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How these strategies promote content areas learning and proficient reading skills --

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How these strategies promote content areas learning and proficient reading skills --

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“ICE”ing and CER both promote content area learning by introducing techniques to students in an organized manner to help them break down the writing process. “ICE”ing promotes proficient reading skills because it breaks down the process of this writing technique into simplified steps. Each letter in “ICE” stands for basic terms that students can make sense of on their own and then put them together to make even more sense of this strategy and how to implement it. Students can take this strategy one step, or one letter, at a time to be successful. By utilizing this strategy, students are enhancing their writing skills and practicing proficient reading skills at the same time. CER is a similarly structured activity that promotes proficient reading skills in the same way.

Free writes promote content area learning by allowing students the opportunity to to deconstruct their ideas and organize them in any manner they so choose. This strategy opens the door to students to allow them to access any material or topic they would like to write about. It could be subject matter related, but of course, with free writes, it does not have to be. Free writes do not necessarily promote proficient reading skills because they are more so for students to get down their thoughts in a less pressured and structured environment. During this particular activity students are not focused on spelling and grammar, nor are they focused on making the most coherent piece. To implement proficient reading skills, after students complete their free writing, teachers could encourage them to go back and use their reading skills to edit and revise their freely written thoughts and responses.

Conferring promotes content area learning by teacher student discussion. Conferring can be informal or formal and teachers or students can touch upon a series of questions to help organize and deconstruct their writing work. This process can be done through graphic organizers and helps students access ELA material because they will be conferencing directly about their writing work, which is solely related to ELA topics and ideas. Conferring promotes proficient reading skills because it requires students to go back to their own writing and use their reading skills to edit and revise their own work. The reading skills they need are proofreading, editing, and revising. These strategies involve students paying close attention to their work and their organization of their thoughts and ideas, looking closely at their details, diction, and coherency.

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This strategy is a formula that students can follow for guidance that is often used with particular writing pieces where students are encouraged to make a claim and support their thinking with evidence from a text or source to back up their thinking. I personally see myself using this technique for argumentative and persuasive writing. With the strategy of “ICE”ing, the idea is for students to introduce a quotation, cite the quotation, and explain the quotation. It is proven that when experts are making claims, they are much more  likely to persuade others when they provide some specific evidence that directly supports their thinking. With introducing a quote, students are recommended to use a signal phrase that introduces the material in a clear way (London). The second part of this strategy has students directly citing a quote that enhances their claim or their thinking. The goal of the quote is that it provides specific textual evidence to enhance the initial statement. The last part, explaining, has writers tell the readers what the quote means and how it supports and relates directly to the claim itself (London).

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With this strategy, I can imagine myself using it specifically in our research units to have students take what they have learned about their topic and make a claim. For example, with plastic pollution, students could make the claim that plastic pollution is caused mostly by humans. Then, they could use the technique of “ICE”ing to guide their writing and support their claim.

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This strategy can also easily be differentiated to fit all types of learners. This strategy can include ELLs and lower level students write basic, simple sentence claims. Grade level learners and more advanced learners, can aim to write a complex claim, using varied sentence structure where they also ICE multiple times throughout their piece. Utilizing this strategy as a grounded formula in class should hopefully transfer over to students applying these concepts on their own whenever writing persuasive or argumentative pieces. This technique provides students with foundational elements that would work to increase their writing skills and abilities.

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"The claim, evidence, reasoning framework is a scaffolded way to teach the scientific method" (Brunsell, 2012).

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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The technique of CER is best used for argumentative or persuasive writing pieces. This strategy is a research-based technique. Students start by making a claim that answers the question (Brunsell, 2012). Next, they find evidence from their own data and then add in "reasoning that involves a rule or scientific principle that describes why the evidence supports the claim" (Brunsell, 2012).

This strategy is again best used for argumentative or persuasive writing pieces. With my 7th graders, I could see me utilizing this technique during their essential research skills unit. This unit involves students spending 4 weeks researching and building background information on their topic of choice, and then making a claim about what they learned. They then synthesize their data to use evidence from their research to support their claim. Finally, they add in their reasoning and explain why and how the evidence they incorporated directly supports their claim.

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CER is a strategy that is easily differentiated. For ELL's and lower level learners, I recommend differentiating by providing students with a few claims around their research topic that they can choose between. Keeping their claims simple and/or providing students with options to choose from will help narrow down their focus. From there, students can use their notes and their notebooks to pull out information that they think will directly support their claim.

For advanced learners, students should have a more synthesized claim and one can challenge them by having them pull out the best evidence that most effectively supports their claim. Advanced learners could also be challenged to pull out a plethora of evidence, to further show their understanding.

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Free writes are prewriting techniques where students are encouraged to write continuously for a set period of time without focusing so much on their spelling or grammar. The goal with free writes is to simple write and produce rough drafts or raw material without worrying about being graded or marked down on their thoughts. It is a brainstorming technique where students are encouraged to be creative and simply write about whatever it is they would like to write about.

This strategy allows students to use their own voice and gives them a writing activity centered around their choice and their interests and desires of what they would like to write about. It has also been proven that strategies like this allow students to develop their own voice. "By giving studnets opportunities to produce quality work about issues that matter, we give them access to their passion, voice, skills, and revelation" (Block, 2014).

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15 Benefits of Free Writing - Life Purpose Institute

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How do you manage stress or difficult emotions? We all have our own strategies–exercise, yoga, meditation and journaling are just a few of the go-to stress relievers for many people. Today, we are going to share one very easy technique that is proven to be an effective way to process…

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15 Benefits of Free Writing

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I use free writes at the beginning of class to provide students with an outlet to get into ELA work with no pressure. For example, I typically start my classes with 20 minutes of reading or writing. I center the writing around free writes where sometimes I provide possibly prompts or ideas to write about, and others I do not. Also, I always ensure to tell students that there is no wrong with this activity and the goal is to simply write. If they do not like my ideas they can write about whatever they would like to write about. Having my students be in this habit has made a difference in their writing skills.

Implementing this structure into the classroom has helped to increase students' stamina and honestly improve their writing skills since they are writing consistently and for longer periods now at a time. This is something that I started small with and continued to extend as the weeks went on. I personally feel it is important to provide a space, especially in ELA, where students are able to write about whatever they would like. I like to open the floor in a variety of ways.

Other ways to use it can be for informative writing, or even persuasive writing, where students are brainstorming ideas and roughly outlining everything they know on a topic (2018).

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If you are using the writer's workshop approach in your classroom, you can easily use freewriting every day. You can allocate five to ten minutes to silent, timed freewriting at the beginning of each writing session, allowing students to get into the writing mindset before they move onto planning, writing, editing, conferencing or small group lessons for the rest of the writing time. Freewriting can also be used as a way to launch writer's workshop - showing students one writing strategy which 'real writers' use as they learn to manage their time and their writing.

You can also use freewriting when you set a new writing task for your students. Students might write anything they like during the freewriting time, or they can write to the topic or a related prompt set for them. This allows them to get past the dreaded 'I don't know what to write!' and may help them discover new writing ideas or directions for their writing task.

Freewriting can be used to spark creativity when you're teaching creative writing, especially less familiar styles like poetry and descriptive writing. Students can use their freewriting to find themes, ideas, phrases or words that they would like to explore further, or they can swap their freewriting with others to find new directions which they may not have thought of before. Using prompt cards (like these ones from the Galarious Goods shop) for freewriting can be a great way to inspire poetry writing as the random nature of freewriting may get students to consider aspects of the prompt they haven't thought of before.

You can also use freewriting when you're approaching a informative or persuasive writing task. Students can read through their research or brainstorming ideas and then use the freewriting time to note down everything they know or feel about a topic. They can use this time to begin to organise ideas and get a feeling for what they're going to write about and come back to their freewriting when they're unsure of what to write next. This is particularly useful when students are writing across the curriculum as it shows them that their writing strategies are not confined to 'writing lessons'.

Finally teachers can use freewriting as part of their writing lessons to create a community of writers. They can schedule it in at the beginning or the end of the writing lesson to create a space where all students (and teachers) are actively engaged in writing. At the end of the time, everyone will have a piece of writing - even one with errors or unrelated sentences - as well as the feeling that you're all working together; even when you're working on different pieces of writing.

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What is Freewriting? (And how can it be used to teach writing?) - Galarious Goods

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There's nothing scarier when we're teaching writing in the classroom than the blank page. Or, to be more accurate, the reaction of our students to the blank page. There is a way to relieve the fear, though, with a simple writing strategy - freewriting.

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For those who struggle with what to write about, I provide a few prompts for them to choose between. Those who do not need any suggestions, I let go off and write. I tell students that they can write about something that is true, something that is made up, something that made them happy, sad, etc., something they wished happened, or even something that is going to happen. What I love about free writes is that there is no “wrong”. I repeat this to students each and every time we do one. I tell them there is no wrong and the goal is just that they write. They can write about anything. When researching more about this strategy that I use to get students to engage in authentic writing I learned off more research proven benefits. These include: “reducing expectations of perfection, providing release of thoughts and emotions, building self-confidence, bringing out emotional blocks and barriers to success, developing good, healthy habits, and offering a blank slate of 100% honesty” (LPI, 2019). Some ways to differentiate this technique are providing sentence starters or prompt ideas for ELLs and lower level learners. Another thing you can do is have students read first then write about their reading, or vise versa to gradually build up the freewriting stamina like I did. With tasks like this I have found so many students continuing their stories from class to class and eventually writing a longer story that they want to share and get feedback on in regards to how to improve their skills and their story in general. The more free writes we do and the more time I give students, the more I notice they enjoy this activity and want to continue their work outside of the classroom. This has been so nice to see and definitely a way I found to help support my students in their growth as young writers!

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Conferring is a strategy teachers can use to help students develop their writing skills by providing them with ownership to their work, an in individual and focused learning manner. Conferring is in simplest terms is having discussions about students writing.

Conferring with students about their writing supports a purposeful student discussion, restates and clarifies their learning focus, and can also provide a guide for next steps. Another benefit to conferring is that scaffolds the learning process. Conferring is also an opportunity for students to apply their learning to their own work before a final summative assessment. For example, if students are writing and argumentative piece, teachers can conference with students about their work. Some questions I like to ask are how it is going. From there, students typically will share any positive or negatives about their piece, voice what they need, and ask any questions they may have. This conference can be 5-10 minutes and I always try to find 1 thing to compliment them on and 1 thing for them to work on.

From there, students can apply their learning and go back to fix their suggestion from the teacher. It allows them a chance to reflect upon their own work, rework their writing, and recognize their strengths, as well as pinpoint an aspect that will help them grow as a young writer. A few things I love about this strategy are that there are many different forms for conferring and it is a quick technique that allows a conversation between teacher and student about the work they have done.

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With many of our Wolfpack WORKS districts moving from fully-remote instruction to hybrid or in-person formats, our Wolfpack WORKS teachers are teaching in rapidly changing environments. One important aspect of writing instruction that needs to take place in all of these contexts is the writing conference. In this blog, we will share some ideas to make writing conferences work!

A writing conference is a meeting the teacher has with a student or small group of students. It is designed to guide students through the process of writing. Conferring is an integral part of writing instruction and has a number of benefits:

It provides a point of assessment and an opportunity for immediate, differentiated feedback.

It centers writing instruction around the student's current skill levels and understandings.

It can improve a variety of student writing skills and strategies.

It creates a positive attitude towards writing among students, and motivates them to reflect and to improve their work.

8 Tips for Conferring with Young Writers
These ideas, based on Carl Anderson's 10 Tips for Conferring with Student Writers Online , include many of the suggestions that Wolfpack WORKS coaches are giving to our beginning teachers when thinking about pushing their writing conferences to the next level to best meet student needs:

Make a schedule

A schedule ensures that each student meets for a conference at least once a week.

Posting the schedule enables children to see what day they are meeting with the teacher for a conference. Including pictures is helpful if students can not yet recognize their names.

Using post-it notes or velcro on a scheduling chart enables teachers to move students around as needed for conferences.

Conferences are a dialogue, not a monologue

Engage students in a conversation about their writing by starting with an open-ended question such as, "What are you working on as a writer today?" or "How is it going with your writing today?"

Use a conversational tone and give ample wait time for the student to respond.
*U se active listening skills to learn what the student is doing well as a writer and what they are attempting to do.

Decide on ONE teaching point

Create a cheat sheet of writing strategies using your unit goals and grade- level standards, or use a rubric to select a teaching point.

Decide what a student can handle at that moment. During his talk at the NC Reading Conference in 2019, Ralph Fletcher shared that "ultimately, our teaching must be guided by our students. Listen to them. Watch them write. Try to figure out what blocks their writing fluency. Be flexible enough to revise your own teaching to respond to the needs of these novice writers."

Give students clear, actionable feedback

Start with a compliment . Look for specific parts of the writing or illustration to praise. Notice and celebrate something specific the writer did.

Provide a suggestion for improvement and teach one thing at a time. Always provide an example.

Teach the writer, don't fix the writing. "We are teaching the writer and not the writing. Our decisions must be guided by 'what might help this writer' rather than 'what might help this writing.' If the piece of writing gets better but the writer has learned nothing that will help him or her on another day on another piece, then the conference was a waste of everyone's time ( Lucy Calkins, The Art of Teaching Writing).

End each conference by restating the teaching point and setting goals with the student.

Model explicitly
There are many different ways that students can be taught during a writing conference, but explicit modeling is key. Teachers can demonstrate using their own writing or a mentor text.

Use a Mentor Text

Create a collection of mentor texts. Use EPIC or purchase an online version of a text to create digital text sets.

Compile student writing samples to use as mentor texts.
*Return to the same mentor texts for as many teaching opportunities as possible.

Take notes
Find a record keeping system for taking notes that is sustainable...or it won't be used.

Look for patterns in data. Use data to set goals for instruction (e.g., future whole class lessons, small group teaching points or conferring foci). Think about grouping. Are there students with similar writing needs who could be taught in a small group for a certain skill or strategy?

Integrate technology tools

A recent entry on the Heinemann Blog encourages teachers to re-think how to conduct conferences in a variety of instructional contexts. Teachers could use live instructional time or set appointments to confer with students synchronously via zoom, Google Meets or even by phone. Asynchronously, they could give written feedback through comments in Seesaw or Google Docs or via video using Flipgrid.

There are many wonderful, free tools (such as Jamboard, Padlet, Flipgrid and many others) to integrate into writing instruction and conferring, not just while students are remote, but also upon full-time return to school buildings. Wolfpack WORKS coaches have created a demonstration video highlighting tools to integrate into writing instruction: Tech Tools for Writing

Writing is an integral part of literacy instruction, as it not only empowers students to respond to text, but also to share their opinions clearly, compose engaging narratives and teach their audience about topics that they are passionate about. Writing conferences enable teachers to differentiate their teaching, assess student growth and collect data to drive future instruction. If a student has just one, 5- minute conference with their teacher every week in the early elementary years, they will have received 10 hours of individualized instruction by the end of second grade!! Writing conferences are key to pushing students to their next level of competency as writers and thinkers.
For More Information: How to Conduct Writing Conferences with Students in the Primary Grades Reading Rockets Blog: Writing Conferences Ileetha Groom, Donna Lenning, Tammy Marble-Youel and Tonia Percy Wolfpack WORKS Coaches

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With many of our Wolfpack WORKS districts moving from fully-remote instruction to hybrid or in-person formats, our Wolfpack WORKS teachers are teaching in rapidly changing environments. One important aspect of writing instruction that needs to take place in all of these contexts is the writing conference.

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This sheet can be used to provide a focus for teachers and students during their conference, provide a space for notes, and outline a future focus.

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Copy of Conference Log w/Quick Look-Fors_Teacher

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This sheet can be used for students to reflect upon their work before and after conferring with the teacher.

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This sheet can be used for teachers, small groups, or partners. It provides a concrete focus for the conference, and also sentence starters to guide students through the process which aids in supporting them with their writing work.

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How to differentiate with this strategy --

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How to differentiate with this strategy --

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In order to differentiate with conferring, teachers can provide set questions to help guide students in their conferences with one another, as well as with the teacher. The teacher can challenge those advanced learners to focus on higher-level thinking skills, and support those lower level learners by giving them 1 thing to focus on to improve their piece, instead of a long list of things. I personally like to give all students 1 thing at a time to work on, instead of overwhelming them. I think it is important to have them go back to their piece with 1 goal in mind at a time, instead of a long list of things. It is important that students see the positives in their own writing and that teachers spend time acknowledging what is working and what is going well in each and every students piece.

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Reasoning for choosing these strategies --

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Reasoning for choosing these strategies --

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These strategies are easy to implement.

They encourage students to use their communication, reflective, and critical thinking skills.

They are structured and unstructured strategies that are proven to enhance students' writing skills.

I have had my own personal success using these strategies with my students.

All of these strategies are easily differentiated to meet and fit the needs of all learners.

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Structured and unstructured strategies

Research proven to enhance students writing skills

All of these strategies can be used in ELA and also across content areas

They are transferable to any topic or unit of study

Provide students to think critically and also freely about their own work

Encourages students to reflect on their writing

Promotes positive teacher student relationships, as well as positive student to student relationships (conferring)

Gives students choice (free writes)

Promotes creativity in a low stress environment (free writes)

Can easily be differentiated to support all types of learners in the roomee

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Structured and unstructured strategies

Involve a mix of thinking skills (critically, reflective)

Some students may structure with the freedom of choice (free writes)

Some students may be reluctant to share their work and get feedback (conferring)

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How is feedback implemented into these strategies?

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How is feedback implemented into these strategies?

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Feedback is implemented into "ICE"ing and CER through the writing process where we confer, edit, and revise our own work. Feedback can be implemented during the rough draft step in the writing assignment, as well as directly during the conferring process. Feedback is implemented into free writes informally, if students choose to share out. I always give my students the option to share after free writes, and those who do, I provide immediate, on the spot feedback about their piece. Conferring itself is a strategy that is centered around providing feedback. With that in mind, all of these strategies can be accommodates to provided students with feedback on their work.

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How to set up the physical classroom space to enhance student interaction and/or success with these strategies --

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How to set up the physical classroom space to enhance student interaction and/or success with these strategies --

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Provide students with possible prompts to choose from to use during free writes

Provide students with graphic organizers and worksheet practice where the strategies of “ICE”ing and CER are explained

Scaffold the process and model for the students first before having them do any of this work on their own

Provide time to practice these ideas and concepts as a whole class, with pairs/small groups, and then individually

Build positive relationships in the room

Remain open minded

Discuss the importance of being reflective

Discuss what it means to think critically

Share a time you received feedback on your own writing and improved from there

Ask students what they need to feel supported, confident, and successful during these writing activities

Offer choice and be flexible

Create a warm and welcoming environment

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Block, J. (2014). Student choices leads to student voice. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-choice-leads-to-voice-joshua-block

Brunsell, E. (2012). Designing science inquiry: claim + evidence + reasoning = explanation. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/science-inquiry-claim-evidence-reasoning-eric-brunsell

Krulder, J. (2018). 5-minute writing conferences. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-minute-writing-conferences

London, J. (n.d.) ICE. https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/16293/urlt/68ICE.pdf

LPI. (2019) 15 benefits of free writing. https://www.lifepurposeinstitute.com/15-benefits-of-free-writing/

WolfPack WORKS. (2020). Conferring with young writers. https://wolfpack-works.ced.ncsu.edu/2020/10/27/conferring-with-young-writers/

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The research that I found helped to guide my choices by reaffirming the methods I currently use to help my students enhance their writing skills, as well as those I am interested in using to better support them. The research highlighted the benefits and helpful aspects to "ICE"ing, CER, free writes, and conferring. All of these methods have many helpful aspects to them in supporting students with writing. These 4 methods are supported through research, but with everything, more research might be needed to further evaluate these ideas. More research would help to reinforce the positive and successful aspects to these methods. For example, it might be helpful to read some sources about the benefits these methods have specifically on 7th grade ELA students, since that is who I am recommending these for. Overall, the research helped support my chosen strategies and I hope you also find them helpful with you and your students!