First of three days for MRLC. Establishing a classroom where writing is integral and accessible for all students. Beginning to build criteria with students. Writing with different purposes in mind. Revisiting writing process. Several strategies shared.

1. Writing across the
Curriculum, Gr 8-12
MRLC in Portage
Oct 8, Jan 22, Apr 28
Faye Brownlie
Slideshare.net/fayebrownlie.writing8-12.oct

2. Learning Intentions
• I have a better idea of how to develop my students as writers.
• I can create criteria with my students of ‘what counts’ in writing.
• I can better include writing as an integral piece of my curriculum,
across disciplines.
• I understand that the purpose of writing is communication and that
writing is an expression of thought.

3. The Story behind the Pictures
• Look closely at the pictures, silently, thinking about:
• What do you think is happening?
• What happened before?
• What might happen next?
• How are they connected?
• In partners, share your thinking.
• Did your thinking grow when you heard from your partner?
• What do you think is the story behind these pictures?
• Quick write: 2/3 minutes. Begin the story.
• Choose a word or a phrase that you particularly like from your quick write. If you can’t decide,
read your first 3 words
• Whip around, listening to each.
• What do you notice about these words and phrases? (This is the first step in building criteria.)
• Add on background information about the picture sequence.
• With this new information, add on to your writing or begin again – 5 minutes. Feel free to use
anything you heard that sparked your thinking!

10. The pedagogy…
• What are your key beliefs in teaching writing?
• What counts?
• Are these evident in your practice?
• Why? Why not?

11. Beliefs about Writing
• Writing is thinking
• Write daily
• Precede writing with talk, reflection, time
• Focus on meaning and communication
• Model
• Explicitly teach writing and provide time for practice and feedback
• Feedback and co-developed criteria support the development of writing
• Writing is cross-curricular
• Set a purpose for writing
• All learners are writers

12. Stages of the Writing Process
• Pre-writing
• Co-creating criteria
• Establishing purpose and audience
• Drafting
• Oral feedback while writing, connected to criteria
• Editing
• Daily: one change
• Not necessarily needing a rewrite
• Proofreading
• Publishing and presenting

13. Writing Purposes
• To activate and/or build background knowledge, build curiosity,
motivate
• To process new information
• To show what you know

14. Feedback
• The purpose of feedback is to improve future performance.
• …most of the time the focus of feedback should be on changing the
student rather than changing the work…
• Dylan Wiliam, April 2016

15. Feedback
• What’s working?
• What’s not?
• What’s next?
**Keep the agency with the learner as much as possible.

16. Feedback
• Where am I going?
• Feed up (give the targets in advance)
• How am I going?
• Feed back (reference the targets)
• Where to next?
• Feed forward (develop self-regulation, clarity and understanding about what
they know and don’t know)
• Hattiei & Timperley, 2007

17. When students write, they generate
deeper thinking in any content area.
Gallagher, EL, Feb 2017
Improvement in writing is grounded in
practice, in getting words on the page –
lots of them. There are no shortcuts.
…a “four big essays approach” stifles
young writers. Worse, it ensures they
will never become excellent writers.”
Gallagher & Kittle, EL, April 2018
Focus on ideas, not on transcription –
punctuation, capitalization, spacing,
spelling, handwriting, high-frequency
words…they are mastered, long before
transcription skills”
Auguste, EL, April 2018
…if you want to revolutionize your
reading instruction, invite writing back
into the fold. Give your students time to
write during class, and give them
feedback that responds to their craft and
their composition.
Bambrick-Santoyo & Chiger, EL, Feb 17

18. Choice Beginnings, an activating strategy
• Collect 12-15 words or phrases from a text
• Read these words to the students 3 or 4 times
• Ask the students to NOT record the words, but to listen to them, then
write, draw or question the text behind these words and phrases
• Encourage drawing to link with the vocabulary, then ask for a quick
write if most are drawing…or you need them all to write
• Ask students to listen to them all once before they begin to write,
draw or question
• Share student responses
• Introduce the text and begin reading

19. Quadrants of a Thought, an acquiring strategy
• Ask students which 2 quadrants they are most likely to fill in. Remind
them that thinkers change their minds when their predicted
strategies are not working.
• While reading aloud, students fill in 2 of the 4 quadrants
• Collect what students have been filling in and make a class quadrant
• Continue reading and ask students to continue to fill in their
quadrants

20. Image Language/words
Questions Emotions

21. Editing
• Link editing to what was taught in a recent mini-lesson. For example,
if you have been examining powerful sentences in published texts,
focus on creating powerful sentences in writing.
• Choose an editing focus, rather than try to edit for everything. This is
especially important with students who are learning English as an
additional language and for young students.
• Authors retain the right to hear editing advice and yet not use it.

22. • Editors have specific roles that need to be taught. The main roles are
to be an encourager and a really good listener. The editor suggests
alternatives, only after really thoughtful listening.
• Editors have responsibilities that need to be taught. These include
making smart and caring responses to an author's request for help
without going overboard or removing ownership.

23. • Teach the PQS strategy to all. P - positive comment, Q - question, S -
suggestion. This requires lots of teacher and whole group modeling
before students meet in small editing groups. If and when they do, it
is often helpful for only the author to have a pencil.
• Include the teacher or one student as a recorder of the feedback.
This can be reviewed with the group, then handed to the writer to
consider when editing.

24. Magnet Strategy
• Read a chunk of text – a paragraph, a short page, an overview
• Choose 1 word that best holds the essence of the text.
• Write this word in the centre of a card or post-it note.
• Reread the text and find words and phrases that support this word.
• Write these around the key word.
• Write ONE sentence that summarizes the text, using the key word and
surrounding words (some of these may be omitted)
• Model model model, before practice with partners, then alone.