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!