The following is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for another blog, which covers the topic of instituting regular formal and informal writing assignments, especially for ELA classes. As obvious as it seems to have students write early and often, sometimes writing takes a spot on the back burner with so much other content to cover. Here are a few ideas to get your writing program up and running:
As the second week of our new school year drew to a close, it was
time to begin implementing some of the classroom assignments/systems I
had envisioned over this past summer. One of these ideas was to assign
an essay of the week--which I borrowed from highly-esteemed educator,
Rafe Esquith. Esquith describes this system comprehensively in his book
Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire. The general gist is to assign an essay
to the class every Friday to be due the following Friday. Students
brainstorm ideas and may draft their writing over the weekend and then
refine throughout the week. For Esquith, the essay of the week is an
effective assignment, in part, because it drives students to take
responsibility for self-pacing throughout the course of the week. So
often teachers mandate that assignments be due the following day that
students may not pick up the long-term work habits they will need in the
upper grade levels and beyond.
In room 204, the first essay of
the week was to write a five paragraph (three body parag.) essay on how
they have used one of our school's core values to the betterment of
their own lives, or those around them. Students chose from of any of the
core values they had explored through lessons during the first two
weeks: honesty/integrity, humility, friendship, perseverance and
responsibility.
As this was the first real assignment of the
school year in Literature/Composition--and also one that could be quite
difficult for many students lacking in formal-writing experience--it was
important to usher students toward success with a highly structured
approach.
The directions (linked below) were precise, and included
a pre-structured outline that students could fill in during the
planning process.
For example, all students were instructed to
write a thesis as the second sentence of their essay that fit the
following structure:
I have found [insert core value here] is an
important value to practice while approaching many different types of
goals, like ____(example 1)____, ____(example 2)____, and ____(example
3)____.
Once students had completed their brainstorming over the
weekend, outline for homework on Monday, and first draft (written on
looseleaf) for class on Wednesday, it was time to implement a system of
peer revision. My goals were give students a position of responsibility
(editor) over another's work that would give them a sense of ownership
over (and invest them in) the essay of the week assignment while also
forcing them to review the requirements of the essay. This second motive
would remind students what they needed to be thinking about as they
returned to write the final draft of their own essays. See the
peer-editor handout linked below.
Peer editing was a highly
structured in-class activity--even though it involved student-to-student
interaction and some logistical "excitement." Students who had written
their draft but "left it at home" were not permitted to edit others'
work. Instead they were given a separate writing assignment to complete
in class that day. These students worked independently for the duration
of the period. Students who had not yet written their draft, and who had
come to class unprepared, worked on their writing in class and were
positioned at the silent detention/work table at lunch to continue
"catching up" with the rest of the class. This was effective and seemed
to be a logical consequence, rather than a vindictive one. Students who
took part in the peer-editing process completed three readings of their
peer's work. The first "pens down" reading was to get a broad sense of
the ideas and content within the essay. The second reading was done as
the student went through the editor's checklist (as previously
mentioned). It was stressed that this was the stage of "revision."
Finally, on the third reading, student editors concerned themselves with
proofreading (as opposed to revising) and were permitted to make neat
edits on their partner's work in the same style as they do on our
morning everyday edits
(http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/archives/edit.shtml). Once
students had finished grading each others' work they executed a
"peer-to-peer conference" on the floor somewhere along the perimeter of
the room. Students used the backs of Home Depot self-made whiteboards as
clipboards. This helped me see what stage various groups were at and
meant that students could whisper-talk to one another separated from
students still focused on reading and revising.
When developing a
grading rubric to assess student essays I knew I had already developed
my final vision for the assignment from the start when I created the
outline and student editor's checklist. I took criteria right off of
these documents and pasted them into a rubric that mirrored the six
traits but fit this assignment directly while assigning point values
that reflected my amplified interest in student ideas/content and
organization at this early point in the year. (See attached grading
rubric.)
On Friday, following the submission of essay 1, students
received the prompt for essay 2, which should prove to be a fun
narrative. Students had just finished reviewing the five stages of plot
structure in class on Friday so I will be stressing this type of
organization in student writing across the upcoming week. Here's the
second topic, which I generated after our class discussion on the London
riots:
Students show up to school but there are no adults. What happens next?
