TCRWP Home Grown Writing Institute (grades 3-5) Recap Day 3

Day three began just like day two did with another round of choice workshops. The options were:

Strategies to Engage and Inspire Writers to Revise with Increasing Independence with Cynthia 

Looking Closely at Two Key Tools for Teachers and Students: Checklists and Goal Cards with Gary

Small Group Work in Writing Workshop to Suuport Spelling Development with Sarah Picard Taylor

Unpacking and Planning for If/Then Units with Sarah Isaacson

Choice Session with Cynthia Satterlee

One very common challenge in writing instruction is to get students to revise independently (or at all!). So I knew that this session with Cynthia would be full of gems that I could share with my teachers.

She began with giving us an overview of what revision looks like throughout the grade levels, starting with small scale revision (like adding to drawings) in kindergarten, to large scale revision (like experimenting with several ways to write different parts of a piece) in the upper grades. She directed us to the Writing Process Learning Progressions in the Writing Pathways books (found on page 220). 

These progressions pair perfectly with any Unit of Study and often provide the teaching points that many students need to move them along in their writing. If you do not use these progressions as a tool, start using them now! It will be well worth your time and help you see what revision (along with generating ideas, drafting, and editing) should look like at your grade level. 

Although these progressions are amazing, they aren't the most student friendly. So to pair with the revision progression, Cynthia shared this student friendly version:

I love this as a starting off point for a conversation about what revision really is (kids often confuse revision with editing). Plus, I think this version could be turned into a micro-progression where you really break down what revision looks like for students in your grade level.

Some of the other tips that Cynthia gave us to encourage independent revision is to use these tried and true strategies:

Mentor texts: 

• Put these in your writing center to be a teaching partner and to push kids into the revision process. These include student writing, published books, and beyond.  Consider "calling out" what the mentor has done in their text to help students be able to give it a go themselves. 

Cutting "dead wood":

• Use this analogy to help student see how cutting out extra parts of their writing can actually make it stronger. Describe what cutting dead wood literally does for a plant then show them what this looks like in a piece of student writing.

Subject verb to verb subject:

• Teach students that simply rearranging a sentence can make it more interesting or vary the patterns in the text. For example, you can change a subject verb sentence, I sat down at the table to eat my sandwich, into a verb subject sentence, Sitting down at the table, I ate my sandwich. 

Audience:

• Always have in mind the particular person or people that will read your work. Ask yourself, What does my audience already know?(I don't add these parts), What do they not know?(build background knowledge), What matters to them? (give weight to those parts), How do they speak?(mirror that language). Your intended audience will change the way you write. 

Morning Session with Gary

I flip-flopped my schedule so I could sit with the other group of 3-5 teachers. So for the remainder of the week, I started my days with Gary. Day three of the institute really focused on informational writing. But first Gary dropped some knowledge bombs on us:

• We have to be the cueing system our kids don't have. If we expect them to always know what to do without us telling them, we are setting ourselves and our students up for failure. Have supports in place (visuals, verbal, and silent cues) that tip them off to what they should be doing. 
• For kids that are new to workshop teaching, set aside time at the first of the year to explain what the expectations during a minilesson, small groups, conferences, and the different parts of the workshop are. Think about the teacher role and the student role. This will save you time in the long run.
• For the student that is not writing and “just thinking”, thinking and writing happen simultaneously. Respond with, “write what you’re thinking, don’t wait to write. If you’re not writing, you’re not thinking.”
• When looking at student writing, always start with the question, "What can my writers do?". Make this your mantra.

Informational Writing

Gary walked us through the fundamentals of information writing starting with the "why" behind this genre: we create informational texts to teach somebody something.

Our focus today was expert topics. For those of you not familiar with expert topic pieces, this is when the author does not research up front before writing a piece. They use their background knowledge and expertise to begin drafting. There may be some holes that need to be "filled" with a bit of research, but this happens through the revision process. So if we are writing about an expert topic, we have to ask ourselves, "Do I know enough about the topic to teach it?".

A good way to decide if you could write about a topic is to orally rehearse what you might say, "Turn and teach your partner about your topic". Getting kids to use oral rehearsal is a key strategy in helping them know what they should and can write about. It's a low risk way to get thoughts out before putting them on paper.

We then discussed all the different structures of informational writing. Here's a picture that captures just a few:

When students have the background of the structures of informational writing, it can help them think about how they want to organize their writing (or experiment with more than one structure) as they write their pieces. This not only leads to greater organization, it also encourages revision through experimentation with different approaches to the same topic.

Speaking of organization, the first step in planning an informational piece is thinking about the table of contents. Thinking about how the writing could be structured and trying several different ways, helps with organization, structure and ideas.

As Gary walked us through this work, we also were trying out the processes ourselves. Putting ourselves in our writers shoes gives insight and understanding that is just as powerful as reading the Units.

Afternoon with Cynthia

The second part of our day was all about putting what we've learned into practice. We started with the minilesson. In this group, on day two, partnerships were told to select a minilesson, decide who will teach each part, and be ready to teach it to another set of partners today. Partnerships reviewed their lessons and jumped right into teaching.

I observed teachers that said what was stated in the Session from the Unit of Study. I also saw partners that modified their parts to make it fit their lives, students, and situations. The best part about it was, both members of the partnerships were successful. Both partners got a sense of what this work actually feels like. Most importantly, partners saw how working with a colleague to sort through these lessons is a powerful experience and should not just be reserved for summer PD. This type of work can be a regular part of the school year with some creative thinking and willingness to support each other in true PLC fashion. This is the work that I look forward to supporting teachers with this upcoming year!

We then dug into the If...Then...Curriculum.

We took a look at the If...Then...Conferring Scenarios section. This part of this resource is the answer to the question that so many teachers ask time and time again, "How do I know what to teach my students next in a conference?" It is like an amazing cheat sheet of scenarios for how to coach writers with a myriad of areas of growth withing a genre.

We also looked closely at the small groups and conferring parts of each Session. As we were looking at these, Cynthia had us frame each suggestion as an "if...then...". We read a few over and framed them as, "if my writers are doing _____, then I could_____". The best part about the conferring and small group sections of a section is that they are the problems that the authors of the unit predicted could come up on that day. But, as we all know, every class and every student, is different. So making the conferring and small group sessions work for you is key. If they don't fit your students' needs, look towards other avenues like the "If....Then...Curriculum" or a learning progression.

After we had a wealth of knowledge about how we might confer with students using these tools, we jumped right into the work.

Cynthia designated one partner as a student and provided them with a piece of writing, and one partner as a teacher. She circled the teachers up in the back of the room and coached them on leading a conference using the resources she had just shown us. After our pep talk, we were off to work, trying out a conference using the resources Cynthia walked us through.

Again, I saw teachers following the suggestions as stated in the texts as well as ones that modified what was being suggested to meet the needs of their "student". It was brilliant work that left everyone feeling more confident and excited about replicating what they learned in their own classrooms (and perhaps even with their partner) this upcoming school year.

My Big Takeaways

• When we keep expectations high for our kids, they can rise to the occasion. Kids can write and write a lot if we believe they can, expect they will, and support them through it.
• Getting kids to plan their table of contents (and consider the structure they might use) BEFORE drafting their informational piece helps set them up for success when writing. It will improve organization, structure, and ideas.
• The hallmarks of a workshop teacher are that your writing never goes on the students’ writing and imperfection is embraced and shows you what your students know (not all their short-comings).
• The minilesson is an anchor for you and your kids, but, it is not where you will really move your students forward in their writing. The real growth will happen through conferring and small group. Don't miss out on this key time within the workshop.