Informational Writing Checklist and Rubric

As students progressed through the writing processes of revising, editing, peer editing, and teacher conference we wanted to make sure that they were keeping all of the mini-lessons and expectations that they have been exposed to throughout the unit in mind.  I created the following checklist so that individual students, their peer editors and teachers would know what to look for when reviewing students’ work.  

 

We found that this checklist was incredibly helpful for a variety of reasons.  It allowed students to check their own work before proceeding to a peer conference.  Secondly, it enabled students and their peers to have a quality conversation during peer editing.  Students were able to give their partners specific feedback around the items that they needed to work on as well as the parts of their work that were going well.  Finally, the checklist is directly connected to the following rubric that we will use to score student work.  

The criteria for the rubric were taken directly from the checklist so there are no surprises for students and grading is consistent for teachers.  Each category is weighted differently for a total score point out of 100.  

 

Publishing Party!

For the past two months our students have worked hard to become experts on topics relating to the Great Depression that tie into our whole class novel, Bud, Not Buddy.  They researched their topics online and wrote informational pieces to share their knowledge.  Despite the many struggles that the students and I have experienced along the way with this project, I could not be more proud of them and the work that they have accomplished. I wanted to keep publishing options open to invite students’ creativity into the process and I am so pleased with the results!  Students were able to publish their written work as an essay, with an accompanying picture and caption, or to split their work into sections in the style of an informational page that might be found in a non-fiction text.  Here are a few examples of the fabulous student work that will be debuted during tomorrow’s publishing party!

Sarah is an expert on Jazz musicians during the Great Depression!

Eric is an expert on the struggles that African American teenagers faced during the 1930s!

Tatyana (who is Sarah’s best friend) is also an expert on Jazz musicians during the Great Depression 🙂

Tomorrow we will be hosting a publishing party so that students can learn from one another’s work.  I am beyond excited to see my first informational writing unit come to a close!

Figuratively Speaking . . .

During February vacation when other students in our district were hanging out on the couch playing video games, our students were in school working hard to prepare for out ELA state testing!  I spent the week guiding fifth graders through a poetry mini-unit.  Students created foldables in order to deconstruct, write, and locate similes and metaphors.  I hoped that this experience would help them develop a deep understanding of figurative language as well as why authors use figurative language.  I was thrilled to notice students enjoying the poems I selected for this mini-unit and loved hearing students try on their poetic voices while writing figurative language!

After researching educator websites, blogs, pintrest, and reviewing poems, I created the following pages to help me teach similes.  When photocopied single sided to double sided they can be put together to create a booklet.  I used these materials to design lessons where students found similes, determined the literal and figurative meanings of similes, wrote their own similes and drew images that similes evoked in the poem “Willow and Ginkgo” by Eve Merriam.

This is the cover. We came back to fill in the definition and purpose of similes at the end of the unit. I was interested to see what students had learned during the week.

Left: students examined the literal words and the author’s intended meaning in four similes. Right: Students used the similes in the poem “Willow and Ginkgo” to visualize and draw a picture of each of the trees.

Left: Prior to reading “Willow and Ginkgo,” students drew a picture of a Willow and a Ginko. They had no idea what the trees look like so they were excited to use Eve Merriam’s words to picture the trees! Right: Students transformed cliche similes by re-writing them into similes that evoke powerful mental images.

Left: Students located similes in the poem “Willow and Ginkgo” and analyzed them to determine the author’s meaning. Right: Eve Merriam’s Willow and Ginkgo.

Thank God for Collaboration

True confessions: I am sort of a hot mess.  I planned out the mini-lessons for the research phase of our writing project, was feeling good about it, and then stopped thinking about the next phases of the project.  I’m not sure if I got distracted by teaching math, SPED paper-work or the whiskey ginger ales that I re-invited to my weekends but, nevertheless, I reached the end of my planning some time last week and I had no idea where to go next. 

In hindsight, I am slightly embarrassed. The thought of planning the unit in full didn’t cross my mind until my dear co-teacher approached me during the writing block and asked the innocent and reasonable question, “So, what’s the plan for when the kids finish their research.” 

Hiding my thoughts has never worked for me since my bluntness is only rivaled by the fact that my feelings are etched on my face at all times.  Reading my panic, my fabulous and veteran co-teacher offered the suggestion, “perhaps they need a graphic organizer in order to transfer their notes into paragraph form.” 

“Ah, yes! A graphic organizer! A genius idea.”  

Here is what she came up with: it is awesome.  The kids needed it and we love it. 

Let’s talk about your feelings

 

Encouraging 5^th grade students to persistently engage in independent research and research writing continues to be a trying experience.  As a novice in teaching writing, I have, on multiple occasions, felt like abandoning this project.  Working alongside my co-teacher enabled me to see past my momentary desire to give up, troubleshoot the problems that have arisen, and persevere with the project.   My most disheartening moment with this project came after an hour-long ELA block where, at the close of the lesson, I observed that the students were visibly frustrated.  Emotions were running high in the classroom and I wanted to offer some sort of catharsis before sending them across the hall to math.  The best cathartic experience that I could offer came in the form of stickie note for each child along with the prompt “Tell me how you are feeling about this project.”  As opposed to the pessimism that I anticipated, students offered a range of responses, “I can’t find any information” “This project makes me mad.”  “I’m not doing well because it’s hard finding facts” came alongside inspiring messages such as, “I am feeling excited because I ‘m getting really close to the end of my research and I had never felt so happy about a project” and “I feel great about this project because I get to learn about jazz.”  This mini-exercise enabled me to take action: our fifth graders at once empowered me to conference with those where were frustrated and re-energized me with their excitement and positivity. 

Student-Friendly Data Displays

 

Although our students are well aware of their reading levels, they frequently lose sight      of the growth they have made from the beginning of the year to the middle and end of the year.  We created this chart as a visual reminder of the progress that our students have made and will continue to make this year.

As a class we noticed that many students who were reading below grade level at the beginning of the year are now reading at grade level.  We were very encouraged by those students who worked hard to make that growth happen.                                                                                  

 

 

 

Another way that we share data with students is through sharing information about student performance by standard.  Our students take 4 interim assessments throughout the year that assess their performance on various grade level standards.  The data reports that we receive are very detailed and useful for our planning as teachers.  We used the data to create this student-friendly display.  The light blue bars depict how students performed on the first interim assessment.  The sticky notes are the goals that students set for themselves for the second assessment.  The dark blue bars show actual student performance on the second interim assessment.  Students reflected on this data in class and will set goals for upcoming assessments.

The Graphic Organizer that Saved my Life (and my SPED kids’ open response scores)

Open Response Graphic Organizer

Teaching students to use answer, evidence, and explanation to successfully answer an open response question has been one of my many challenges in 4th and 5th grade special ed.  I created this graphic organizer to help them sort out the pieces and successfully write a quality open response.  Using it this year has saved my life as well as my students’ scores.

5th Grade Integrated Research Project

Our 5th grade students are reading the whole class novel, Bud, Not Buddy.  My hope was that they would fall in love with the book, just as I have.  Fortunately, Christopher Lee Curtis did not let me down; our students are thrilled with the author’s words and enamored with his main character, Bud.  Because Bud, Not Buddy naturally engages children, I wanted to design a writing unit that feeds off of and fuels their excitement.  Integrating reading and writing is something I have aspired to do since I began teaching and now I have the chance!

Somewhere around my 10th read of Bud, Not Buddy I began to imagine this research project taking shape.  Christopher Lee Curtis makes countless references to historical events and happenings of the 1930’s.  I noted these references as potential research topics for students and came up with the following list:

• The Great Depression
• The Labor Movement
• Michigan in the 1930’s
• Racism in the 1930’s
• Women’s rights in the 1930’s
• Unions
• Jazz Music in the 1930’s
• The Stock Market Crash
• The New Deal

I introduced the project to students via the following documents:

General Expectations of the Project

Potential Topics

An Opportunity for Students to Reflect and Share Feedback after Day 1

Childtimes

Students responded to the question “What does the Jones family value?” in their interactive notebooks.

Childtimes

This year my colleague and I took on the challenge of using novels that have been designated as “Advanced Work” in our inclusion ELA classroom.  We are experimenting with using interactive notebooks to capture student learning throughout the reading of the novels. This is a sample page completed by a fourth grader who responded to a quote from the memoir Childtimes by Eloise Greenfield and Lessie Jones Little.