Coming off the rush of NECTFL 2022 I have so many immediate applications for the different strategies I learned from teachers from across the country. I specifically want to highlight one I attended by Greta Lundgaard about building writing proficiency. In her presentation, she provided such a clear explanation as to what it means to build writing proficiency in our classes and the many benefits for both students and teachers. I have to admit, prior to this session I held great doubts about the value of writing in my classroom in comparison to the other forms of communication but that has changed. I also never thought that my students were well prepared for assessments and that my writing instruction needed a complete overhaul. Thankfully, her presentation gave me the jolt of energy that I needed. Above is my version of Greta's detailed writing plan that she so graciously provided us in her workshop. Let's take this step by step. Organization: In this table, Greta walked us through 8 possible writing prompts that we can build into our classes as we prepare students for a summative writing task. Each one has different prompts, indicates if they are timed or untimed, is meant for individuals, groups or triads, has scaffolds and supports built in for vocabulary, grammar and inspiration and has a looped in feedback process that doesn't always put the burden on the teacher to provide feedback and collect mountains of papers. Writing #1: This is a timed individual prompt for the first task. The teacher comes up with a prompt for writing and provide sentence starters and language chunks right away. These give students the language they need in order to answer that prompt. When time is called, the feedback process has options. Students can read their writing out loud to a partner and the partner can choose their favorite sentence or section and explain why. The teacher could also provide a peer feedback format where students acknowledge a positive section of their writing. Writing #2: This is a timed individual prompt. The teacher designs another prompt for writing and this time only provides the targeted chunks they are working with. These could be verb forms (already in the right forms) or any other chunks of language kids need to complete the task. Then, for feedback, the teacher can make this active by asking them to get up and find someone with similar answers, opposite answers, etc. They can then work together to combine their writing into one cohesive paragraph. Writing #3: This is an untimed writing in pairs. The prompt will relate to a picture stimulus that should generate language related to the unit. The teacher will also post or highlight specific vocabulary words from the unit that they can choose to use in their writing. For feedback, each pair combines with another pair to create one polished piece of writing from all four people. Writing #4: This is a timed writing assignment in triads (groups of 4 are too many). The prompt will come after a reading stimulus (an article, infographic, etc). The teacher will also draw students attention to new vocabulary from the unti and encourage them to go back into the reading stimulus and select words they can use in their writing. Each triad is writing one paper so the teacher could choose to collect the papers and provide feedback on those few papers instead of 25+ papers. Writing #5: This is an untimed writing for pairs. The prompt will now be related to a listening stimulus (video or audio) and the teacher can deliberately bring up recycled vocabulary words from prior units. This is a great way to build in retrieval practice. The teacher can hand out an editing checklist for each pair to work on. The checklist is not meant to make work perfect or correct every grammar mistake, but instead to find evidence of vocabulary, grammar, transition words, etc. Writing #6: This is a timed individual assignment. Students would view another picture stimulus that would relate to the topic of their writing. This is also when the teacher can deliberately draw attention to connecting words and transition words from the unit. When students are done, they can look over their own writing using the editing checklist to get more independence with the checklist. Writing #7: This is a not timed individual assignment. The teacher would show another picture stimulus and post recycled vocab from a prior unit to help with retrieval of previously learned material. The students would then give their writing to a partner who would look over the writing using a single point rubric to provide glow and grow feedback based on their writing. They could also receive a single line of the rubric that they could look at and focus on for feedback. Writing #8: This is a not timed individual assignment. Students would have one final reading stimulus that would spark a writing prompt. Within that reading students would find new vocabulary and find ways to combine that with previously learned vocabulary. This is when the teacher could collect and/or grade the writing. Here's a specific example from my Spanish 2 class. I'm really excited to try this out in my classes in the coming weeks. I think this has the right amount of novelty while reinforcing the forms we are working with in class.
Again, thank you to Greta Lundgaard for the inspiration for this post and for the continuous amazing ideas. Click here for the document if you would like to check it out more!
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