Writing Activities
Field Trips
- Activities before the field trip
- Field trip check list
- Writing ideas after the field trip
Evaluation Tools
Holistic Scoring of Student's writings
Observation Check Skills Checklist
1. To create a safe, predictable, trusting, joyfully literate community
2. To increase students' critical thinking skills at each step of the writing process
*Prewriting -- collecting, choosing, and organizing material, brainstorming, listing,
thinking, clustering, creating interest inventories|
*Drafting -- producing a first step, a first draft
*Revising -- rethinking, improving the rough draft|
*Editing -- correcting mechanics
*Publishing -- sharing the work with an audience
3. To write for a variety of audiences and with a variety of purposes
4. To have students write often
5. To provide an immediate response to students' writing (not necessarily through traditional grading)
6. To teach students skills in fluency, completeness, clarity, and precision in written and spoken language
7. To provide students with time to read large amounts of published writing
8. To have students write at least a small amount regularly in all classes
9. To have teachers of writing write themselves
10. To recognize that each student is an author and has ownership of his/her work
Practices supported by research
1. "Test- study- test" method of instruction is superior to "study- test" methodology
2. Self correcting is best method of learning
*1st weeks check to see if they can handle pre- post tests
3. Independent word lists
4. Focus on highly used writing vocabulary
5. Spelling words must be words that students already know and understand
6. Present words in list form rather than paragraph form
7. Look at good spellers
*understands letter/sound regularity in spelling
*like between spelling and vocabulary instruction
*understanding of origin of words
*have a visual dictionary
8. Students are better spellers than teacher and public assume.
2nd graders average about 87% of the words spelled correctly
3rd 90%
5th 94%
7th 95%
High School 97%
College 98%
9. One of the best practices for spelling is the teaching of proofreading
10. Use techniques of not only visual, but auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic senses
11. When students were asked to learn a few words each day and tested on those words days later, larger number of words were retained.
12. Word lists should conain words frequently used by pupils
13. Steps to an Effective Method for Studing Words
1) Look at the word and say the word|
2) Close the eyes and visualize the word
3) Cover the word and write it
4) Check to see if the word is spelled correctlyThis makes up all of the words children typically find in writing:
Number of words Frequency of use
8 10%
100 50%|
1000 89%
3000 97%|
4000 99%1985 study defines formal and informal instruction of spelling
Formal spelling should not start until 2nd semester of 2nd grade. Reading words comes before spelling them.
Initial words are simple words like sight words
Informal spelling is the examining of words
Words looked at linguistically and through the inquire process and methods to develope the analyzing of words.