How can I support students to write and collaborate effectively when responding to writing prompts?11/5/2019 A large portion of writing that students need to learn is responding to writing prompts. For the entirety of a students academic life, students will be required to write to prompts accordingly, in all genres and formats. During the primary years of school, students seem to be taught the foundation of writing. They learn sentence structure, how to write a paragraph, and write according to a specific genre: informational, narrative, and opinion. It seems as though learning the foundation of genre writing has been pushed to the side after the primary school years and having students learn how to write to prompts has become more important in today’s educational system. In California starting in third grade, students are required to take a state test where their ability to write to a prompt will be tested for the rest of their academic lives. Janet Angelillo wrote a book called Writing to the Prompt When Students Don't Have a Choice. In this book she explores the importance of continuing to build the foundation of writing by using writing workshops. "In the workshops is where they learn the foundation of writing. They learn how to manipulate their own writing and how to write appropriately for the genre of writing that they choose" (Angelillo, 2005). Not only is writing to prompts important for school, it is also important for life and the workforce. People need to be able to respond to other people, we do this through social media, emails, letters, and advertisement. Writing is essential to communication. Now, today's educational system gets stuck teaching to writing prompts exclusively rather than reinforcing and building off of the fundamental reading and writing skills needed to be successful when responding to those prompts. Dombey says, "But only through the ability to write as well as read can children become full members of a literate society, able to contribute their experiences and ideas to those remote from them in time and place. And only through writing can they learn to work out those ideas and reflect on those experiences in ways that carry their thinking forward" (Dombey, 2013). In other words, without continuing the development of the necessary skills writing to a prompt will yield little growth for students. Furthermore, students need explicit instruction on how to respond to prompts and other pieces of writing. They also need a complete understanding of the different genres and what is expected to meet the writing requirements for those specific genres. Teacher's also need to include in their writing instruction methods of dissecting writing prompts in order to further the student's comprehension and their ability to transfer their skills from one prompt to the next.
I will be focusing on writing instruction by giving 20 -30 minutes of direct instruction of writing daily. These lessons will be structured to model how to dissect writing prompts and respond to the prompts accurately. These lessons will model reflection and editing within the writing process. Lessons will also include grammar instruction within the writing lessons. Students will be given multiple chances to collaborate on their writing throughout a four week period. At the end of every four weeks, students will have the chance to publish one piece of writing that they were able to collaborate on with a peer and edit as necessary. All research will be conducted in my general education classroom with 26 third grade students. The lessons are embedded into the regular school day during their language arts period. Progress will be assessed in their writing according to the success criteria for their genre of writing. This success criteria has been created by using third grade standards and requirements for the specific genre that the writing prompt is asking the students to write: informational, opinion, and narrative writing. Students will be given a score between 1-3, 1 - surface level, 2 - deep level, and 3 - transfer level. If a student is at the transfer level, that means they are able to take their skills from one prompt and respond to another prompt adequately. I will be collecting writing journals, online writing tests, and writing organizers throughout the study to track student progress.
1 Comment
Peter Abboud
11/27/2019 07:36:54 am
You have a lot of great citations in this blog. Be sure to not lose track fo them for your paper!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |