Skip to content

Posts from the ‘PAWLP’ Category

Mar 9

5 Comments

Guest Post: Why Teach the 6-traits of Effective Writing?

by Dr. Jolene Borgese

We need only go to the source to find why we need to teach the traits—Vicki Spandel. Vicki, while working at the Northwest Laboratory, worked with 17 teachers at Beaverton, Oregon School District, using the research of Paul Dietrich, who created an analytical writing assessment rubric. Through their work with Vicki, they also identified six characteristics true of all good writing (ideas. organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency and conventions).  Vicki capsulizes the reasons for teaching and using the six traits:

  1. Builds students understanding of concepts like voice
  2. Provides language for thinking and talking about writing
  3. Gives students options for revising
  4. Teaches students to think – by making them evaluators
  5. Connects reading and writing through mentor texts
  6. Puts students in charge of their own writing process  (Creating Writers, 2013 page 3). 

Read more

Feb 24

4 Comments

Assessment Opportunities: Asking Authentic Questions to Inform Instruction (Guest Post)

By Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan

We are always on the lookout for assessment opportunities that can happen authentically, right in the midst of our teaching.  Asking a pre-assessment question before a whole class, small group or individual lesson is one assessment opportunity that we have found invaluable and it only takes a minute or two.  We simply begin by asking a question, have students turn and talk, and move among the partnerships to listen and take notes.  Once students have had time to talk, we tell the class a few ideas we heard and connect these ideas to the lesson we are about to teach.  Read more

Feb 17

13 Comments

From the Classroom: Finding “Moments Worth Writing About”

by Tricia Ebarvia

It’s just after 7:20 a.m. and my students are settling into their seats. Although it’s early, this class is usually lively, with students generally willing to try out whatever their English teacher has planned for them that day. This morning, I pass out cream-colored quarter sheets of paper and several tape dispensers. I go over the lesson plan to the sound of pages flipping, synchronized to the squeaky pulling and staccatoed tearing of tape. Into their notebook, students tape the following Willa Cather quotation:

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”

Today is Day 1 in a brief unit on the personal history essay. I decided to call this next essay a personal history rather than the more familiar term memoir for a few reasons. One, the term memoir feels a little intimidating to me; the term has always implied a confessional quality to it, like a great secret is about to be shared, a great burden lifted. For better or worse, memoirs feel too big a task, too much to ask.

So instead, I like the term personal history. Read more

Jan 20

6 Comments

From the Classroom: Success Defined

By Brian Kelley

Searching photos on a phone while writing on a Chromebook.

Searching photos on a phone while writing on a Chromebook.

Change bothers most people.

We can be good teachers and still make room for change. Change does not mean we are bad teachers making bad decisions. There are many ways to teach, but consider this blog post as an invitation to grow.

Consider change as growth. Everyone can grow.

For example, I changed my approach in the classroom by adding writing and technology to my life outside of the classroom. It wasn’t a drastic change–and if writing and technology are changes you would like to make, neither needs to cause a seismic shift in your day.

Asking teachers to write is a scary proposition. Asking teachers to become more fluent with technology is a scary proposition. It sounds a little like going off of the script.  Read more

Dec 30

5 Comments

From the Classroom: Does Anyone Have Any Questions?

by Tricia Ebarvia

For years, whenever my students and I read a novel, I would pass out a study guide with a list of questions for each chapter. By giving students the study guide questions―questions I wrote―I could make sure that students wouldn’t miss anything in their reading. Too often, students would read too quickly and miss details. Requiring students to answer study guide questions was my way of getting them to slow down to notice what they were reading. To get them to see the dots that they could later connect together.

After we finished the novel, the next step would be a writing assignment. On that day, I would pass out a list of essay questions. I often included questions of varying difficulty in order to better differentiate instruction, and students could happily chose whichever essay question was most accessible (or least terrifying). In case none of the questions interested students, I always gave them the option of creating their own essay question (just so long as they reviewed it with me first).

Of course, rarely did students ever take me up on that option. After all, by creating essay questions for them, I had already sent the message that it was the teacher’s questions that mattered, not theirs. And while some students were more than happy to answer my questions―in fact, I think some of them preferred to―what I’ve come to realize that what I needed to focus on was getting students to answer their own questions about the text.  Read more

Dec 23

3 Comments

Writing Resolutions from PAWLP

What's your writing resolution-By Janice Ewing

Most PAWLPers don’t wait until New Year’s to engage in reflection and goal-setting; nevertheless, this time of year especially lends itself to those pursuits. For example, one PAWLPer said, “I firmly resolve to write something every day that is not just a compilation of events, but actual insights of life that I’ve noticed and contemplated.”

Here’s a sampling of some more of our Writing Resolutions, collected at our December Continuity and Leadership meetings: Read more

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »