Unfortunately, the importance of assessing writing cannot be downplayed!  Without knowing where our students are, it’s hard to know where to go next with our planning.  That being said…

Increase the frequency of assessment

When we create these huge and lofty writing tasks and create assessment tools to match, it makes it impossible to assess often.  When we do a huge six week unit and grade only a culminating project, students go far too long without specific feedback.  By sprinkling in several shorter (like seriously–I give them EIGHT minutes to write) assessments throughout the unit, I can quickly keep my finger on the pulse of how my students are doing. Eight minutes of class time and maybe 45 total minutes of grading?  Totally doable.  You can even pick just one or two things you want to look for at a time–maybe you are going to give students ONLY a score for punctuation.  Or capitals.  Or writing in complete sentences.  When you keep things short, it takes less class time AND less scoring time.

Give faster writing feedback

When we give a writing assessment and it takes us forever to grade, there is nothing useful for students.  We may get a grade for report cards–but it certainly doesn’t help students.  When we can give students quick access to an easy-to-understand checklist, they can take that information and use it.  If I see my students aren’t capitalizing well, I want them to work on it TODAY, not when the unit is over.  By then, they are checked out and ready for the next thing!

I wanted a down and dirty checklist–not complicated rubrics–to help me assess faster.  I am a big fan of grids/lists for assessing.  They are visual and fast.  Look how easy this is to interpret!  I’ve also done something as fast as a post it with a score–when I pass back writing, I tell students that their score (for me–4, 3, 2, 1 but it could be anything) is ONLY based on their capital letters.  We can then look back at their writing and try to find places to improve.  These scores can SO quickly go into my binder to help me pull small groups.

Improve communication and writing interventions

One of the points of assessment is to communicate with the “stakeholders” about how things are going! When you look at that checklist, you can see six crystal clear writing components that are supercritical for writing success.  Each one is something that students (and parents!) can understand.  Possibly most importantly, each of these can EASILY turn into an intervention topic.  Do you have 6 students who still aren’t indenting?  Pull them and work with them.  Have a few students who are still not using capitals correctly?  Work with them.  When you keep all your data in a spreadsheet or chart, it’s easy to see which students need which skills.

Now don’t get me wrong–this is only a PART of how I assess writing!  This checklist does NOT account for other key writing skills.  It doesn’t address transition words and organization  It doesn’t look for quality leads and “voice”.  It is truly a basic skills-only deal.  There truly is a time and a place for this, right?

But it can be so easy to ask your students to do a “quick write”…maybe about a chapter you just read aloud.  Write about a topic you just studied. Write about their favorite animal.  It doesn’t matter–we just want them to show us their writing skills!

Use writing data to show growth on specific skills

As students progress through their learning journey, it’s critical for us to be able to show them how they are growing and learning.  If a student isn’t indenting at ALL at the start of the year and then, after instruction, moves to a 1 or even a 2 or 3–how satisfying for them to see that making changes in their writing results in growth.  By focusing on only one specific skill at a time, it’s much easier for students to take action.

Consider modeling whatever skill you are working on to show what a “3” would be.  Write several samples at different levels and ask students to compare and contrast.  Pick a piece of work (I like to use work from previous years or another teacher at my school with no names, of course!) and work to make revisions and edits to improve it.  There is SO much instructionally that can be done with these little “quick writes”!

Helping students and families see that improvement is happening is so important.  We all probably remember getting an essay or other piece of writing back that was marked with a B+ or some other grade.  What did that mean?  How can I make it better?  Young students need far more clear and explicit guidance when trying to make improvements in their writing.

Quick Writing Assessments to the Rescue!

I created a whole series of these quick assessments to address ALL these issues!  I want my students to get feedback from me on specific skills in a timely manner.  It is essential that this happens in “kid-friendly” terms so that they can learn and grow from the feedback.

I know that writing is complex, and my district has several sophisticated rubrics that we use for district assessments.  What I felt was missing was the “nitty-gritty” stuff–those essential writing basics that our rubric ASSUMES students are doing.  The simple truth is, many of my fourth graders are still not punctuating or capitalizing correctly.  They aren’t writing with careful and varied sentences.  They aren’t adding enough detail for me to truly see their writing skills.

If you want to see more student growth in these areas, you might find these 8-minute writing tasks right up your alley as well!  I wrote them in four different sets so that I could use them to complement whatever I was working on–from opinion writing to seasonal work to academic content.  I wrote these because I wanted prompts AT MY FINGERTIPS with a checklist printed right on them.  I use these as one component of my writing program, and they are perfect when you have just a few minutes where you want to collect some data.  (They aren’t bad for homework or other independent work either–remember, students can use the checklists to self-assess as well!)

Now Includes Digital Access with Google Slides!

See what you think about these quick writing assessments!  If you want to use them digitally, each set also has each prompt in a simple digital slide with the checklist on top.  Super easy to use and tons of flexibility!

[one-third-first] [/one-third-first]
[one-third][/one-third]
[one-third][/one-third]

[one-half-first][/one-half-first]
[one-half][/one-half]

Rather pin this for later?

The post Quick Writing Assessments to Guide Instruction appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

It’s time to look at the remaining curriculum, streamline it, and figure out how to get the most “bang” for the delivery method with truly focused instruction.

One thing that is becoming clear to me is that short and sweet is the way to go when teaching writing lessons.  We are supposed to have two long and in-depth writing projects at the end of the year, but I’m just not sure that type of work is the most effective. Instead, I believe focusing on small minilessons and shorter writing tasks is the way to go. I have some very explicit lessons I have yet to teach–but I’m going to tackle them with short task cards, brief responses, and other more manageable situations.

Short Writing Lessons. Focused Instruction.

What I wanted to do was focus my instruction at the sentence level, and I already had some task cards in my store that my students REALLY like–so I added the digital component. After that, I went through my curriculum and found a few more topics I need to cover this year and created sets to go with them. I know doing the big long process writing pieces have value, they really do. I will miss doing them with my students and am still trying to figure out how to do a modified version.

That being said, sometimes it’s nice to be able to teach writing minilessons, do some good modeling, let students practice and get creative, and then share their success. That’s exactly where I think these cards can help! I have four different writing strategies now that can be taught with a short minilesson and then some practice. If you use Seesaw or Padlet or other sharing platforms, it’s a great way to have students share their work as well! Again, focused instruction with little planning or stress!

How can these help?

The bundled set I created includes task cards that help with the following writing skills:

1. Identifying fragments and run ons (maybe your kids have this figured out already but NOT. MINE.)
2. Combining sentences and adding details to write complex sentences (includes compound sentences, adding phrases at the beginning, etc)
3. Thinking about transitions—adding on to sentences (These cards are geared toward getting students to think in sequence…what would come before? What would come after? How can I connect sentences in a meaningful way?)
4. “Show not tell” to write with more sensory detail. (This is a huge one for me! Many of my students still write like a “newscast”. This set can help them work more details in–with lots of writing hints along the way!)

All the sets include the following components:

• Teaching tips and ideas
• Color and black and white printable task cards (24 cards per set)
• Printable recording sheets
• Digital slide access. Students can record in text boxes on the slides OR on the digital recording sheet.
• Optional extension ideas

Digital access is easy–each task card is on a slide with a text box.  There are also digital recording sheets at the end of each set if you would rather have them record on one sheet.

Anyhoo…if you are looking for some easy, fun, SHORT writing experiences, check them out!

Want to read a full blog post about one of these sets? It explains how to use them to teach with a gradual release model.  CLICK HERE!

The post Focused Instruction: Teaching Effective Writing Minilessons appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

These are:
1.  I can combine two sentences into one improved sentence.
2.  I can add details to simple sentences to make them more interesting and descriptive.

Improving and Combining Sentences to Improve Our Writing

We are starting our social issues book clubs, and each “chunk” of their reading is going to culminate in a writing reflection–and I thought it would be a great time to reinforce some of the writing and convention skills we have worked on all year from capitalization to punctuation to sentence fluency.

Today I pulled out the task cards I used earlier this year and brought out several samples that showcased both of these targets.

Modeling Writing:  Gradual Release of Responsibility

After that, we started to tackle those tricky compound and complex sentences.  I worked to model different ways to “add on” details to sentences and to combine short sentences to help our writing sound more conversational.  Again, we used highlighters to find sentences and clauses to help us decide if we needed commas for compound sentences or if we had a clause before our main sentence needed a comma to set it apart. Students quickly began to see different ways that combining sentences made their writing flow!

Task Card Update!

Due to popular demand, I have added a digital component to this resource.  You can use the print cards OR send the task cards digitally!  This is a great way to help with the gradual release! You can model and practice WITH students, and then the independent work can be sent virtually.  A win!

Interested in trying some writing task cards?

[one-third-first].[/one-third-first]
[one-third][/one-third]
[one-third][/one-third]

[one-half-first][/one-half-first]
[one-half][/one-half]

The post Improving and Combining Sentences: A Gradual Release of Responsibility Writing Lesson appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

If you want to read about some GREAT narrative teaching tips, head over to my blog post on Upper Elementary Snapshots.

Check out my ideas about teaching leads, reviewing other skills, a quick writing revision idea–and more!  Here’s a sneak peek at part of it…

Stop by if you want to check out what I did with our second narrative writing unit of the year.  This is really one of my favorite writing activities because it is SO accessible to all students and is a great review of previously taught narrative writing skills.  If you want to read more–just click HERE to take you to the post.

Want to read even more about teaching narrative writing?  I have a few more posts for you!

Here’s a great post about planning narrative writing.

How about teaching dialogue?  Here’s a great post with some wonderful tips about incorporating dialogue.

The post Teaching Narrative Writing – Tips and Ideas appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

My district requires us to use a pretty substantial rubric to go with our required writing assessments–and we are welcome to use it for others.  Here’s the problem.  It’s 2 1/2 pages long!  Not only that, it makes a LOT of assumptions about what my students should be doing with their writing–those basic skills like writing using proper conventions, sufficient details, and more.  The rubric doesn’t “drill down” to that level of detail–and that’s what I want to see in order to pull small groups and to plan my instruction.  Because I wasn’t getting down to that level of detail, I’m afraid I just wasn’t collecting enough data.

Let’s Be Real…

Now let’s add the “real world” factor in here.  Grading and assessing writing takes a LONG time.  This is especially true if students are writing full essays and other large projects.  I knew I could do some better “quick” assessing if I figured out a way to just capture a small amount of writing.

I knew I didn’t want to add MORE to my plate (our literacy curriculum is daunting enough!)—but I knew I needed something. So I decided to try a short (8 minutes!) writing prompt once a week or so. By making it short, I didn’t take away from instructional time, I am able to quickly score it (seriously–I spend 2-3 minutes per students TOPS) and give feedback, and I can use it to pull strategy groups while I teach our district curriculum. I wanted the rubric right on the page as a reminder for students…much like my other writing prompt resources. The difference? This is meant to be a quick snapshot—almost like an entrance slip before a writing class. I figure I can give up 8 minutes once each a week if it will help me to help my students, right?

Collecting Writing Data Sensibly!

I figure by giving students a starting topic, we wouldn’t waste time thinking of topics either—and each topic should be something that students really can write a decent “quick write” about. This isn’t meant to be a full essay—just a quick write to check some important skills—and to help even my reluctant writers–to give me a good writing sample.  Why eight minutes?  Because even ten minutes seems like a long time to some writers–and eight is enough!  To be honest…if my students are REALLLLY into a topic, I may extend that time a little.  Right?

Thus the “Great 8” was born! Just 8 minutes to do…and seriously less than an hour to score…It’s worth it!  Not only is that initial 8 minutes worth it, but I have found all sorts of other ways to use these prompts.  Check these out…

Revision practice

Partner revising and editing

Writing Self-Assessment

Shared/partner writing

Another fun way to use these prompts is to actually have partners work together to write!  Either one student can start the piece, then pass it off to another student OR you can have them work together to craft a single piece.  This is especially valuable if you are working on something new (like adding transitions or quality “hooks”).  They can work together on a practice piece–and then later you can ask them to try another one on a different topic.  This can be especially valuable if you have some struggling writers who would benefit from hearing the “think aloud” of a more capable author.

Teacher modeling

I hope you got some ideas for how these “quick writes” can be a really powerful way to impact writing instruction in your class–without having to do the HUGE projects that we so often tackle with our big units.  I’d love to hear your success stories!

Want to see more?

If you are interested in these prompts, I have four sets and a bundled set…I use all of them at different times in the year, and I have blank ones in each set so I can write my own when it makes sense.  (You can see that I did that with my immigration prompt.)  I have seasonal prompts, opinion prompts, high-interest prompts (sleepovers, video games and more!), and “content” prompts which can be used to collect information about different topics you are teaching.  Each set has 18 ready-to-print prompts.  These would be GREAT for homeschoolers as well!

Want to pin this for later?

Want to check out the prompts?  Here is the link to the bundle–and all the other sets are linked within the description or are linked individually in the paragraph above.

The post Writing Assessment Made Easy. Really. appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

Studying Characters in Narrative Writing Lessons

As we started our narrative unit several weeks ago, we spent a great deal of time studying our main read aloud, Fish in a Tree, along with other picture books I selected.  We studied the characters, their traits, their actions, and then–finally–their words.  We actually then worked to create our own characters that we would later insert into some “mini” narratives that we wrote.  The students were SO engaged and I truly saw them thinking more deeply about the characters in their own books.  (Note:  This student had a bad experience with a pigeon…I guess my “hint” that authors often work their real life into their books paid off!)

Creating a Story Arc or “Story Map”

Learning how to write dialogue

As we started to realize all the ways writers help us get to know characters, I told my students we were going to work hard to do this with our own narratives–we were going to write so our reader can really get to know our characters.  Students grabbed their own books (great because no matter WHAT level a child reads at, you can use this lesson) and searched for dialogue “tags”.  We jotted them on sticky notes and then came back to the large group to do some sharing.  I recorded their findings on a chart and then we talked about the messages writers can send by carefully choosing tags.  What does “mumbled” show about a character instead of “shouted”?  If a character “demands” something, what does it say about them?

Writing Dialogue

It was so much fun to see how creative they got! Their writing REALLY displayed their understanding of how characters can be revealed.

Using “Fish in a Tree” and other books to put all the pieces together!

With all the pieces in place, we were ready to write our narratives!  It’s funny…we spent 2 weeks prepping for them and three days writing them–.  It was amazing to see how all the “quick writes” we did paid off. The students REALLY saw how the planning made it so their story essentially wrote itself.  When I asked how many of them felt it was the best thing they had ever written, it was almost unanimous!  Also, if you are working on narratives, I can’t recommend “Fish in a Tree” highly enough to really look at character development, character change, and more.  Narrative writing lessons that piggyback off narrative reading lessons?  Yes, please!

Want some help with your narrative writing lessons?

The post Narrative Writing Lessons and More: Teaching Dialogue appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

We are digging into a fun narrative writing unit to complement our historical fiction unit.  I know many of you write personal narratives…many write realistic fiction…mysteries–you name it.  One of our fun writing projects is to take a scene from one of their historical fiction book club books and rewriting it through the eyes of a different character.  It’s so much fun to talk about point of view and how we can take a very “known” event and make it our own. Teaching dialogue is a part of this!

Why are we teaching dialogue anyway?

In order to really tie back to our writing standards, I use parts of the same planning guide I used earlier in the year–but without having to create the character.  (Not sure what I’m talking about?  Check out this post).  We brainstormed those ever important setting clues (which they were quite familiar with since they just finished reading the book!) and then dug into planning their stories.  Watch for a post on the drafting process soon!

Before we dig into writing, I wanted to do a quick review on dialogue–both the reasons WHY writers use dialogue and HOW they punctuate/write it correctly.  It’s a tough writing skill for intermediate students–especially with all the different ways one can punctuate and format it!

To start, I wanted my students to really study the WHY–something we started with our book clubs and our read aloud.  We talked about how dialogue should have a purpose; we’ve all heard stories that unfold a little something like this.

“Hey.  What are you doing?”
“Going to the park.”
“Why?”
“For baseball.”
“OK.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing”

(Kind of reminds me of teenagers texting, to be honest!)

Is it dialogue?

Yes.  Is it adding meaningfully to a story?  Not so much.  We talked about all the things dialogue can help an author do…this list is just a smattering of ideas–certainly it is not meant to be all-inclusive, but I think it’s interesting for students to see that dialogue has a purpose–and they can experiment with these as they begin drafting!

In fact, as I read my read aloud now, I will highlight certain examples of dialogue for us to consider how it is helping the author convey the big ideas of the story.  There are TONS of great examples in Number the Stars, our current read aloud!  I think it’s really valuable for students to realize that writers are intentional with things like this–and that understanding this can help them not only improve their WRITING–but understand their reading more deeply as well.

The next thing I wanted to review is the actual “rules” for punctuating dialogue.  We had done lessons on this earlier this year, but it is definitely something that needs lots of repetition. Next, we reviewed by using the following anchor chart and I put up several examples of dialogue.  We highlighted each of these features with different colors.  I forgot to take a picture of that!  Sorry!

Time to model teaching dialogue in reading and writing!

After we had reviewed, I wanted to model some dialogue writing with my own “think alouds” to show how to punctuate it.  First, I pulled out my dialogue writing cards that we had used earlier this year and told my students that we were going to get creative.  Next, I reminded them of how SERIOUS our historical fiction stories are–so this was our chance to let loose a little!

I started with this card and had them talk in trios about what Melanie could possibly say to a lifeguard.  Trust me, we had some hilarious ideas!  I picked one and wrote it down under the document camera.

We then went back to our groups to discuss what the lifeguard could say back–and we had so much fun!  I then had the students try their own versions of this same dialogue–with the reminder to be appropriate!

Sharing our work

Want to check out another narrative writing blog post?

Try this one geared toward helping students plan their writing.  If you want to see how we invent our characters, check out this one!

The post Teaching Dialogue and Why It’s So Important! appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

First I gave the students “alone” time to write and then let them go compare notes with their partner from the investigation…

Math vocabulary and language

 

What really stood out to me was the very NEBULOUS (vocabulary word!) math language I was hearing.  A phrase that kept coming up was “small fractions” as in “It was harder to fold the small fractions.”

What next?

Reasonable and rigorous expectations

Did you miss Day 1  of this fraction series?  Go take a look!

 

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The post Fraction Misconceptions and Math Language (Day 2 Fraction Concepts) appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

Today is my day to post over at Upper Elementary Snapshots, and I hope you’ll head over to read about a lesson I did last week to help slow down my readers and get them thinking more deeply about the books they read.  I am excited to see if our dialogue studies transfer to their writing next week–so stay tuned!  Want to learn more about what we did?  Just click the image above and check it out!

The post Studying Dialogue to Improve Reading AND Writing appeared first on The Teacher Studio.

Teaching narrative writing isn’t easy. Writing a story from start to finish can seem like a pretty overwhelming task–and it is!  I’ve been working for years on how to make it more accessible and meaningful to my students. Let’s face it, writing stories for a living isn’t what 99% of them will be doing.  That being said, the PROCESS of writing a story and the creative energy of planning one is super valuable–and, of course, there are many writing skills that cross genres.  I thought I’d share what we did this year, and I’m trying to consolidate it without losing too much of the detail.  Hope this all makes sense!

For the last few years I have used a planning tool that I turned into a resource which helps kick off the unit of narrative writing. It has been SUPER helpful for me as I try to set the tone for a writing community. At the same time, students start planning their stories.  I still use it and it really helps my students with their planning.  Now, I’ve even added a DIGITAL component so my students can do their planning on the computer OR using print resources!

Planning Our Narratives

As our curriculum has evolved a bit, I started looking for ways to really get my students digging into character development so that their narratives were richer and more thoughtful.  We worked hard to try to get students to really think about a main character…who this person would be.  What they would be like as people.  We thought about what they would enjoy–and what they don’t.  We pondered what their strengths are–and their weaknesses.  As I started to jot down these ideas, I used our read aloud to try to see if we could see how a “real” author developed those characters.

Because we are reading Fish in a Tree, there are PLENTY of opportunities to talk about characters–both Ally as a main character and the several other important secondary characters.  I started tracking what we knew about two of the characters (Ally and Shay) in terms of their “external” characteristics and their internal traits, interests, strengths, and more.  We tracked the characters on these forms and learned some things. We learned that authors do NOT spend much time describing what characters look like. (I was thrilled when my students said, “That doesn’t really matter!”) Most of the clues that authors give are HINTED at (ah, “inferring”!).  This led to some pretty interesting discussions about what WE need to do as writers. For one thing, we really need to focus on creating characters that we describe by giving our readers clues.

The Importance of Modeling

I decided that the best way to help show my students how to start creating such a character would be for us to work together to create one…I made new copies of these forms and, together we worked to “invent” a character under the document camera.  This is really one of my favorite things to do–to write WITH my students.  It’s a great way to get ALL students involved in the writing process…it takes the pressure of the actual WRITING away and lets even struggling writers be active participants.  We did lots of “turn and talk” and then I let students share ideas and then I made final decisions and recorded our thinking.

After spending about half a class period “creating” this character, I had my students work to talk with small groups about the types of characters THEY wanted to create.  I am kind of a stickler–I tell students that writers write about what they are experts in–so their characters need to be similar in age to them…they simply don’t know what it is like to be a teenager and deal with teenager problems.  This keeps the stories much more realistic and saves a lot of tough discussions!

Time to Really Dig In!

After this, it was time to get to work.  I broke this up into two days–where we worked through exterior “looks” of our characters and the trait list.  It is always amazing to me how many students don’t know many of these vocabulary words…words like “conceited” and “compassionate”–so we work on those.  I then tell them to pick ONE key trait that they will work to build…and one or two others that might show up in the story.  We looked back at our study of Ally and realize that although the author paints her as a bit defiant and difficult, she also has her creative and compassionate side…so that was good food for thought as they picked.

Working Hard to Get Planned

The next day, we continued “getting to know” our new characters (I told my class that they should “know” their character so well that they would recognize them if they walked through the door!) and expanded our planning.  We got back to work inventing “Danny”, my character by coming up with his likes and dislikes as well as special items or treasures he might have.  We talked about characters we know and love–and went back to Ally to talk about her likes, dislikes, and special objects.  I could really see that my students were starting to “get it” and they were itching to get to work on their own characters…so off they went to get creative.  I kept this a pretty relaxed time…some worked alone, some brainstormed together, and then we came together at the end to talk about what we had accomplished.

The next step of our journey started to get us deeper into story planning–stories don’t tend to have just ONE character, so we talked at length about some of the secondary characters in Fish in a Tree and how Ally interacts with them.  We talked about their traits, likes, and dislikes, and how they were important to the story.  Then what?  That’s right–time to invent some secondary characters for Danny!  We really were getting close to having our narrative writing planned!

And Digging in More…

I love the idea of having students think about characters who can HELP the main characters, and those who make life difficult…as you know, this is what stories are made of!  We had TONS of ideas for who might make life difficult for Danny…but we kept it simple.  These are meant to be short stories, not novels after all!  It was time for students to get to work…and I asked them to work with a partner to make sure their new characters seemed to “fit” with what they had already invented about their main character.

Next, it was time to decide what types of problems our character could have…all the while making sure that these problems fit in with what we already had created.  We pulled Fish in a Tree back into the mix and talked about how Ally and her problems were directly related to other characters (Shay), and her own dislikes and traits (her unwillingness to ask for help).  We created a few situations for Danny, then students went off to work on designing some perfect problems for their characters and secondary characters.

As our stories took shape, I wanted to get a little bit more background information for the students so we dug into a few books we had read looking for setting clues.  I wanted them to continue thinking of this idea that authors “give hints” without just TELLING the reader…and then we created a chart to brainstorm ideas for the setting of “the ballpark”–and how to come up with descriptive words and phrases that could help a reader know we are there without really telling them.

Sharing, Teaching Dialogue, and More!

They had SO much fun…and got better and better as our sharing continued.  When we were finished?  Off to our writer’s notebook to start creating our settings!

The two other elements of writing that we tackled before we started writing were working on writing dialogue and planning a narrative with a story map.  I won’t bore you with all the details…but if you are interested, I do have an old blog post that you can find HERE all about what I do!

Ready to Try?

The post LOVING our narrative writing unit! appeared first on The Teacher Studio.