WEBVTT 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:06.720 Welcome to Teaching Writing Strategies. 00:00:06.720 --> 00:00:09.769 I'm Kim El-Amin. 00:00:09.769 --> 00:00:13.750 I teach first grade at Eagle View Elementary in Fairfax, Virginia. 00:00:13.750 --> 00:00:15.180 I'm Ginnie Stawicki. 00:00:15.180 --> 00:00:19.769 I teach fourth grade at Eagle View Elementary in Fairfax, Virginia. 00:00:19.769 --> 00:00:24.499 El-Amin: When teaching brainstorming to first graders, the first thing we teach them is 00:00:24.499 --> 00:00:26.679 oral retelling of the story. 00:00:26.679 --> 00:00:30.380 They can retell stories that have happened to them out loud. 00:00:30.380 --> 00:00:34.180 Our end goal is for them to be able to brainstorm independently. 00:00:34.180 --> 00:00:40.330 That happens through modeling where we as the teacher, we model how to do this ourselves 00:00:40.330 --> 00:00:42.690 as an independent writer. 00:00:42.690 --> 00:00:46.790 Once the children feel comfortable with the idea of brainstorming and what that means, 00:00:46.790 --> 00:00:48.840 we create an anchor chart. 00:00:48.840 --> 00:00:54.030 El-Amin: An anchor chart is a way that children can visualize the strategies that we teach 00:00:54.030 --> 00:00:54.650 in writing. 00:00:54.650 --> 00:00:58.870 It's like a snapshot of what we expect the children to be able to do. 00:00:58.870 --> 00:01:04.530 It's something that stays in the classroom for the school year so that children at different 00:01:04.530 --> 00:01:10.670 levels can come to it and use it when they are ready and also something that we can use 00:01:10.670 --> 00:01:15.250 to remind ourselves of some particular part of writing that we may forget from time to 00:01:15.250 --> 00:01:17.150 time. 00:01:17.150 --> 00:01:22.170 Once that anchor chart has been created, we reread it and revisit it and model some more, 00:01:22.170 --> 00:01:25.850 and then finally the children are able to do this independently. 00:01:25.850 --> 00:01:30.240 When they're able to brainstorm independently, that's where children are often able to 00:01:30.240 --> 00:01:34.770 use things like graphic organizers or their own way of getting ideas down before they 00:01:34.770 --> 00:01:36.180 write a story. 00:01:36.180 --> 00:01:42.920 Stawicki: In addition, too, all the teachers at Eagle View, starting with an example—modeling—and 00:01:42.920 --> 00:01:48.080 then expecting the students to actually try the strategies, the anchor charts in every 00:01:48.080 --> 00:01:53.880 classroom help the students remember from day to day what the strategies are and how 00:01:53.880 --> 00:01:55.369 to use them. 00:01:55.369 --> 00:02:01.220 Stawicki: We teach the whole process, starting with drafting, and give them lots of strategies 00:02:01.220 --> 00:02:07.030 for how to pick their ideas, which ideas are the strongest, and take that into drafting 00:02:07.030 --> 00:02:09.780 their actual writing. 00:02:09.780 --> 00:02:14.720 In my class we have an anchor chart of the writing process, and it is not linear; it's 00:02:14.720 --> 00:02:15.730 in a circle. 00:02:15.730 --> 00:02:20.870 And I talk to the students about how at any time they can cross the circle and go back; 00:02:20.870 --> 00:02:25.690 so they might be drafting, but in the process go back and revise and then continue on with 00:02:25.690 --> 00:02:26.240 drafting. 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:33.240 And so it's a very fluid process; at any time one or many of students may go back to 00:02:33.750 --> 00:02:39.060 revising or back to drafting, even if they've gotten close to publishing, just to make sure 00:02:39.060 --> 00:02:44.380 that their writing is exactly the way they want it in powerful words. 00:02:44.380 --> 00:02:50.510 Stawicki: In fourth grade we teach the children a few planning strategies. 00:02:50.510 --> 00:02:56.650 We teach the children how to use a box-and-bullet strategy, where they have a main topic as 00:02:56.650 --> 00:02:59.739 their title, and then they have some subtopics. 00:02:59.739 --> 00:03:03.980 And this is starting to get the children into a five- paragraph essay format, where they 00:03:03.980 --> 00:03:08.140 have their first support and then the details underneath—that would be the bullets—and 00:03:08.140 --> 00:03:12.440 then another box would be their support two, and the bullets would be the details that 00:03:12.440 --> 00:03:14.540 support that. 00:03:14.540 --> 00:03:20.410 If the strategy presented in class does not make sense or work for a student, then I tend 00:03:20.410 --> 00:03:26.050 to pull them in a small group with other students who are either confused or are not working 00:03:26.050 --> 00:03:27.890 well with the strategy. 00:03:27.890 --> 00:03:34.890 And I either re-explain it and try it again and maybe they'll get it in a small group, 00:03:35.260 --> 00:03:37.810 or I might try a different example. 00:03:37.810 --> 00:03:42.180 For example, if boxes and bullets doesn't work for one of my students, I can try a four-square 00:03:42.180 --> 00:03:47.650 or another graphic organizer that might make more sense to that particular child but not 00:03:47.650 --> 00:03:50.110 necessarily the rest of the classroom. 00:03:50.110 --> 00:03:56.300 El-Amin: The power of revising for first graders lies in rereading. 00:03:56.300 --> 00:04:01.730 Children begin to see the power of revising when they start writing their own stories 00:04:01.730 --> 00:04:05.650 and they come to a part where they are reading it to the teacher, which is a large part of 00:04:05.650 --> 00:04:09.970 first-grade writing, and they realize it does not make sense. 00:04:09.970 --> 00:04:14.940 We ask the children to help us solve the problems that occur as we reread the story and the 00:04:14.940 --> 00:04:19.168 solution is to reread it and fix the parts that don't make sense. 00:04:19.168 --> 00:04:24.820 El-Amin: In my class we write with pen or pencil, but they are allowed to use crayons 00:04:24.820 --> 00:04:26.490 to edit. 00:04:26.490 --> 00:04:30.470 We use three colors with our first graders, the same colors that are in a traffic light; 00:04:30.470 --> 00:04:33.620 we use red and yellow and green. 00:04:33.620 --> 00:04:39.190 We introduced the red color; red is the universal sign for stop, so this is a great way for 00:04:39.190 --> 00:04:44.220 children to go back and identify places where their punctuation may be missing, or some 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:48.320 of our advanced first graders are able to notice that "Hey, I think I would like to 00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:50.790 use an exclamation point here." 00:04:50.790 --> 00:04:55.820 Then they're able to come to the understanding that the beginning of each sentence needs 00:04:55.820 --> 00:04:57.169 a capital letter. 00:04:57.169 --> 00:05:01.000 We use the green color crayon for this. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:05.660 In order to get them to understand the concept that lowercase letters are what they need 00:05:05.660 --> 00:05:10.780 to be using most of the time, we let them go back and edit for that using the yellow 00:05:10.780 --> 00:05:12.020 crayon. 00:05:12.020 --> 00:05:17.000 Yellow is seen as the middle of the traffic light, and we use it to represent the middle 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:17.910 of words. 00:05:17.910 --> 00:05:22.880 When there are capital letters and either it's in the middle of a sentence or the 00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:29.509 middle of a word, they can circle it with yellow and make the correction. 00:05:29.509 --> 00:05:34.389 They very much enjoy the independence piece of writing their own piece of writing while 00:05:34.389 --> 00:05:40.620 still working within the parameters of learning how to write and follow the writing process. 00:05:40.620 --> 00:05:45.490 To learn more about Teaching Writing Strategies, please explore the additional resources on 00:05:45.490 --> 00:05:47.120 the Doing What Works website.