Writing Across the Curriculum:

Writing Across the Curriculum: http://youtu.be/OfHh9c6wN94

Learning • Writing in the content areas. • Expository writing • Collaborative Reports • Mulitgenre Projects • Quickwrites/Quickdraws • Notetaking • Summarizing • Journal Writing • R.A.F.T.

Enduring Understanding • Writing is a tool used for thinking, learning, and communicating.

Goal as educators….. • Life long learners …....

EQ • How can writing be used in an elementary classroom to get students to think, learn, and communicate?

Expository Writing • Purpose: learn and share information • Audience: wide, often unknown audience. Such as posted in library, hallway, or displayed in the community • Forms: reports, posters, diagrams, charts, multigenre projects

Collaborative Reports Shared writing report on Hermit Crabs (4 students) • How they look • Where they live • What they eat • How they act

Multigenre Projects • Acrostics • Biographical sketches • Cartoons • Charts • Clusters (Word Web) • Cubes • Letters • Maps • Songs

Your turn: Acrostic • Science Words: Magnets, Electricity, Weather, etc. • Social Studies Words: slave, land forms, etc.

Quickwrites/Quickdraws • Informally write or draw, rambling on paper, generating ideas, making connections • Write/draw on a topic for 5 to 10 minutes • Don’t focus on mechanics • Example: students choose a word from word wall to quick/draw write about an end of unit review…or could be a cluster about word.

Notetaking • Students draw a line lengthwise down the middle paper. • As the student reads or listens, major headings or concepts are recorded in the space to the left, supporting details in the space to the right. Only one side of the paper is used. • When it comes time to study, the paper is folded down the center line so that either the main ideas or the details are visible, but not both at once.

Summarizing Cooperatively • paired summarizing • Students are expected to complete an individual retelling before they come together as pairs

Procedures First, immediately after reading, a student writes a retelling of the selection. • If students have difficulty remembering, they should refer to the text to verify or re-cue their thinking. • The students are not permitted to write any of their retelling while they are looking back at the text. • Students might want to compete with their partners to see who can write the most extensive retelling. The goal here is elaboration and you should tell students not to worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, or other mechanical considerations.

Next, students exchange papers with their partners. Partner A writes about Partner B's retelling and vice-versa. • At this stage students are not allowed to converse with one another. • If something is not clear to one of the partners, he or she must work to figure out what was intended.

Next, summaries are complete, pairs discuss the retellings. During the discussion they do each of the following: • specify what each understood as readers of the retellings. • identify what they collectively cannot come to understand in the passage of story they read to create their individual retellings. • formulate questions for their classmates and teacher.

Last • students have completed these tasks, they convene as a class to discuss the questions prepared by each pair of students and/or to share what they have written.

Journal Writing • Purpose: record personal experience, explore reactions, interpret: reading, videos, or content: record and analyze information about social studies and science • Audience: usually limited, writer or known reader • Forms: personal, dialogue, reading logs, learning logs, double-entry, simulated journals

Personal, Dialogue, Reading Logs • Personal- Events from own life or topics of special interest • Dialogue- written to be shared with teacher or classmates. These journals are a written conversation. • Reading Logs- Respond to reading, write, draw entries after reading, record key vocabulary, make charts, write quotes.

Learning Logs, Double-Entry Journals • Learning Logs- part of Social Studies, Science, or Math units. Students write “quickwrites,” draw diagrams, and take notes. • Double-Entry- divide each page into two columns, write different types of information in each column. Could be predictions one side, what happened on other side. Could be quotes one side, reactions on other side.

Simulated Journals • Students assume role of a book character or historical personality and write entries from that person’s viewpoint. Writing should include details from the reading or historical period to add authenticity.

What is a RAFT Writing Assignment? • R.A.F.T. writing prompts challenge students to assume a Role before writing, to write for an imaginary Audience, to write using a given Format, to write about a certain Topic.

RAFT writing assignments ask student to …….. • Think and write from another person's perspective. • Shape their ideas to appeal to an audience outside the classroom. • Consider perspectives as they go through the writing process, students are being asked to think at a much deeper level of Bloom's Taxonomy

Assignment • Role: a scientist • Audience: lunchroom ladies • Format: A top ten why list • Topic: germs

Directions: You will write as though you are a scientist. You are writing a list to be read by lunchroom ladies in an elementary school. You will write a top ten “why” list of why germs are dangerous. The purpose of your list will be to convince lunchroom ladies to always wear their hair nets and gloves.

R.A.F.T.S. • transform the R.A.F.T. prompt into a R.A.F.T.S. prompt. • Assign verbs: • convince, encourage, assure, or sway, • These strong verbs transform the prompt into a persuasive writing activity.

R.A.F.T.S. Assignment • Role: a scientist • Audience: lunchroom ladies • Format: A top ten why list • Topic: germs • Strong Verb: sway

Possible Writer’s Roles • Laboratory Scientist • Forensic Scientist • Environmentalist • Veterinarian • Astronaut • Biologist • Zoologist • Characters: Magnet, Electricity, Wind, Water etc.

Audience • An Enemy • Computer program designer • Space Alien • Meteorologist • President of the United States • Newscast audience • A wealthy group of people giving away money

Formats • Top ten reasons why list • A classified add • 3 minute speech • An invitation • Letter to the editor • an important e-mail • A book report • An obituary

Topics • Research techniques • Fossils • The animal kingdom • Heat and temperature • Natural disasters • Genetics • Environmental issues • Recycling • Food cycle

Writer’s Purpose (Strong Verbs) • Contrast your topic with something interesting. • Object strongly to something. • Disprove someone’s thinking. • Argue against or for something. • Persuade the audience to do something. • Complain about something.

Your turn • Create a RAFT

Links for Assessment of R.A.F.T. • http://writingfix.com/

Quick write-5 minute • How did/didn’t today’s learning connect to learning in other courses or field?

Writing Across the Curriculum: