Writing

Interactive Writing

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This was part of a reading lesson with inactive writing section for one of my students.

Show Don't Tell Emotion Chart

Anchor charts help students choose different words and express different ideas with a little help.

First Grade Schoolhouse: Teaching Writing

Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits: Teaching Writing Idea and Plans

Beginning, Middle + End Achor Chart  

#Teach #Teaching #Writing#Spelling #English #Reading#AchorCharts #Charts

Writing a letter properly is a headache for many..... great for teaching writing to language students


 

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What Did I Write?: 

Beginning Writing Behaviour

by Marie M. Clay (1975)

This book allows some insight to how a young child is thinking.  They have purpose behind the things they say, write and do.  Children want to communicate the way they see the world around them.  This book restates the importance of working with a child’s strengths to overcome their weaknesses.   It all comes back to teachers noticing.

This book also talks about how teachers’ assumptions many times prevent or slow learning.  We forget the fact that many times the simple things need to be pointed out.  We should not assume children know that one letter is not a word. Again it is what teachers notice, say, and do that ultimately brings forth learning.  I related to this book in many ways since I live with a four year old.  I am asked many times, “What does this spell?” or “What did I write?”

            
The many principles covered in the book (Recurring, Directional, Generating, Inventory, Contrastive, and Abbreviation) allow teachers a directional insight of where to go with our students writing.  The Rating Technique is a strong tool that provides a way to assess and document how students are progressing.

There are several principles Clay discusses in this book. A few of them are recurring, directional, generating, inventory, contrastive, and abbreviation principle. I will give a brief description of these principles.  

         *Recurring involves the repetition of pictures, letters, or words.

         *Directional principle is the behavior of writing print from left to right.

         *Generating is the realization that letters can recur in patterns; that many words can be constructed out of the 26 letters of the alphabet.

         *Inventory is the arrangement or order that students put the things they learn into. One example given to show inventory was one student grouped the capital and lower case letters into pairs.

         *Contrastive describes children’s urge to create contrasts in letters, sounds, meanings, and visual forms of writing.

         *Abbreviation principle is the deliberate attempt to use one symbol to represent a full word, knowing he could get help filling out the rest of it.

Copying is often used in classes to help children gain muscle control and letter formation. These copying lessons are also to practice grammatical structure that they do not use well. The research in the book talks about when there are too many teaching points students often miss the points because there are too many.  Teaching points are clear to children “if only one new feature of correction is made”.    

I know this is a fault of mine.  I want to get as much from my time with them as possible.  I feel such pressure to get all the items checked off the long list of standards I am required to cover.  Again to only find out I am working against my students and myself by covering too much.  This is a goal of mine to pick one thing to correct in their writing, instead of over whelming them with all five things that are wrong.