Writing Ladder - Updated

For information report writing, I used a writing ladder which worked wonderfully!

For narrative writing, I have updated my writing ladder and it looks like this:

This time, I've made it look like a ladder and the students have to "climb" up the ladder as they progress through writing their narrative. 

Each students' name is placed on a little laminated card that they move up the ladder as they finish that part of their narrative writing. 

Our ladder steps from the beginning to the end are:

Plan, Develop the Characters, Set the Scene, Orientation, Complication, Resolution, Self Editing and Revising, Publishing, Group Editing

Narrative Rubric

As you may remember (and if you don't, check out this post: Writing Unit Sequence, my writing sequence to begin a new writing genre always includes a rubric.

Here is the rubric jointly created by our class.

The students chose Structure, Creativity, Writing Process, Language Features, and Grammar and Spelling as the categories for a narrative rubric. 

Then working in small groups, they filled in what a 5*, 4*, and 3* and lower narrative would look like for each category. 

Once again, excellent collaboration between students. 

The creation of rubrics by the students is a part of the e5 Instructional Model, as it relates to the engage section of the model: "The teacher presents a purpose for learning, determining challenging learning goals, and making assessment and performance requirements clear."

Narrative Writing Goals

This is one the best parts of starting a new writing genre...

student self-evaluation and goal setting for their own writing

The idea behind this lesson is that students (especially in grade 6) are given greater ownership and accountability over their own work. By setting their own writing goals, they have achievable and visible goals set for their own writing.

To set our writing goals, students were given their pre-tests back and they had to use the rubric that we created as a class to mark their work. From that, they needed to choose the three areas that they felt they needed to improve upon from the rubric. These areas then were turned into writing goals. As a class, we shared our individual writing goals and  create a class list of the top goals.

The top goals selected by the students for narrative writing were:

1. Have a detailed plan

2. Include a title, orientation, complication, and resolution (and sometimes a cliffhanger)

3. Write in full paragraphs

4. Have lots of juicy language (descriptive and figurative)

5. Be CREATIVE (Is my story exciting to read?)

6. Use a range of punctuation correctly

They are along the left side of the poster. Then, when we work on our group editing session, students add their names (on sticky notes) to the box corresponding to the goal they achieved. They can then go back and revise to ensure they have achieved all these goals in their writing. Students love seeing their name beside each goal and really worked hard because of this.

This strategy relates to the e5 Instructional Model components of engage and evaluate.

- Engage: Teachers provide support for students to create and achieve their learning goals. 

- Evaluate: Students are able to evaluate their progress and achievements. (and in a visual format)

Writing Unit Sequence

You may have noticed a bit of a pattern that I use when teaching a writing unit. I often start the units the same way, as I believe that these core lessons are utterly important in any writing genre. I thought I would give you a quick run-down on the sequence of lessons I use to start a writing unit. These are usually all taught within the first two weeks of introducing the new writing genre. 

So here we go...

Lesson 1: Writing pre-test for the genre

Lesson 2: Discovery Chart to identify features and structure of the genre

Lesson 3: Deconstruction of a sample text 

Lesson 4: Joint creation (teacher and students) of a rubric 

Lesson 5: Student evaluation of their pre-test with the rubric created by the class

Lesson 6: Student creation of own writing goals for the genre based on their self-evaluation with the rubric (this leads to the creation of a writing goals poster)

And after this is done, we begin to work more in detail on specific genre of writing. Hope this spawns some wonderful ideas for writing in your classroom!

Group Editing

This is an absolutely amazing idea that was shared with me by my colleague Ryan, who is also coincidentally an amazing teacher. It can be used for any writing genre and has been used in the classrooms for grade 3 to grade 6 students. It can definitely also be used for high school students.

As you move through the writing process for a genre, use this activity for the editing and revising  stage of the writing process. 

Students are placed in mixed ability groups of approximately 4-5 students. They work together to edit each other's writing piece. The person whose work is being edited puts their work on the interactive white board and also have a copy printed for themselves. They get to sit in the "teacher chair" with a clipboard, their printed copy and a red pen for corrections. 

One of the other students is the "computer jockey" and is in charge of the whiteboard marker. The other two or three students are editors. They all sit around in a semi circle facing the interactive whiteboard. The "computer jockey" begins to read the writing piece out loud and editors can chime in whenever they think there is a correction that needs to be made. As a group, they decide how to change the error or how to revise the sentence to make it sound better. The group member whose work is being edited, then make changes on their hard copy.

The students loved this activity as they got to take greater ownership of their work and were given more responsibility and control over their learning. Some constraints may be a lack of interactive whiteboards to use. I was lucky that I have one in my room and was able to borrow a TV for another classroom to connect to. This way I could have two groups editing at the same time. While this occurred, other students were either finishing drafting, or publishing once their work was group edited. 

After the group edited the work, the group decided as a whole if the student whose work was edited achieved our writing goals. They then placed a sticky note beside the goal achieved. Most students achieved the majority of the goals and then simply had to go back to their edited draft and add in either "juice language" (descriptive language) or more technical language (so only simple revision).

I absolutely loved doing these writing sessions and the excitement of the students made it even more worth while. 

This activity is easily linked to the e5 model of instruction as students are able to evaluate their work against learning goals and can visually see their improvement and also areas for future improvement. 

This is also a very positive activity for EAL (English as an Additional Language) students in a mainstream class as they are able to receive assistance from native English speakers in a non-intimidating setting and environment since all students are editing each others work.

Writing Ladder

Another strategy for giving students greater accountability and ownership over their work!

As my students were working on writing their information reports, I found that many students were struggling to move on in their writing. Students spent more than usual on certain paragraphs and I couldn't understand why. Now, not that this tool explains it, but it was an excellent way of helping students finish their work. 

We started with every student having a little laminated name tag. I created a writing ladder that had a new coloured paper for each part of the information report. All students put their name tag on the top of the ladder (the classification). When they finished writing this part and it was checked by the teacher, they moved their name down to the next part of the ladder/their information report. 

This strategy relates to the e5 Instructional Model components of engage and evaluate.  

- Engage: Teachers provide support for students to create and achieve their learning goals. 

- Evaluate: Students are able to evaluate their progress and achievements. 

Students absolutely loved this writing ladder and could not wait to see their name move to the next part. It worked extremely well as I would tell students the expectation was that their name moved to the next part during a writing session. Instead of just having the expectation verbally stated to the students, the visual of seeing their name moving and them making progress helped students to write wonderful reports!

Writing Goals

For this writing unit on information reports, I used some new techniques that I felt really worked well to help students with their writing and to track their own progress. Again this is all part of the idea of giving students greater ownership and accountability over their work. 

We usually have students set writing goals for each new genre. This time, instead of students just creating writing goals and tucking them away in their notebooks, we created a class writing goals poster. 

To set our writing goals, students were given their pre-tests back and they had to use the rubric that we created as a class to mark their work. From that, they needed to choose the three areas that they felt they needed to improve upon from the rubric. 

These areas then were turned into writing goals. As a class, we shared our individual writing goals and  create a class list of the top goals.

 The photo is a little hard to see because it is laminated, but the goals they selected were:

1. Have a detailed plan

2. Include a title, classification, description and conclusion

3. Write in full paragraphs

4. Write in third person

5. Use descriptive language

6. Use technical language

They are along the left side of the poster. Then, when we worked on our group editing session, students added their names (on pink stick notes) to the box corresponding to the goal they achieved. As you can see, many students decided that they still need to work on adding descriptive language to their information report. They can then go back and revise to ensure they have achieved all these goals in their writing. Students love seeing their name beside each goal and really worked hard because of this.