Hi I'm Cheryl Butler, a fifth grade teacher at Shelter Rock. I'm taking this course to gain more reources to be utilized in my LA program. I've taken your other course, and I really found an unbelievable amount of material to use with my reading groups. I look forward to sharing insights with my colleagues.
Hi, my name is Michelle Salmeron. I am a 5th grade self contained teacher at Shelter Rock.I am looking forward to learning some new strategies to incorporate into my writing program. Michelle
Hi--My name is Lynn Prisco. I am a speech therapist servicing grades K-6. My students in the upper grades find writing extememly difficult. I'm hoping to learn new strategies that will help them with the many class projects that they will be working on.
My name is Mike Putnam and I teach 4th grade at Munsey Park. I have worked with six traits in the past and like how it breaks the writing process down into specific topics.
Looking at the definitions on pageI feel that I work on Ideas, organization and conventions. I feel that voice and word choice and sentnece fluency can be my next focus.
When I work on a writing piece with my students I currently use the traits--ideas, organization and sentence fluency. I would like to work on voice, conventions and presentations. These traits become more important as the students moves up. Since writing is so difficult for many of my students a formula that they can use easily would be very helpful to them.
Week 1 Response Currently, I would say the main focus of my writing instruction is on Ideas and Organization. My students’ skills are way below grade level. They are essentially emergent or not yet writers. I am hoping to improve my writing instruction overall. I viewed the website and went to lesson plans, early elementary and then picked a trait. I loved that the site was easy to navigate and allow you to zero in on a trait and grade level of your choice. It provided many wonderful ideas to teach the six traits. I also found the 6-Trait Assessment for Beginning Writers this will be a good starting point for me in assessing my students. Michelle
I went to a lesson “Color Crayon”, and found the task very creative and the way the scoring is done extremely insightful. I usually score a writing piece as a whole. It’s interesting to score each writing convention separately. I then looked up a lesson on conventions and read “Yellow Mama”. The comments are extremely helpful.
As far as the definitions, I always stress organization of details and ideas. Ideas, of course, is the first convention I discuss. Without ideas, there is no writing piece. Word choice is another convention I am very serious about. I have my students find definitions for more difficult vocabulary and stress the importance of vivid vocabulary. Voice is something I touch on. Some students get it, and some don’t.
I feel the first thing I always discuss is organization skills and then we discuss ideas through brainstorming. As I reflect i could improve on flavor. I went on the website and I read the writing piece about crayons. I loved how you could see the scoreing. I am going to try this out today with my class. I think it is a great idea.
Understanding the different level that the classroom teacher like Michelle and Laurie are working with and what levels helpds me to reinforce and incorporate their classroom skills during therapy.
Michelle and Caroline--The writing assessment will be something I can also use, regardless of the child's level. The children would be learning the strategies and reinforcing the skills is something that they can all use. It would be great to follow the curriculum, even in a modified way for those student s that need it the most.
When teaching writing, I focus more on organizational skills and creating ideas. This seems to be quite challenging for many students. I strongly encourage my students to use a planning page, which helps them with their ideas and sequencing skills. After reading the definitions, the next step I would like to focus on would be sentence fluency. The website was very insightful. It has some great tools that I would like to utilize. I really enjoyed reading some of the stories and seeing how they were scored. I would like to try their scoring techniques in my classroom (scoring their papers per trait).
week 1-Introduction- I am excited to study the trait-based writing since I usually start with a character sketch to get my students to develop a piece by describing it. Then I move on to fuller development by studying "memoir." Once I sense they have a feel for developing a piece, I concentrate on voice. I do mini lessons for descriptive language. I am ready to try a new twist and this all makes so much sense. I browsed through the web site and focused on two examples of "5" pieces that had excellent development and voice. One about camp will be helpful since my kids have trouble limiting their topic.
As 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!
After reading the definitions, I found I do some of them well and could use some work on the others. I focus on ideas in the beginning of the year with my sixth graders, so that they know how to find ideas to write for the rest of the year in their journal. Organization and Word Choice are two other topics I focus on. Voice, however, I feel is difficult to teach and still struggle with this trait. I teach sentence fluency and conventions, but I could definitely do more with these two traits. After surfing the site, I found the writing prompts helpful and used one today with my class. It would be nice if they had a few more though. I also found a lesson called "Mouthwatering Menus" that would help students with word choice and cracking words open.
Hi I'm Cheryl Butler, a fifth grade teacher at Shelter Rock. I'm taking this course to gain more reources to be utilized in my LA program. I've taken your other course, and I really found an unbelievable amount of material to use with my reading groups. I look forward to sharing insights with my colleagues.
ReplyDeleteHi, my name is Michelle Salmeron. I am a 5th grade self contained teacher at Shelter Rock.I am looking forward to learning some new strategies to incorporate into my writing program. Michelle
ReplyDeleteHi--My name is Lynn Prisco. I am a speech therapist servicing grades K-6. My students in the upper grades find writing extememly difficult. I'm hoping to learn new strategies that will help them with the many class projects that they will be working on.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Mike Putnam and I teach 4th grade at Munsey Park. I have worked with six traits in the past and like how it breaks the writing process down into specific topics.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the definitions on pageI feel that I work on Ideas, organization and conventions. I feel that voice and word choice and sentnece fluency can be my next focus.
ReplyDeleteWhen I work on a writing piece with my students I currently use the traits--ideas, organization and sentence fluency. I would like to work on voice, conventions and presentations. These traits become more important as the students moves up. Since writing is so difficult for many of my students a formula that they can use easily would be very helpful to them.
ReplyDeleteWeek 1 Response
ReplyDeleteCurrently, I would say the main focus of my writing instruction is on Ideas and Organization. My students’ skills are way below grade level. They are essentially emergent or not yet writers. I am hoping to improve my writing instruction overall. I viewed the website and went to lesson plans, early elementary and then picked a trait. I loved that the site was easy to navigate and allow you to zero in on a trait and grade level of your choice. It provided many wonderful ideas to teach the six traits. I also found the 6-Trait Assessment for Beginning Writers this will be a good starting point for me in assessing my students.
Michelle
I went to a lesson “Color Crayon”, and found the task very creative and the way the scoring is done extremely insightful. I usually score a writing piece as a whole. It’s interesting to score each writing convention separately. I then looked up a lesson on conventions and read “Yellow Mama”. The comments are extremely helpful.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the definitions, I always stress organization of details and ideas. Ideas, of course, is the first convention I discuss. Without ideas, there is no writing piece. Word choice is another convention I am very serious about. I have my students find definitions for more difficult vocabulary and stress the importance of vivid vocabulary. Voice is something I touch on. Some students get it, and some don’t.
I feel the first thing I always discuss is organization skills and then we discuss ideas through brainstorming. As I reflect i could improve on flavor.
ReplyDeleteI went on the website and I read the writing piece about crayons. I loved how you could see the scoreing. I am going to try this out today with my class. I think it is a great idea.
Understanding the different level that the classroom teacher like Michelle and Laurie are working with and what levels helpds me to reinforce and incorporate their classroom skills during therapy.
ReplyDeleteMichelle and Caroline--The writing assessment will be something I can also use, regardless of the child's level. The children would be learning the strategies and reinforcing the skills is something that they can all use. It would be great to follow the curriculum, even in a modified way for those student s that need it the most.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhen teaching writing, I focus more on organizational skills and creating ideas. This seems to be quite challenging for many students. I strongly encourage my students to use a planning page, which helps them with their ideas and sequencing skills. After reading the definitions, the next step I would like to focus on would be sentence fluency.
ReplyDeleteThe website was very insightful. It has some great tools that I would like to utilize. I really enjoyed reading some of the stories and seeing how they were scored. I would like to try their scoring techniques in my classroom (scoring their papers per trait).
week 1-Introduction- I am excited to study the trait-based writing since I usually start with a character sketch to get my students to develop a piece by describing it. Then I move on to fuller development by studying "memoir." Once I sense they have a feel for developing a piece, I concentrate on voice. I do mini lessons for descriptive language. I am ready to try a new twist and this all makes so much sense. I browsed through the web site and focused on two examples of "5" pieces that had excellent development and voice. One about camp will be helpful since my kids have trouble limiting their topic.
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!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the definitions, I found I do some of them well and could use some work on the others. I focus on ideas in the beginning of the year with my sixth graders, so that they know how to find ideas to write for the rest of the year in their journal. Organization and Word Choice are two other topics I focus on. Voice, however, I feel is difficult to teach and still struggle with this trait. I teach sentence fluency and conventions, but I could definitely do more with these two traits.
ReplyDeleteAfter surfing the site, I found the writing prompts helpful and used one today with my class. It would be nice if they had a few more though. I also found a lesson called "Mouthwatering Menus" that would help students with word choice and cracking words open.