
2. Disability does not mean retarded.
3. Having a child who is considered disabled changed by life in many ways.
4. Normalcy is never achieved in our lifetime.
5. Everyone should be treated fairly, regardless of any difference the world may or may not see.
6. Disability does not mean impossibility.
7. People who live with a disability are truly amazing people.
8. Disabled is a word that can break the heart of parents, but it is a reality in many people's lives.
9. Children living with a disability should not be mistreated.
10. When we look at others we should look at their heart and soul.

I keep asking myself how do I sum what I am trying to say in one sentence...#2 seems so harsh, but in reality I have had people ask me, "How retarded is she?" So that is where that came from. Each one of my thesis statements could take me in many different directions. I think really when I explain this tomorrow I should focus on the Big Picture...what do you want to tell your reader? Which direction do you want to go? I want my reader to realize that when they see my child Down syndrome should not be the first thing they see, but a beautiful 4 year old child.

Back to School

Back to school we go tomorrow! We are currently working on an action research project as a grade level. This is one that I am extremely excited about. We have 5 sections of LA/SS teachers at our site. 2.5 of us are taking the Lucy Calkins route for writing test prep and 2.5 of us are taking the more formal 5 paragraph song and dance routine for writing test prep. I am on the Lucy side of things and I am writing the daily lesson plans from Book 3: Breathing Life into Essays. I am using Lucy's Lessons as a guide and adding my own "isms" in it. We have been meeting weekly to discuss how it is going in the classroom. We started Dec. 1, but missed almost a week due to ice before the holidays.

I am so excited about this process. So far the students are responding very well to the essay process. They understand that there are different genres of writing and this is a new genre. At the same we (the 2.5 using Lucy's WW) will be trying Katherine Bomer's ideas from her latest book, Writing a Life. I am very excited about the process we are trying because writing takes place daily in my classroom. However, we also have to get the students ready for a test. So, this provides them with authentic writing and test prep. So this week my students will be writing thesis statements and framing our essays. Cheers to a great writing journey!