Elementary 's Writing Workshop : Four Square Model

Writing can be a daunting task for students in any grade. Teachers have to implement new basic components for those struggling to write. Finding new methods and being able to execute them requires teachers to design lesson plans that help

This entails working on the Seven Steps to Writing Success will be taught twice a week and writing tasks will also be included during literacy groups. Sizzling Starts and recounts will be the focus text in term one. Narrative and creative writing will be taught too and in both cases the emphasis will be on creating strong sentences with good structure. The lesson format for sizzling starts and narrative/creative writing will be explicit teaching to the whole class. My role as a teacher will be to identify the student’s level and provide appropriate feedback to support to move students toward the next level.

Reflecting on my life as a means of deciding on a topic, one time period struck me as particularly important in terms of writing itself: my second year of second grade. Moving to Poway in 2007, the first class I was in was Mrs. Ramin’s 2-3 combo at Painted Rock. I had purple wire-rim glasses, a brown Hello Kitty tracksuit, two friends, and a hatred of writing. This was particularly unfortunate for young Analise, since Mrs. Ramin’s main focus was writing. She encouraged her students to write daily, setting aside 20-60 minutes each day for it. Although I hated it at first, my passion for creative writing grew as I turned my love for my sister and for Webkinz into tales of adventure and peril parallel to my then favorite series, Magic Tree House. I wrote, drew, and colored whatever my seven-year-old imagination spun for me. After that spark, the fire of writing died down to a smolder until eighth grade, when I wrote my first successful essay, “Flowers for Algernon: A Comparative Essay On How Two Versions of the Story are like

In 2003, the National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges published a report called The Neglected ‘’R’’: The Need for a Writing Revolution. This report argued that ‘’writing has been forgotten in American schools for the past 20 years and how now it must receive the attention it deserves’’. As the name of the report mentions, there are three Rs in education. This refers to the foundations of a basic skills-oriented education program in schools: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. According to the above mentioned report published in 2003, ‘’Writing, Education’s Second R, has become the neglected element of American school reform. The school improvement journey that began 20 years ago with the publication of A Nation at Risk

Teachers, parents, and friends often tell students exactly what the writing process should entail and how long it should take. However, the older I get, the more I realize that the writing process varies not only from person to person, but also from one writing project to the next. Throughout my years of life, I have written countless papers, ranging from a persuasive speech to an extensive research paper, and each project requires an altered version of my personal writing process. While each individual has his own writing process, there can be many similarities between different writing processes. Finding one’s individual writing process takes trial, error, and repetition. When an individual finally uncovers his unique writing process, better thought, work, and writing is produced.

Writing is a practice that most of us were taught when we were young. We were taught the basics of grammar, how to form a sentence, conjunction words, how to write paragraphs and more. Although we have learned this skill while growing up and have used the skill every year after entering kindergarten, this does not mean our writing process will ensure the best work. The authors that I chose each encourage their audience to excel in the art of writing in their own way to help with the writing process.

From the early beginning of the school year to the current day, my writing skills and knowledge have improved and broadened over time. If not drastic, the change is noticeable nevertheless. For almost an entirety of eighth grade, assignments of varying difficulty challenged me to a degree. To be frank, some seemed as though they were beyond my comprehension and ability. However, determination amalgamated with knowledge obtained in advance helped me to overcome my doubts, for I exceeded my expectations; surprisingly good grades and comments are a delight, owing to the fact of that I don’t tend to think of myself as being proficient at writing. Consequently, the assignments given to me this school year shaped me into who I am as a writer.

As part of students IEP resource program and RtI services, I provide instruction for the development of written expression, as evidenced by my Professional Growth Experience #2. My methodology for writing instruction has evolved dramatically. Now I see each student as an individual somewhere on the path to independent “author.” I work to meet each student’s learning need at their level. Currently, students work at their own level and I provide individual or small group mini-lessons to support weaker skills. I learned from experience to create quality, high interest prompts that address a real audience to teach “voice.” My format support Common Core’s informative/explanatory writing standard and engages critical thinking and motivation. To

In Peg Tyre’s article, The Writing Evolution, he addresses how some students struggled with writing in schools and how more time needed to be spent on teaching the proper aspects of writing. In his article, Tyre mentions a specific high school that took large measures to figure out why their students were doing so poorly on english and writing exams. This particular high school, New Dorp, made a writing revolution in which they placed an intense focus across nearly every academic subject, teaching the skills that underlie good analytical writing (Tyre 4). They received extraordinary results. Pass rates for the English Regents, for example, bounced from 67 percent in June 2009 to 89 percent in 2011 (Tyre 4). The number of kids enrolling in a program that allowed them to take college-level classes shot up from 148 students in 2006 to 412 students in 2011 (Tyre 4).

Students are instructed on how to develop and organize their writing by developing a plan or out line to follow. Teachers should discuss with their students how to effectively plan out their writing strategy. Students need to be taught to question themselves about the purpose of their writing. Questions like; “Who am I writing for?” or “How will I organize my thoughts?” are two general examples. Gersten mentions the importance and purpose of the first draft and how it provides a concrete reminder for where the writing is going. The plan and its draft provide a common language for teacher and students to share making communication easier. He also speaks of the strengths of the revision process. Gersten illustrates how peer-editing can be a useful tool to employ during writing.

For project three, the objective was to create a multimodal composition about my writing process. Throughout the poster, I talked about how my writing has changed as well as how it has stayed the same since I began English 101. I also spoke on the struggles I went through with writing in high school. Through my poster, I was able to convey how a deeper understanding of the writing process in high school can help mediate these struggles and better prepare one for their intro Writing class in college.

As a freshman at Linden High School, I have learned that writing provides students with the necessary communication and thinking skills necessary to succeed in school. Before I enrolled in ACL, I was a lazy writer who detested every aspect of writing. Now, I have learned to embrace writing challenges and learn from my mistakes. Writing persuasive and research papers proved to be difficult for me because it required organizational and research skills. As the year progressed, I began feeling more confident in my writing skills and looked forward to expressing my ideas on paper. As a writer, I have gained the knowledge and tools to grow as a student.

Christine Love Thompson discusses strategies that she believes are the foundation to “good” writing in the article, “A Dose of Writing Reality: Helping Students Become Better Writers.” Thompson discovers that it is not correct spelling and grammar that makes a “good” writer; it is the voice of the student. She uses sources to support her claim that methods such as using graphic organizers and her constantly making corrections are not as effective as they seem. Thompson organizes the article to ensure better understanding of the process she went through to help her students become better writers.

Weekly, one-page response papers are assigned based on their readings, which helps students understand my writing expectations, and gain confidence as the transition from generalized and vague language to academic writing. In class writing assignments, which deal with key questions from their reading, also helps students make the transition. After reading “Why I Write” by Joan Didion, I invite students to write a short essay about their writing process. Each reading and writing assignment escalates in difficulty, with the intention to build confidence, reduce anxiety, and overcome fear about their writing process, while increasing their academic language.

The world is vastly changing. With it, is the classroom and the ways in which students work and think. They are not motivated by mundane instructions that they have no relation to. According to Boscolo & Hidi (2007), “Paper-based writing projects are often foreign to student interest and what they relate to in their daily life” (p. 29). This lack of interest and motivation has led to an increase in writing struggles amongst students in various schools. Brett Darrington and Tonia Dousay attempt to take a closer look at students’ writing struggles and suggest an alternative. Using various sources and studies, they look at the use of Multimodal teaching and student needs to find a solution to the problem.