On this page, feel free to talk about what you learned from the Step Up to Writing training, how you are incorporating the techniques into your classes, any questions you may have, and your ideas for what we can do as a school to ensure all of our students are learning the Step Up strategies and the skills they promote.
Here is one link to some Step Up to Writing resources. More may be included in the future.
SMART Board Resources - Step Up to Writing
There are some things that I like with Step Up to Writing, and other things that I don't. I did the sentence fragment/complete sentence chart with my SPED group today - and it went well. I had movable pieces and such. I like that a lot. I am not too keen on the response prompts. I like the ones that I have used over the years better because of the types of responses they illicit. I would like to start a writing strategies class for the middle school - open to all MS students to work on some of these strategies. Too many of the MS students do not know how to write a basic paragraph, much less a quality essay like what is needed for the curriculum and the state.
ReplyDeleteI think that would be great Rachel....I can tell that your style of teaching writing has an effect on those freshman coming in from WYVA 8th grade...so thank you!
DeleteI got approval for the writing strategies class. I will be starting it next week. Yippee. Dee Dee, you are too kind. Those kids worked hard. And there were some very good LCs. Besides if I take credit for the good ones, I have to take credit for the bad ones!!
DeleteThat is a wonderful idea Rachel! I hope the students who need it most take advantage of it!
DeleteRachel - great news that you got approved for the writing strategies class. There is a lot of writing in the high school history classes and I can reiterate what Dee Dee said, I have really seen an improvement in their writing in the last couple of years. I am sure this class will only help more. Thanks for doing that!
DeleteI really like the Step Up to Writing, but this year I have mainly used it as a resource to go along with the writing curriculum. I think that next year, I will start off using it more at the beginning mainly with writing sentences and paragraphs more. It's a good program, but should not just be taught alone, but incorporated into our curriculum.
DeleteKris S.
I love Step Up to Writing.....I think it will be wonderful if our school uses it in the lower grades....some consistency will make it so that I don't have to spend so much time teaching the basics, but can spend more time honing the craft for high-school students. I can myself using the vocabulary techniques....plus I really loved the sketching of what was going on while someone reads aloud.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the Step Up to Writing pd was great and I came out of it with a lot of ideas. Now that it has been a couple of weeks, I need to go back and review some of them. I met with a student right after the in-service and he said he didn't really know how to write essays - I used some of the techniques from Step Up to Writing and he said he understood after that. Many of them are such simple processes and it would be nice if we could implement them as a staff so the student's became familiar with them and they just became habit for them.
ReplyDeleteWhile correcting extended response - real world assessments in Math+ Yellow and Fundamentals of Geometry and Algebra, I have found the 5th and 6th grade students do not know how to explain how they found an answer. I have been using the Math - Writing to Explain strategies from Step Up to Writing. this strategy helps them think about the process they are using to find an answer and helps them explain their reasoning.
ReplyDeleteThat is great! I think students need to understand that we don't just write for English. And having to explain your thought process is going to develop different skills that writing an essay. This kind of writing also is helping them develop those oh-so important metacognition skills.
DeleteThe Writing Strategies class has been expanded to include 9th graders. I have been working on taking prompts and making them into topic sentences. What makes the MS staff so fabulous is that they provided me with the prompts that they use in their own work samples!!! I incorporated those prompts into my lesson. This helps the students recognize that this is not a Language Arts thing but a successful student thing. I also used the same lesson with my Reading Foundation 1A students because the writing topic sentences lesson in the LMS was not good. These kiddos were able to identify the topic, figure out if they were explaining, describing or illustrating by inferring from the question, and figure out the answer format. Now if only the skills would transfer to other classes :).
ReplyDeleteThe Writing Strategies class has taken an interesting turn. I have started to use the jargon from that class in my regular class connect sessions. What is interesting is that students who are not coming to the writing strategies class will ask what the jargon is, which students who are coming will answer. I have been giving extra credit to students who are attending. I am also noticing that writing complex sentences is really hard for students. We go over it in GUM, but for students to come up with a complex sentence based on a simple sentence give, was really difficult. It was really interesting to observe this practice in progress. I am appreciating this extra time. I wish that more students would take advantage of this time. I can see in the students' writing who is coming and participating and who is not.
ReplyDeleteDo you have your students combine sentences? I think this is a fun (and effective) way to learn to write complex sentences. I love the jargon idea, too, btw.
DeleteDoes anyone have any great ideas to help me with the students that refuse to really dig deep on their essay questions for the work samples? Most of my students do really great on this...but some...whoa... just not there yet. I go over excellent model essays in CC every week, but for the students not attending, that doesn't do a lot of good. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of doing a quick jing vid or camtasia vid and sending it out on Kmail. Thoughts?\\
Jenn Schultze
This is something I struggle with at the high school level, too. Some ideas: Give them a minimum word requirement. You might get some repetition at first, but it might force them to go deeper, too. You might make sure the questions are worded in a way that ENCOURAGES digging deep; sometimes there just isn't much to work with and questions need to be rewritten. I usually teach students to break down questions so they realize all the different parts of the question they need to respond to. You might also give them a graphic organizer to complete in place of writing the answer. You could also just not accept answers that don't reflect serious thought.
DeleteStep up to Writing is a nice resource to have with everything in one place. Everything in the Step Up to Writing at 5th grade level has been covered and developed over the past few years for WYVA. I like Rachel, prefer most of my samples and work over theirs. I love having the resource though- it lets me know I am on track and covering what is needed for their grade level.
ReplyDeleteAnother year - and time to start Step Up to Writing. In the next few weeks, I will post up what Rita and I are dong with the MS and early HS students. We are starting the Writing Strategies class on Sept.14th. I am looking forward to working with the kids again with these concepts. I like how it can be broken down. I wish that I was able to do more hands-on like actually folding paper and such. Not sure how to do that in the platform that we are in and make sure that everybody writes at the same time.
ReplyDeleteUpdate on the Writing Strategies Class - Rita and I have been averaging 100 students at the sessions. It seems a little overwhelming, but Rita is great at moderating the chat. We have discussed the stoplight paragraph and Editing Using CUPS. I am trying to keep the sessions to 35 minutes - that includes the exit ticket. We have decided not to have WS during the week of MAP testing, the entire month of January, and after PAWS testing. I have noticed in my classes that the students are starting to use the jargon of SUTW. We will see where this will all lead to.
ReplyDelete