Elem.+Team+notes

** Wednesday, February 10, 2010  ** ** Lincoln **** Elementary ** ** Focus: Writing  ** At the last teacher leader meeting, the leaders felt there was a need to have some time to work together as grade level teams on scoring probes and also discussing and planning some of the suggestions you might give students to improve their traits. 1- Sample work you brought previously including high, middle, and low papers for organization, ideas, and voice 2-The rubrics Vicki passed out at our last session. 3-Lincoln staff will provide a laptop for each group Trait: ideas Suggestions for improvement: Have students read piece to teacher or student to see if their writing makes sense. Explain your picture to a friend and then go back and write details from your retelling. Have the students ask themselves questions about the story. How would they answer their questions? Write out their answers. Trait: Organization Suggestions for improvement: Divide paper into sections to have students draw beginning, middle, and end. Then, their writing can correspond to each section. Trait: Voice Suggestions for improvement: Give students a certain feeling or mood to write about. Share stories with whole class to emphasize the “voice” of the story. Use details from picture to write about. Read stories to class and guess who wrote them. Trait: ideas Suggestions for improvement: Trait: Organization Suggestions for improvement: Trait: Voice Suggestions for improvement: Trait: Ideas Suggestions for improvement: You state your main idea in a sentence. Now, how about adding several new sentences with details to make the idea as clear as possible? Not every detail is equally important. Can you pick out the most important details? Can you write more about what’s important to you? Trait: Organization Suggestions for improvement: Your beginning draws the reader in. How about thinking of an equally good ending to make the organization strong? What might come first, second and last in this piece? As you put your thoughts down, think about what might come first, second, and so on. Trait: Voice Suggestions for improvement: Tell me more about what you think and feel here. That will strengthen your voice. Nice work showing me what is most important to you. Doing that creates voice. Please think about your idea a bit more and add details that only you know. That will make the piece more interesting and create voice. What really interests you about this subject? Can you write more about that? Your voice will get stronger. Trait: ideas Suggestions for improvement: -Elaborate and develop details -Main Idea and Details- Begin with a topic sentence, and then give more details about the topic. Trait: Organization Suggestions for improvement: - Repeatedly modeling for the students how to take a graphic organizer and turn it into a story - Beginning, Middle, End - Sequence Words - Never end with “The End” **//__ Fourth Grade Writing notes __//**__:__ Kurth, Boatright, Al-Khanfar, Hoskins, Wells, Weiss, Strickler, Hanshaw Trait: Ideas Suggestions for improvement: Main idea, Using details, Perspective, “Who is your audience?” Trait: Organization Suggestions for improvement: Transition words, Title relation, Resolution (Tie up the ending), Creating a good lead “grabber” Trait: Voice Suggestions for improvement: Your opinion, “Who is your audience?” “How did you feel?” Be passionate TMR!!!!! (TOO MANY RUBRICS!!!!!) We need one for teachers and one for students. Trait: ideas Suggestions for improvement: Pick one disaster to write about (narrow topic) and tell me how you survived that accident. Tell me details to help clear up this part that is confusing. I need details about this particular disaster and what exactly happened. Tell me more details about the snowstorm. When did it happen? What did you use to dig out? Some of your details need fixed a little. I think it is pretty unrealistic to be trapped for a month. Think of a different amount of time that might be more reasonable to be trapped. Trait: Organization Suggestions for improvement: Use some sequencing and transition words to help the reader connect with new ideas. Be sure to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. How can you change the ending so that it ties up the whole story? It just sort of ended, there is no sense that this is the end. Choose a specific ending from the board (Vickie’s paper) to help you create a good conclusion. Trait: Voice Suggestions for improvement: Rather than “Thank you for listening,” use a more convincing ending. Repeat one of your strongest arguments. Maybe you could zero in on how using the computer would make you a better writer. Follow the directions, you didn’t consider the audience you were writing for. You wrote so that the two of you understand, but the whole class needed to understand. How can you make it clearer to the whole class. Type in the content of your page here.
 * Elementary Professional Development **
 * // Big Idea: Writing Collaboration //**
 * // Enduring Understanding: Collaborating on scoring and suggestions for improving writing will contribute to a more viable writing curriculum district-wide. //**
 * __ Please bring the following on Wednesday:  __**
 * __ Directive:  __**
 * Decide as a group how you’d like to proceed. You may either work in pairs or examine the same work as a team and score using the method Vicki illustrated last time.
 * Resolve any inconsistencies in scoring
 * Pick sample papers for each trait and write suggestions you might give the students for improving. Again – either in pairs or as a whole group.
 * Discuss the suggestions. Have someone complete the suggestion page (next page) with the various suggestions your group came up with for each trait and e-mail to me. I’ll post on the elementary wiki space so all will have access.
 * //__ Kindergarten Notes:  __//**
 * //__ First Grade Notes:  __//**
 * High end- add a quotation to get more detail. What would you say out loud?
 * Low end- stick to main topic
 * Add more details- pick one thing and ask them questions to get them to add something to their thoughts. “I played with my cat”. Teacher could say “What did you play? How did it make you feel”
 * Add a picture to help convey idea
 * Stay on topic- Teacher models a non-example of how silly it is to completely change topics in the middle of the story
 * Dictate for differentiated instruction
 * Draw the three steps (beginning, middle, end)
 * Use a tri-fold on the paper to help develop beginning, middle, end
 * Sequencing and using transition words (first, next, then, last, second, third)
 * Share story with peers so friends can hear how story flows.
 * Dictate for differentiated instruction- Allow students to help understand how to get their words on paper
 * Graphic organizers, webs, sticky notes, wiki-sticks (bendaroos), markers- use around words at beginning, middle, end.
 * Peer read to listen for voice
 * Give students puppets to act out their story
 * Compare your story to something else you have done. Students mostly write about being happy. Are there other voices (sad, angry, etc)
 * Books that go along with //Trait Crates//
 * Reading orally books that have good examples of voice
 * Junie B. Jones
 * __ Second Grade Notes:  __**
 * //__ Third Grade Notes:  __//**
 * __ Fifth Grade Notes:  __**