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K-6 Illustrated Writing Workshop Checklists

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K-6 Illustrated Writing Workshop Checklists

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INFORMATION

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K-6 Illustrated Writing Workshop Checklists 

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K-6 Illustrated Writing Workshop Checklists 

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OPINION

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K-6 Illustrated Writing Workshop Checklists 

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K-6 Illustrated Writing Workshop Checklists 

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NARRATIVE

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Educational Leadership is pleased to announce a new column this year- The Art and Science of Teaching- and a new columnist-noted researcher Robert J. Marzano. Internationally known for his practical translations of current research into effective classroom strategies, Marzano is cofounder of Marzano Research Laboratory, which synthesizes teacher research into components that schools can use for gains in student learning. A well-known speaker and trainer as well as a prolific book author, he draws from 40 years of experience in education. Each month, Marzano will focus on one teacher-tested instructional strategy in education.

After examining for decades the research on instructional strategies and reflecting on my involvement in hundreds of studies, I can say one thing confidently: If you examine all the studies conducted on a given instructional strategy, you will find that some studies indicate the strategy improves student achievement whereas other studies indicate it doesn't.

Take, for example, the strategy of providing feedback. Researchers Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi (1996) synthesized the findings from 607 studies on that strategy. They found that the average effect of providing feedback to students is a 16-percentile-point gain. However, more than one-third of the studies indicated that feedback has a negative effect on student achievement. Simply using a strategy does not guarantee positive results. Rather, it's how someone uses the strategy that determines whether it produces great results, mediocre results, or no results at all.

So what's a teacher, school, or district to do? Certainly, the answer is not to ignore the research. In fact, the research is the first place to start. You should scour studies to identify those strategies for which research shows positive effects on student achievement. Next, teachers, schools, and districts should conduct their own informal (and formal) studies on how well an instructional strategy works in their particular context-with their students, their grade level, or their subject matter. No strategy is foolproof. No strategy is proven. You have to see how it works in your particular setting.

They Won't Forget the Crocodile Teeth

1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.

2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.

3. Ask students to construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term.

4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.

5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.

6. Involve students periodically in games that enable them to play with terms.

Teachers use the first three steps when introducing a term to students. For example, assume a teacher is introducing the term mutualism. Instead of offering a textbook definition, the teacher describes the term or tells an anecdote that illustrates its meaning (Step 1). The teacher might explain that the crocodile and a bird called the Egyptian plover have a relationship that exemplifies mutualism. The crocodile opens its mouth and invites the plover to stand inside. The plover picks things out of the crocodile's teeth. Both parties benefit: The plover gets fed; the croc gets its teeth cleaned. While explaining this relationship, the teacher might show students images found on the Internet.

In Steps 2 and 3, students try their hand at explaining the meaning of mutualism. They devise an explanation or an example from their own lives (Step 2). Next, they draw an image depicting what they think mutualism means (Step 3).

A few days later, the teacher reviews the new term using Steps 4, 5, and 6, which needn't be executed in sequence. The teacher might have students compare the meaning of mutualism with another previously studied term, such as symbiosis (Step 4). Students might pair up and compare their entries on the term in their vocabulary notebooks (Step 5), or the teacher might craft a game that students play using these terms (Step 6).

What Teacher Research Found

Over the last five years, I have been involved in more than 50 studies that involve this strategy. In all these studies, teachers used the strategy with one class but did not use it with another. Then they compared the results.

These studies have taught us several things about this six-step strategy. First, the strategy works at every grade level, from kindergarten to high school. Second, it works better if you use all the steps without leaving any out. In one middle school study, teachers found that the whole process enhanced students' achievement much more than the parts of the process in isolation did. Third, although the majority of studies indicate that the process enhances student achievement, some studies indicate that it doesn't.

For example, in one district in which 24 elementary teachers used the six-step process with one group of students but not with another, the average effect for using the strategy across all 24 elementary teachers was a 24-percentile-point gain. Six studies showed gains greater than 40 percentile points, but nine studies showed negative effects.

When students copy the teacher's explanation or description of a term instead of generating their own explanation, the results are not as strong. Ideally, student explanations should come from their own lives.

The third step in the process is crucial-having students represent their understanding of a new term by drawing a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation. When students do this step well, achievement soars.

Games seem to engage students at a high level and have a powerful effect on students' recall of the terms. Games not only add a bit of fun to the teaching and learning process, but also provide an opportunity to review the terms in a nonthreatening way. After the class has played a vocabulary game, the teacher should invite students to identify difficult terms and go over the crucial aspects of those terms in a whole-class discussion.

Of course, we still have more to learn about this strategy. But for now, it's safe to conclude that it can be a powerful tool that teachers can use in classrooms at any grade level and in any subject area.

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The Art and Science of Teaching / Six Steps to Better Vocabulary Instruction - ASCD

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Educational Leadership is pleased to announce a new column this year-The Art and Science of Teaching-and a new columnist-noted researcher Robert J. Marzano. Internationally known for his practical translations of current research into effective classroom strategies, Marzano is cofounder of Marzano R

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YOU-LOG READING: #1 rated iPhone/iPad reading log on the AppStore

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This has been an amazing tool for tracking our kids' reading. For school, our children are required to log minutes and sometimes titles and authors during the course of the school year. My former tools for keeping track of all this (pencil and paper and clock) required a lot more time and effort on my part and were less accurate. With "You-Log", I can quickly input the title/author with a scan or a search. Even better, the kids can scan their own books!
Also, the moment you press "Log-It" is recorded as the start time for that reading session, which can be helpful when Mom or Dad forget to look at the clock. This app has actually enabled our kids the freedom to read more and still have it count towards their reading goals. They like to read on the school bus or during their free time at school. When they come home, I ask them to tell me what page they are on. Based on the weeks of data, I can estimate about how many minutes they read. They are both exceeding their reading goals by far. Love this app!
For Readers that Set Reading Goals I downloaded this because every year I set New Year's reading resolutions. Read all Hemingway's works. All of Steinbeck's. Every year in able to do this no problem. Last year however, I decided to read all unread works in my library. The problem was that I felt lost. How do you pick up a book out of twenty and determine to read it with a handful of others? This app was hard to find but the only one that was going to provide what I was looking for. A reading list that helped me set goals of 100 pages a day or 60 minutes in multiple genres. As an omnivorous reader, I felt that this app understood readers more than the others. Most of all, it was simple. It knows what you're trying to do and will track your progress through books. Just scan the barcode on the back of the book, and you're away. Set your goals and it will help you track. Took me an hour to find in the App Store, but this one needs to be at the top. I've read the web and seen people trying to accomplish what this app provides using three separate apps! This is an extremely useful app for parents who have kids that need to track their reading for school. It makes life much easier when you can email the logs to the teacher! Also, giving my kids the ability to track their reading gives then a better sense of how they are progressing. This has become a hit with our 10-year old. He can log his reading on his own and see his progress in a few different views. He digs the charts! This acts as our home/school reading log I think this app does a great job tracking & encouraging reading, & found it very easy to use. I just scanned bar at the back of the book that I am reading and when the scan was done it showed the book. AWESOMENESS!!!!!! This app is great to keep track of your reading times & it's really useful! Love this app. Perfect for keeping my assigned reading for school on track! Couldn't be happier with this app! Great teaching & home tool. I use it every day. It works & did what should be done. Intuitive, useful, and sleek So I usually hate doing those reading log things but the fact that I can do that on here makes it more fun & the way it looks is nice too 😀 My daughter is loving YLR on her iPad. She has added all her summer reading books to it and logs her pages and minutes daily! The logs are great to keep up with reading. Barcode scanner is great.
by newbreedcp.org - Jan2, 2015

(* Avatars are not associated in any way with the reviewers.. they're part of the avatar set available within the You-Log Reading app.)

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You-Log Reading: #1 iPhone/iPad reading log on the AppStore

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This has been an amazing tool for tracking our kids' reading. For school, our children are required to log minutes and sometimes titles and authors during the course of the school year. My former tools for keeping track of all this (pencil and paper and clock) required a lot more time and effort on my part and were less accurate.

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Mentor Sentences for Grammar Instruction

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Mentor Sentences for Grammar Instruction

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This post is going to be a big one, but definitely worth your time if you are interested in Mentor Sentences!

Do I have your attention now? 😛 After hearing Jeff Anderson speak about them and reading his books, I was hooked on the idea and knew I wanted to make a routine that would work in my elementary classroom! I have adapted his ideas, and explain how I did so in this post.

If you aren't sold enough to read the whole post yet, let me tell you why I use Mentor Sentences in my classroom.
#1: I already use children's literature to teach my mini-lessons in reading and writing. Why not use those books for grammar, too? #2: Kids need to learn from amazing, Giving them a sentence filled with mistakes and telling them to "fix it" doesn't work if they don't even know what it's supposed to look like to begin with! #3: My kids don't know they are learning grammar during our daily Mentor Sentence time. They think it's a scavenger hunt, or a game, or a challenge. #4: My students' grammar knowledge I found my students actually trying to imitate the mentor sentences in their own writing. #5: It only takes 10-15 minutes per day!
Are you still with me? (How could you not be?) I realized after blogging about Mentor Sentences last year that although reading about them is helpful, seeing it in action is really what teachers needed. (Raise your hand if you are a visual learner just like over half of the students in your classroom!) So, I made a video. That's right, Y'ALL go ahead and get ready to make fun of my accent if you aren't from Georgia. ;o)

Did you hear how excited the kids were? They can't WAIT to find out what the Mentor Sentence will be each week, and they are dying to be the one who figures out the skill I want them to see in the sentence, or for their sentence to be chosen to get displayed.

Still need more...? Want to read about it, too? Here you go, friends. Below you will find information about grades 3-5 mentor sentences. If you are a primary grades teacher, there are mentor sentences for you, too! Read about how you can implement them in the lower grades here!

**These are two posts written in April 2013 combined!**

On Monday, I give the students their sentence for the week to glue down into their journals. (Mine use the back of their Writer's Notebook.) This sentence comes from a book we read the week before, or we are going to read that week. Usually, I have not read the book when I give them the sentence, so when I do read the book, they are hanging on every word, waiting to hear the sentence. I have trained mine to snap when they hear me read the sentence (instead of shouting out). Last week, we used a sentence from one of my favorite books, Step-Stomp Stride by Andrea Davis Pinkney which I had already read to them the week before as part of our biographies unit.
Sojourner put one big-black-beautiful foot in front of the other and she STOMPED on the floorboards of ignorance that were underneath.
Once they have their sentence glued down, we practice reading the sentence together fluently. I'll call on some volunteer students to read it by themselves to show off, but we read it a few times chorally as well. Then, they "notice" what is so awesome about this sentence. Some things I ask to prompt them and get them going are:
How is this sentence different from others you've seen? How is it the same? What makes it so awesome? Why do you think I chose THIS sentence out of ALL the sentences in the book? What about the way this sentence is written stands out to you?
I expect them to write at least three things down on their own, but usually they write more. I give them just a few minutes, and then we come to the floor and they share what they saw. I add their "noticings" to the chart. I always have something in mind that made the sentence stand out to me, and the students know they are trying to "guess" what it was that made me pick it. This helps with their list of "noticings" too because they know it's usually not something small and simple (although, sometimes it is!). Here is our list from last week's sentence:

I have my students tell me why for everything. They can't just say the sentence is descriptive. They had to tell me they could imagine the scene in their head like a movie. They couldn't just tell me STOMPED was in all capitals- they had to tell me why they thought the author put that word in all capital letters. You'll notice the star next to "big-black-beautiful"- there were two things about that, and they got them both!! Alliteration, and the hyphens! We also talked about this being a compound sentence, but I just realized it didn't make it on the list. I don't know how that happened! Whoops! I am usually really good about making sure everything that they say is there! My apologies!

On Tuesday, the students re-write the sentence in their notebook, skipping lines in between, and label all the parts of speech that they know (first, independently). Then we come to the floor again, and they tell me what parts of speech they know, but again, they have to talk about WHY. Here is the completed sentence, but check below it for examples of the dialogue we had as we labeled:

Student 1: Sojourner is a proper noun.

Ms. Ivey: How do you know that?

Student 1: Because it's her name, and she is a person.

Student 2: Underneath is an adverb.

Ms. Ivey: Really? But it tells position. Why isn't it a preposition? (yup, I'm mean. Trying to trick them!!)

Student 2: (thinks for a minute) Because it tells where they were, but it doesn't connect it to a noun...? (She was not totally sure, but she was right! I was so proud!)

Ms. Ivey: Very good!!! No fooling you!! What else do you notice?

Student 3: Oh! "On the floorboards" is a prepositional phrase, because like <student 2> just said, it DOES connect to a noun. On connects to the floorboards, and it tells where!

Ms. Ivey: Very good!! You are right, and actually, our whole prepositional phrase is "on the floorboards of ignorance"- of is ANOTHER preposition! (It's okay to tell them some things, like this, because you don't want them to be confused...)

Student 3: So "in front of the other" is a prepositional phrase too, right?

You can see that, by this point, I am not having to really lead them too much. They do most of it on their own. This is a different story at the beginning of the year. Please do not believe that the conversation you just read above happens right away. They begin to understand the "language" and know how to tell me the answer as we get more comfortable with the process. Of course, I would not give them a sentence like this in the beginning of the year either- I want them to feel successful, which they can do on simpler sentences at first. Something you might hear from them early on is, "big is an adjective." Instead of just labeling it, make sure to ask, "how do you know?" If they give you a blank stare, or just tell you it's a describing word, make them tell you what word it's describing! Same with nouns. Yes, at this point they had BETTER know what a noun is, but make them tell you what MAKES it a noun! (For example, it's a person.) This is what leads to them being able to tell you why something is a preposition, for example. It also is great when you get into those adjectives that are also nouns, like "kitchen table." They want to tell you kitchen is a noun. Well it is, by itself. But it's describing what kind of table!
Mentor sentences give you the chance to hit several aspects of grammar repeatedly each week. I rarely teach grammar in isolation anymore because I can do it through mentor sentences!
The focus of day 3 is to make the sentence SOUND even better than it already does. I have an exercise I do with the kids every Wednesday (and other times in writing also, but they expect it during Mentor Sentences on Wednesday). I ask them, "what happens when we edit?" I have taught them editing makes our writing LOOK better, so they all say together, "we make it look better," as they put their hands on their eyes like binoculars. I ask students to share ways we can edit- capitalization, punctuation, spelling... And then I ask, "what happens when we revise?" I have taught them revising makes our writing SOUND better, so they all say together, "we make it sound better," as they cup their hands around their ears to give themselves supersonic ears! I ask students to share ways we can revise- changing verbs to make them more vivid, adding descriptive language like adjectives or figurative language, combining sentences, etc...

So, now they are ready to revise this week's mentor sentence! We do talk about how just adding any old adjective (or adding TEN adjectives) is not revising because we want to make it sound better, not just "longer." I always give them an example of the sentence that I revised. This helps get their brain going. It also allows conversation for what kinds of things can be done during revision. Here's my sentence from last week:

(Remember, the original sentence was: Sojourner put one big-black-beautiful foot in front of the other and she STOMPED on the floorboards of ignorance that were underneath.)

We talk about the things that are different in the revised sentence:
*I changed the word put to placed, making it more vivid.
*I also replaced STOMPED with POUNDED- both are vivid, but POUNDED makes an impact in all capital letters, too.
*I used the preposition across instead of on because I thought it fit better with POUNDED.
*I changed the adverb underneath to below.

The students write their sentences and I allow the ones who volunteer to share; the rest of the class listens for the revisions and shares what they hear. It's very important that you stress to them they are keeping the meaning of the sentence, but just making it sound better. Once they learn Thursday's task, they will sometimes get confused and want to change the meaning of the sentence. Just remind them that they won't do that until the next day...

Thursday's task is to write like the author. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, I always say! So, on this day, the students decide what they want to write their sentence about (this is the day they change the meaning!) but try to keep the structure of the sentence the same. It is important to go back and review the noticings from Monday. The author used a metaphor? Oh, I should too! The sentence is a compound sentence? Then, so should mine! The author connected three alliterative adjectives with hyphens? I will, too!

Again, I share my example with them and we compare how it is the same as the mentor sentence:

I wrote a compound sentence with three alliterative adjectives connected with hyphens followed by a prepositional phrase, and capitalized my vivid verb. Sometimes, I even go word by word or phrase by phrase, pointing at the mentor sentence and pointing at mine to talk about the similarities. Then it's their turn! They all imitate the sentence and I choose 4 students to write their sentence on sentence strips with special markers. Some weeks, it is REALLY difficult to choose only 4! The students all want to be one of the four chosen, so they really try hard to write some SUPER sentences. I also try to pick different students each week to give everyone the chance to be displayed on the bulletin board.

The four sentences I chose last week were great! You'll notice they don't have EVERY element from the mentor sentence, but that's okay! You can tell they are trying some of the elements, and hey! I would be so happy with these sentences written in their writing pieces! The first one is by far my favorite. I laughed out loud!!

My dog dropped one stinky-smelly-surprise in front of me and BARKED for me to clean it up.

I bounced the basketball with my super-sweaty-super-sized hand and threw the basketball into the white netted hoop.

My mom made the best-blasting-booming with taste pasta and my brothers and I devoured it.

Jeremy bought delicious-dreamy-delicate brownies from the Debie Snack store and he STUFFED the brownies in his mouth and ate it.

Perfect sentences? No. But better than those boring ol' sentences I'd be getting otherwise? Absolutely!! And YES! They do try to incorporate the elements and structure of mentor sentences into their own writing! I have seen improvements in my students writing over the last few years while using mentor sentences.

As I mentioned in my last post, I teach grammar through mentor sentences and through my reading and writing lessons. Very rarely do I teach it in isolation. We have been working on distinguishing between simple, compound, and complex sentences for the last several weeks. I alternated my mentor sentences between compound and complex, and we talked about how we knew it was compound vs. complex.Every Friday, I give a mentor sentence quiz. The quiz requires them to edit the sentence that they've been seeing ALL week (so they know at this point what it should look like), and it assesses whatever skill we worked on as the focus for that week. It sometimes also spirals back to include skills that were previous focuses but also showed up in this sentence. For example, in this week's sentence, I focused on the fact that it was compound (last week was complex). But we also talked about the alliteration in "big-black-beautiful" which was a previous focus in our figurative language unit and another mentor sentence... so I included it on the quiz!

You can easily pull a sentence from any book and try this in your classroom, or if you love the idea of all the work being done for you, check out my TPT Store for Mentor Sentence Units.
Remember, CONSISTENCY IS KEY! To see real improvement, you need to carve out a time in your schedule to do Mentor Sentences daily. I promise you, it's worth it! You won't have to teach grammar in isolation so much anymore (BORING!) and you'll see improvement in the students' writing!
If you want even more IN-DEPTH step-by-step help with implementing mentor sentences, check out my courses!

For more ideas with mentor sentences, follow my Pinterest board!

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Step-by-Step: The Why and How of Mentor Sentences

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This post is going to be a big one, but definitely worth your time if you are interested in Mentor Sentences! Do I have your attention now? 😛 After hearing Jeff Anderson speak about them and reading his books, I was hooked on the idea and knew I wanted to make a routine that would work in my elementary classroom!

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Attention during lessons, volume of writing, partner work, independent work, writer's notebook

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Using Mentor Sentences for Grammar and Mechanics

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Using Mentor Sentences for Grammar and Mechanics

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Middle School

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Using Mentor Sentences to Improve Grammar and Mechanics

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During the last professional development session that I did with the middle school teachers language arts teachers, we dove head first in...

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Building Grammar Usage and Style in the Writer's Workshop

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Building Grammar Usage and Style in the Writer's Workshop

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Generating Ideas, Drafting/Planning, Revising, Editing

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Generating Ideas, Drafting/Planning, Revising, Editing

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Mock Grade Book Reading/Writing any grade level

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Mock Grade Book Reading/Writing any grade level

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Common Assessment Patterns for Writing K=2

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Common Assessment Patterns for Writing K=2

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Solutions for common writing problems.

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Common Assessment Patterns for Writing 3-8

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Common Assessment Patterns for Writing 3-8

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Solutions for common writing problems.

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Possible Categories for Grading in Writing Workshop

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Possible Categories for Grading in Writing Workshop

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Published pieces, on demand writing, writing process skills, grammar, writing notebooks.

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This also gives thoughts to a "grade book" for writing workshop

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Word Study Continuum - Fountas and Pinnell

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Word Study Continuum - Fountas and Pinnell

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These are Jeanne's notes from the session on Digital tools at TC.

Using digitital tools- TC- March 18th 2017

Fluency & Growth
Have students talk into a recording device to help them reflect on their fluency and growth.
See-Saw  get kids to do the work, not the teacher

Partner ships
Use the technology to have partners record themselves during partner time.
Shadow Puppet - Teacher can listen to them read
Recording Studio
Educreation - students create pictures as your talking, and then show what they’re doing.
Switch
Explain everything
Chatter picks
Record students explaining their own expert topic.. and record it,  which you can then show in a small group.
Repetition can be done with charts by having you record what you’ve taught  by recording a video
Show Me App
Reflector App
Screen cast - Teacher can show the screen and how to do something

Conferring
When conferring with students capture some images of their work.
This makes your follow up so much stronger.Have the image right next to your notes about the work.

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Converting Scaled Scores to Letter Grades/Translating Scale scores to Percentage

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Generating Ideas, Drafting/Planning, Revising, Editing

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Small group planning or conferring sheet.

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Small group planning or conferring sheet.

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Whole class data sheet for K writing. Checklist for specific skills.

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Whole class data sheet for K writing. Checklist for specific skills.

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May be easily adapted for additional grade levels.

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This plan is written for moving students from

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Reading Workshop

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Reading and Writing Workshop