Unit of Study Overview
The Genre
Mastering the Essentials gives students and teachers the foundation they need to carry out a 21st century writing workshop that will show results over the school year. Teaching writing to young adolescents is enormously challenging because learning to write is not about one skill; it represents a “bundle,” encompassing everything from generating good ideas to editing the grammar of a final draft (Fletcher and Portalupi, 2001). Recognizing just how complex this type of instruction can be, this four week introductory unit aims to make start-up easy, fun and understandable to students, and highly manageable for teachers. But is it really necessary to take so much time to introduce the practices associated with the 21st century writing workshop? What can be gained?
Linda Ellis and Jamie Marsh, the authors of Getting Starting: The Reading–Writing Workshop, Grades 4–8, emphasize the importance of setting the stage when they state, “What happens in the beginning of the writing workshop sets the tone for the rest of the year. It’s critical to establish our expectations and organization, structure and commitment” (Heinemann, 2007, 51). Mastering the Essentials does just that. Students develop an understanding of the overall structure of the workshop and how they will take part in this environment that emphasizes responsibility (for choosing and fleshing out topics, working independently, exchanging writing with peers online), active learning (making effective use of in-class writer’s work time by writing in a sustained manner) and professionalism (producing complete pieces of writing and publishing for a real online audience). Students come to understand and develop essential skills while completing the first assignment, a written “snapshot” that briefly describes a real experience in detail. Students get their feet wet with several stimulating brainstorming approaches that ignite their imaginations, and engage in every step of the writing process while being supported by instruction that meets their individual needs as well as web-based activities increasingly relevant to their day-to-day lives. Ultimately, they produce work for sharing and celebrating.
For youngsters, this first project goes far beyond familiarizing them with the practices and guidelines that will be used all year. Students also have an initial enlightening and satisfying writing experience to jumpstart what is to follow.
Lessons at a Glance
The unit offers four weeks of instruction (organized into four steps), preceded by one week for assessing students and establishing guidelines for effective technology use. It is suitable for a wide range of middle school classrooms. Each step contains four lessons aligned with New York City and State learning standards in English Language Arts.
Step 0: Get Ready
Students prepare for participation in Writing Matters by producing a preliminary writing sample that will serve as a baseline for measuring progress over the year. Students learn procedures for using classroom technology appropriately, and enroll in the program in order to have access to the Online Classroom that offers activities that are integral to all units within the program.
Lesson 0.1: Baseline Assessment, Part I
Students write to the best of their abilities without any instruction. They each produce a writing sample that demonstrates their performance at the beginning of the year. This sample will serve as a reference for what to teach, as well as help to monitor how students have progressed throughout the year. Teachers use an Assessment Checklist for class observation during the baseline exercise.
Lesson 0.2: Baseline Assessment, Part II
Students revise and edit the writing sample they produced on the previous day. Students work as best they can to improve their pieces without any teacher or peer assistance.
Lesson 0.3: Technology Procedures
Students learn procedures for using technology in the classroom, including laptop distribution, laptop etiquette and file saving procedures. Students practice creating, naming and saving a word processing document in the correct folder on the computer.
Lesson 0.4: Welcome to the Online Classroom
After creating Writing Matters accounts and enrolling in their Online Classroom, students explore the online activities and resources they will use in the Mastering the Essentials unit. By becoming familiar with the resources and how to access them, students will find it easier to participate in the many literacy activities contained within the complete program.
(Checkpoint)
Step 1: Be a Writer
Student writers are introduced to strategies, tools and rules that will make their participation in writing workshop with technology successful. Students learn to make good use of their writers’ notebooks for independently generating and developing ideas from their idea banks. Students also get to know one another as writers through the Online Classroom as well as face-to-face peer interviews.
Lesson 1.1: Build Your Writing Muscles
Students are introduced to the writing workshop approach they will take to become good writers this year. Given a set of interesting images as prompts, students begin brainstorming topics about which to potentially write now and later. They record their ideas in the idea bank in their notebooks.
Lesson 1.2: Collect More Writing Ideas
Students generate more writing ideas using another brainstorming strategy, The Five Door Strategy. They think of topics organized into the following categories or “doors”: observation, world, wonder, heart and memory. Students are guided through each door as they write.
Lesson 1.3: Create a Writer’s Profile
Students conduct peer interviews to get to know one another better as people and writers. After gathering information from one classmate, students prepare to post their own profiles online for the rest of their classmates to read. Students will expand their profiles later in the unit.
Lesson 1.4: Share Your Writer’s Profile
Students post information from their writers’ interviews in the Online Classroom. They then read each other’s profiles and comment on them. In addition to familiarizing students with one another as writers, this lesson gives students a start in using the powerful communication capabilities of the Online Classroom which promotes ongoing feedback and high levels of motivation. (Checkpoint)
Step 2: Time to Write
Having been introduced to the basic structure and expectations of the daily workshop, student writers are ready to dig in to find ideas that make for interesting “snapshsots,” real experiences that can be described briefly but in detail. After exploring their memories, students select one to develop into a written draft that they will refine and ultimately share with an online audience.
Lesson 2.1: Locate Your Memories
Students get one step closer to identifying a memory that will serve as the basis for the writing assignment in the introductory unit. In order to do so, they draw maps of familiar places, charting the locations of vivid memories. After adding the memories to their writers’ notebooks, students write several paragraphs about one selected memory.
Lesson 2.2: Analyze an Author’s Memory
After listening to a read aloud of a snapshot in a mentor text, the class analyzes the example and develops a list of snapshot characteristics. Students then work independently to select topics for their snapshots, using these characteristics as a guide. Students post their topics in the Online Classroom. (Checkpoint)
Lesson 2.3: Write Your Snapshot
Students complete a teacher-led visualization activity to help them recall details related to their selected memories. Armed with rich details, students begin writing the first drafts of their snapshots, and upload their work to the Online Classroom for easy access throughout the remainder of the unit.
Lesson 2.4: Develop Your Snapshot
Students review the Snapshot Rubric to further understand the requirements of the snapshot assignment before working independently to complete their first drafts. Students are introduced to writers’ conferences and given a clear description of their purpose and structure. (Checkpoint)
Lesson 2.5: Type Your Snapshot (Supplementary)
This supplemental lesson is tailored for classrooms in which students are inexperienced in using word processing software. Students learn about good file saving practices in preparation for typing their first drafts. Students learn to upload their typed documents to the Online Classroom.
Step 3: Revise
Students learn the purpose of revision as well as basic craft strategies to improve the clarity of their writing and engage readers. Rubrics and technological strategies that advance the revision process are introduced as well. Students also learn how to take advantage of peer review as a way to help improve their writing.
Lesson 3.1: Revise for Clarity of Meaning
Students make their first set of revisions, improving the structure of their snapshots to emphasize the most important parts. To accomplish this objective, they create timelines and use them to identify those parts, and elaborate by adding more action.
Lesson 3.2: Revise with Descriptive Language
Students take the next steps toward bringing greater clarity and reader engagement to their snapshots by replacing generic or overused words with words and phrases that are more specific, unique and evocative.
Lesson 3.3: Use the Rubric to Revise Your Work
Students use a rubric to assess the quality of various elements of the writing they have produced to date: the topic itself, the organization of the piece, the use of craft strategies and grammar and mechanics. They then revise as required. To scaffold this process, they are introduced to an animated Think Aloud that shows how a student takes advantage of a rubric to improve his or her written work.
Lesson 3.4: Get Peer Feedback through Peer Review
After learning the importance of sharing feedback and giving specific comments, students confer with classmates to improve their snapshots. As reviewers, they respond to one another’s work and then, as writers, they use the feedback they receive to make appropriate revisions. (Checkpoint)
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Lesson 3.5: Use Online Reference Tools (Supplementary)
Students learn to find synonyms and look up definitions using Microsoft Word’s thesaurus and dictionary tools. They use these tools to replace overused words in their writing with more descriptive alternatives.
Step 4: Edit & Publish
Students learn the importance of editing, and then use the checklist provided to take this final step before publishing for a real audience. Once the work is posted in the class ezine, students celebrate their accomplishments by reading and commenting on one another’s stories online.
Lesson 4.1: Edit Your Work
Students edit their writing for grammar and punctuation using the Editing Checklist (Handout 4.1a). They pay particular attention to including capital letters at the beginning of sentences and punctuation at the end. Students work on computers to correct their typed drafts. (Checkpoint)
Lesson 4.2: Title and Publish
Students develop titles for their snapshots. Then they upload their first completed pieces of writing to the class ezine, where they can be shared with their classmates and other members of the learning community.
Lesson 4.3: Reflect on Your Work and the Unit
Students reflect on what they learned in this first unit as well as goals for future writing. They also update their profiles (from Step 1) in the online classroom to include additional information about themselves as writers.
Lesson 4.4: Respond and Celebrate
Students read each other’s snapshots and comment on them using guidelines established in class. The class celebrates its hard work and prepares to move forward to the rest of the Writing Matters genre studies over the rest of the year.
References
Anderson, Carl. How’s it Going? Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000.
Angelillo, Janet. Making Revision Matter. New York: Scholastic, 2005.
Atwell, Nancie. In the Middle: New Understanding About Writing, Reading, and Learning. Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1998.
Buckner, Aimee. Notebook Know-How. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers, 2005.
Calkins, Lucy. The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1994.
Ellis, Linda and Marsh, Jamie. Getting Started: The Reading- Writing Workshop, Grades 4–8. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2007.
Fletcher, Ralph and Portalupi, Joan. Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001.
Heard, Georgia. The Revision Toolbox. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2002.
Lattimer, Heather. Thinking Through Genre. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers, 2003.
Tompkins, Gail E. Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Fifth Edition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2008.
Standards
The lessons in this project support the New York State Learning Standards for writing.
ELA 1.1c:
Students use the process of pre-writing, drafting, revising and proofreading (the "writing process") to produce well-constructed informational texts.
ELA 2.2:
Speaking and writing for literary expression involves producing imaginative texts that use language and text structures that are inventive and often multilayered.
Students
- explain the meaning of literary works with some attention to meanings beyond the literal level
- write stories, poems, literary essays and plays that observe the conventions of the genre and contain interesting and effective language and voice
- use Standard English effectively.
This is evident, for example, when students
- write stories or poems for their peers or younger children.
ELA 3.1:
Students evaluate their own and other’s work based on a variety of criteria (logic, clarity, comprehensiveness, conciseness, originality, conventionality), and recognize the varying effectiveness of different approaches. They analyze, interpret and evaluate information, ideas, organization and language from academic and nonacademic texts, such as textbooks, public documents, book and movie reviews and editorials.
ELA 4.1:
Students express ideas and concerns clearly and respectfully in conversations and group discussions.
ELA 4.3:
Students share the process of writing with peers and adults.
ELA 4.4:
Students use the conventions of electronic mail.
