Welcome everyone!! My name is Liz Watts, and I am a 5th grade teacher at Shelter Rock School. I'm constantly looking for ways to improve my writing instruction. Personally, I feel it's one of the most difficult subjects to teach. What I like about the Traits is how each part of writing is broken down. Students are able to focus on their voice or word choice or organization. This allows them to become more aware of what they need to do to improve as writers.
I'm looking forward to sharing the theory and practice of 6+1 Traits of Writing with you. The book you have received is written by Ruth Culham. The concept comes from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in Portland, Oregon. Below is a link to their website.
Copy and paste it and investigate what they have to offer.
http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/department.php?odelay=2&d=1
There are numerous websites supporting this program. I will share them with you as we move along.
Today we will log on, read our assignment and post an introduction.
Today before you leave -- post an introduction and respond to one other learner.
This week only the assignment will be due on Friday, 3/20. Please read the introduction, starts on Page 7. Respond to the following:
On Page 11 read the short definitions -- which ones do you feel you currently include in your writing instruction and which ones do you feel could be improved upon;
Look through the website I sent you. Share one or two things you found helpful there. There are links for lessons, sample papers, products, etc.
Have a great week. Session 2 will be posted tonight. It is due on 3/27.
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Introduction:
ReplyDeleteHi, my name is Laurie Swaine. I am a fifth grade teacher at Shelter Rock. I am looking for some new and fresh ideas on teaching writing. I took your reading strategies course and I am now implementing many of those ideas in my classroom. Laurie
Laurie,
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to working with you. Maybe we could use some of the strategies we learn to bring our classes together for a mini lesson.
Mchelle
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteyes, I would love to do something with you again. it's always a pleasure to work with you.Laurie
My name is Lisa Greenwald. I am an ESL teacher at Shelter Rock. Teaching writing is an important part of my program and I'm always looking for new ideas and approaches.
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon everyone. I am one of the speech/language therapists at the ROCK. I look forward to learning and keeping abreast of all writing strategies. I like to support the students in any way to further support their language growth.
ReplyDeleteI am a 4th grade teacher at Shelter Rock ~ teaching writing effectively is a huge task ~ I am looking forward to ideas and techniques to use so the children will try the suggestions offered during the lessons.
ReplyDeleteLynn, I hope that we will be able to brainstorm how to use the ideas in our therapy session again.
ReplyDeleteLisa---It seems that our goals are very similar. ESL students need to learn the same skills as students with language delays.
ReplyDeleteLisa,
ReplyDeleteYou and I can practice what we learn when you come into my classroom. I am really looking forward to reading and trying out the lessons from this book.
Yes, Marsha that sounds great. Since we share a student we can work on this together.
ReplyDeleteHELLO! My name is Laura Kinsel. I am a 6th grade teacher at Munsey Park. I am excited to learn how to improve my writing program!
ReplyDeleteLaurie,
ReplyDeleteWe can brainstorm together with Michelle and the 3 of us can come up with some lessons.
Hi
ReplyDeleteI am currently teaching 4th grade at Shelter Rock. I am really excited to learn some new writing skills and strategies that can be utilized in my classsroom!!
Hi Stacey,
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you're in this course ~ now we can be partners here too! We will have fun as we try out new ideas!
Hi Stacey,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I'm always looking for new ways ways to teach writing effectively in my class.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI'm Debbie and I am a Special Ed. teacher at Shelter Rock. I am currently teaching a third grade Language Arts group. My kids are making progress in reading, but I need to move them along in writing. I am looking forward to learning ideas to help my students improve their writing.
Hi Caroline and Lynn,
ReplyDeleteMaybe we can get together and do some follow-up to what we learn. The more minds, the merrier!
Hi! I teach fourth grade at Munsey! I am comfortable teaching using Teacher's College techniques...I like what I know of this program because it is very organized and I enjoy using the rubrics.
ReplyDeleteI think I do a good job of teaching ideas, organization, word choice. I have worked this year on teaching #6 better. I think I need to work on teaching all the rest! I am really excited about using this program after reading the introduction! I enjoyed the website, too. I found the website a bit overwhelming as there were so many places to visit. I did find the scoring papers section very useful however, and I cannot wait to use it with my class! I like how the students can grade other works via the Smartboard! This is a very useful teaching technique! I love the rubric, too! I am hopeful that both mny students and I will get a hang of using this grading system. I'll keep you posted!
ReplyDeleteHi Marsha
ReplyDeleteI am so happy you are taking this. I am looking forward to learning some new strategies and brainstorming with you about some creative ideas we would like to use in our classroom!!
Lisa:
ReplyDeleteI'm glad we're taking the same course together. It's the only time I really get to speak to you. Hopefully, we can use some of these resources for our students.
Week 1 Introduction: I do lessons on ideas (details, description), organization, voice, word choice (especially interesting verbs), and conventions. Although I do focus on the above, I welcome new ideas and strategies. I do speak about sentence fluency but hope to learn new strategies.
ReplyDeleteWeek 1 Introduction: I opened the scoring section and then read an example of a piece of writing receiving a high score under "ideas". The name of the piece was "Color Crayon". I will use the piece in my class to have the children discuss why the ideas in this piece are good. Then I can also use this same piece to have the children edit it, thereby stressing the importance of "conventions". I also thought that sharing some pieces that did not receive high marks will spark the discussion in class with suggestions to improve the pieces.
ReplyDeleteHi there, I'm Nancy Reisman and I teach 6th grade reading, writing, and language arts as part of our departmentalized program. I am looking forward to simplify my program, which presently requires lots of writing by the children and tons more work and time from me to assess and confer with each of the 50 writers so they get feedback. I am overwhelmed and hoping to make appropriate changes with this program.
ReplyDeleteMarsha,
ReplyDeleteHi, it's Patricia Lynch. I know the great work you do with writing in your classroom.
I feel the way you do about being open to new ideas. Hopefully I can take away some useful ideas for working with your students.
Hi Pat,
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you're part of this class. I can't wait to get new ideas to try out and brainstorm with you to come up with creative projects for my class to learn and enjoy!
Liz,
ReplyDeleteI concentrate on ideas,organization and voice and could focus further on conventions. When viewing the website, I found an interesting lesson for March and Sayings. Useful now.
Patricia Lynch
Hi there,
ReplyDeleteLaura, we may have a perfect opportunity to make sense out of our 6th grade curriculum. Perhaps we can incorporate the 6 traits into the best of what we now do and get rid of the things that have been overwhelming.
Amy,
ReplyDeleteThis is a perfect opportunity for us to collaborate. You teach our 4th graders so we can get a sense of what works well and we can pick up where you left off. Nancy
Hey Nancy...I'm excited to use this class with you to improve our writing program. I agree that focusing on one trait would take the overwhelmingness out of our program.
ReplyDeleteAs with most of us, I focus a lot on Ideas and Organization. For my special ed students, the idea portion can be such a stumbling block. They can often share stories of so many events verbally, but when asked to write about it, or even recall an event for a writing task, they seem to freeze. I really want some strategies to make the flow of ideas come to them without stress and anxiety!
ReplyDeleteI went on the website and specifically looked at lesson plans for Ideas. There was a great one fractured fairy tales, as well as 'picturing' animals for creative ideas. It's always helpful to have book suggestions to use with the students to help them generate ideas. I'm really looking forward to finding new resources to help my students become better writers!
Hello everyone! I am Ally Weiss Begley and I teach fifth grade at Shelter Rock. I loved taking Liz's last course about reading strategies and am looking forward to exploring more writing activities with my fifth graders.
ReplyDelete~Ally :)
Hey Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteI'm really excited to be in the class with many of our grade-level colleagues so we can add some new ides to our curriculum.
~Ally :)