Developing Students’ Writing Ability
Make it easier on yourself to read students’ writing, by looking at what the needs are, and developing focus mini-lessons, peer edit guides targeted to needs, and the best possible rubric to guide writing. Providing exemplars of specific writing areas is very helpful for students. Saving great pieces from year to year helps. When we read aloud to the class great writing pieces from the class, or even an inviting introduction, or pinpointing closing sentence that nails down a point or argument, this spurs good writing. Students can learn to love self-expression and finding their writing voice.
MA Standards are great writing guides for fluency, expression, and organization, beginning with Lucy Calkins’ tenet that students writing best on what they know about and care about.
Grades 9 & 10 Writing Standards
Please scroll down or email to kayscheidler@hotmail.com any thoughts on developing writing ability, any specific writing activity you love or need help with, and success or challenge(s).
from Kristen
One thing I would be interested in hearing more about is how others help reluctant writers move through the varying stages of the writing process. Many of my students seem to have the idea that “good” writers can write one draft of an assignment and be done. Or my struggling writers take so long to complete a first draft that they fall behind and rush through the later stages of the writing process. I often see real progress when I am able to work individually with students on revisions for solid chunks of time, but i can’t do that as much as I would like with the number of students I have.
Hi Kristen,
Since you’re finding you’re successful with one-on-one development of struggling student writing, I’m wondering if you could train some of your higher achieving students in each class to serve as a writing coach, to help individuals extend their writing, by asking questions such as, “Can you tell me more about this?” “Can you explain this better for me?” “why are you stating this?”
Some schools and districts are allowed to train community members or parents as individual writing coaches to help individuals with writing development, expansion. Other schools don’t want parents in. When parents are trained to be confidential and helpful, not critical, this can work well.
~ Kay
from Karyn
My Question: Getting students to create strong beginnings and endings to writing can be difficult, no matter if the writing is Narrative, Argumentative, Opinion, or Expository. What are some strategies you use to help students boost their beginnings to catch a reader’s attention and create strong endings that are reflective of the piece?
Hi Karyn,
Since you’re finding you’re successful with one-on-one development of struggling student writing, I’m wondering if you could train some of your higher achieving students in each class to serve as a writing coach, to help individuals extend their writing, by asking questions such as, “Can you tell me more about this?” “Can you explain this better for me?” “why are you stating this?”
Some schools and districts are allowed to train community members or parents as individual writing coaches to help individuals with writing development, expansion. Other schools don’t want parents in. When parents are trained to be confidential and helpful, not critical, this can work well.
~ Kay
from Kathleen
My question: Middle school students thrive on working with their friends. Writing is often a solitary pursuit. Although peer editing can help, what are some other activities that students can do together to allow working with others?
Thank you
Katheleen
Katheleen,
It seems to me that a good place to start with this having students working together, could be on working in teams or small groups on having students brainstorm together on the narrative extension asked for on MCAS.
So, for example, in the posted gr 6 Practice Test number 3, students are asked in relation to the brief story “Magic Elizabeth” to “write an original story about what happens when Sally arrives at Aunt Sarah’s house.”
The teacher could first brainstorm with the full class initial ideas to begin this “text-based writing,” writing that extends the text, and then have students work in small groups that would extend the story further. Just developing the narrative first is the hard part of this type of question, so students could generate in each group how the story would continue, then have each group report out on their own story, and comment on each others’.
The test question also asks to use the same setting and characterization. So each group could create first setting details, and then character in behavior in keeping with the passage character, and finally dialogue writing, and report out on these, to see inventiveness from each group. These groups could then together write out their group’s story, with those in the group each contributing.
In this way, as it’s creative, students could enjoy this activity, and learn from hearing others’ contributions, plus be preparing for MCAS! It’s good to take a good amount of time on such a story writing activity, to really give students the time to develop narrative on their own, and continue character.
Once students do well with this type of more creative and fun writing work together, they could then in small groups or effective pairing, work on constructing the more imposing “compare and contrast essay” writing that are in the other two practice tests.
These sample tests are found at
https://parcc.pearson.com/practice-tests/english/
Kathleen,
It’s great that your students like to work together!
To take advantage of this for writing, we can present a topic to write an Argument on, and have students brainstorm in small groups to create opinion points to justify making a case for one side of the argument.
To make this game-like, the team that creates the most valid argument points wins. A student can help the teacher decide which are valid points, what are not valid. This role of arbiter can change with different students having this position.
Any way we can get students first brainstorming on a writing piece to generate ideas is extremely helpful!
Also, having a peer read another student’s writing piece aloud to the class, with applause at the end, validates writing. Also students can hear what’s effective, or not so effective in the reading aloud.
Other suggestions for this good question are welcome!!
Kay
from Tristan:
One thing I would be interested in is hearing teachers’ strategies for helping students vary sentence structures. Some students who are very good thinkers have pretty clunky writing, with no overt errors but with repetitively simple or complex sentences. What are some lessons, exercises, or strategies to help students with this?
Tristan,
My Response:
(I’m sure others can thinking of more inventive, fun, lively activities!!)
One response to how to how to get students to vary sentencing is I’d just use the mini-lesson, “focus lesson” steps of teaching a skill:
First break this skill out to present the new skill through direct instruction, then provide many examples of the new skill, have students practice the new skill in pairs or in small groups and share out their new better skill use, give multiple examples, provide an assessment (may be differentiated by reading achievement level), and re-teach in a different way for those not attaining proficient on the assessment.
Once this new skill is taught to mastery level, then students are asked to use the new skill in their continued work, continuing to apply this new understanding in their work, so it’s not lost. The teacher includes the new skill in rubrics and peer edits, and notes when finding good examples in the student writing.
So, in this case, to begin at the most basic level, short simple sentence writing samples are provided, because we start at the simplest level. In the whole class, the class works together with teacher-presented simple sentences, to see what sentences can be combined for more complex sentences. This is done till they “get” it.
Then students work together on this skill of combining some sentences, in pairs or small groups, and report out on this. An assessment is provided to make sure students can transfer the skill to new writing, and without assistance, ind
Next the teacher provides text samples of all complex sentences. As a full class the group decides which clauses or phrases can be effective as a simple sentence. (We’re also learning “grammar,” “conventions” terminology here — clauses, phrases, complex sentences. It’s always good to NAME a skill, to nail it down, and use proper terminology.) The students work together on modifying the abundance of complex sentences to create effective short sentences (This can be done at the upper grades with using newspaper writing samples — sports writing can show way too many complex sentences, also found even in the NY Times front page news articles).
Collections of too many short simple sentences (Hemingway) or too many complex sentences (Faulkner) can also be found in literary text, samples from student writing, teacher written samples. As always, it’s helpful to electronically save samples, for future use, and students are always providing us with good examples and those that need modification.
In one’s spare time, googling “sentence combining” online can provide examples to use for this focus lesson.
Taking the time to teach with first direct instruction, then student application, then assessment and re-teaching as needed will vary in level of difficulty and time needed with the group. Faster learning students can help slower learning students. Celebrating successes, as always, creates confidence, propels learning.
When a teacher reads a student’s good work aloud, even if it’s just two sentences, this is powerful positive reinforcement.