Second Grade. Spring

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Oakland Unified School District

Writing Proficiency Project

Process Writing Assessment

(PWA)

Second Grade

Spring

Expository:

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Second Grade Fall Prompt

Expository: CLASS ANIMAL REPORT

**Overview of week*:**

Suggested time:

Day One Project Introduction: --Generate interest

--Begin KWL Chart 40 minutes

Day Two Build Background Knowledge --Continue KWL Chart

--Collaborative Investigations 60+ minutes

Day Three Pre-Writing: _{--Web graphic organizer} 30 minutes

Day Four Modeled Writing: _{--Expository paragraph} 15 minutes

Day Five Assessment Day—Write!: _{--First draft for assessment} 45 minutes

* You may distribute the time allotted to each activity differently across the days, or combining or splitting lessons as seems appropriate, taking up to four weeks to complete them all. You may also wish to pause a lesson at a natural break, and then resume the lesson after a recess.

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Summary of Activities:

With great fanfare, the teacher introduces the genre of the expository report and the subject animal of the Class Animal Report. Children’s background knowledge and oral language around the topic are developed as they are invited to share what they think they know about the subject animal. An optional read-aloud generates further interest in the subject animal and/or the genre of reports.

Next, the class identifies directions for further research by continuing work on the class KWL chart (Know-Want to Know-Learned). In partnerships or collaborative groups, students investigate the class animal and use a note-taking chart to record what they learn. This portion of the assessment may last anywhere from one day to three weeks, according to the discretion of the teacher.

Now the teacher helps the class organize its ideas and information using a web graphic organizer in preparation for writing.

The teacher also uses the modeled writing technique to demonstrate how to convert notes to sentences in a paragraph.

Finally, children are given a prompt paper of their own and invited to write everything they know about the class animal.

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CA Standards Addressed by the 2

nd

_{Grade Spring PWA}

1.0 Writing Strategies

Organization and Focus

1.1 Group related ideas and maintain a consistent focus. Penmanship

1.2 Create readable documents with legible handwriting. Research

1.3 Understand the purposes of various reference materials (e.g., dictionary, thesaurus, atlas).

1.0 Written and Oral English Language Conventions

Sentence Structure

1.2 Recognize and use the correct word order in written sentences. Grammar

1.3 Identify and correctly use various parts of speech, including nouns and verbs, in writing and speaking.

Capitalization

1.6 Capitalize all proper nouns, words at the beginning of sentences and greetings, months and days of the week, and titles and initials of people.

Spelling

1.7 Spell frequently used, irregular words correctly (e.g., was, were, says, said, who, what, why).

1.8 Spell basic short-vowel, long-vowel, r-controlled, and consonant-blend patterns correctly.

NOTE: The genre of expository writing appears formally in the CA standards as

“information reports” in the fourth grade. By the 4th grade, students are expected to create a researched multiple-paragraph expository composition with a central

question, introduction and conclusion, and topic sentences with supporting details. Expository writing is a sophisticated genre that students will need to practice for more than one year in order to gain the mastery expected by fourth grade writing assessments. Therefore, the PWA includes this highly-scaffolded expository writing project in the 2nd_{grade in order to introduce students to the genre at an earlier stage} in their writing careers. In the case of 2nd_{graders, the standard that applies to the} expository genre is Writing Strategy 1.1: “Group related ideas and maintain a consistent focus.”

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Pre-Teaching: SUGGESTED MINI-LESSONS

If your writing program has not already included these mini-lessons so far this school year, you may want to take some time in the weeks preceding Assessment Day to teach any of the following lessons you think would be most beneficial to your students’ success as writers.

Mini-Lessons on the Management of Writers’

Workshop

• How to use writing materials (including a Writing Folder) • Think-pair-share

• Silent writing time

Mini-Lessons on Conventions of Print

• Ending punctuation for sentences: . ? !

• Capitalization: proper nouns, titles, initials, beginning of sentences, etc. • Using quotation marks to enclose speech

• Using commas in a series • Indentation of paragraphs • Sight words

• How to use a Word Wall

• How to use spelling resources: Word Wall, dictionary • Spelling demons

• Word Study

Mini-Lessons on the Writer’s Craft

• Notetaking to record ideas in brief form

• Research: Taking notes from books

• Research: Features of text: table of contents, index, graphs, tables and captions

• Research: Important vs. Interesting

• Converting notes to sentences

• Web Organizer: Grouping related ideas

• Revision: Does my writing make sense? • Revision: Crossing out to delete text • Revision: Using carats to add text

• Editing: How to correct spelling errors on a draft

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Materials and Photocopies:

Day One: PROJECT INTRODUCTION

Collection of non-fiction books about animal subject at range of reading levels appropriate for your class

Non-fiction (reports) and fiction books and excerpts (one per student) Definition of a Non-Fiction Report on a chart (see page 10)

Pre-drawn KWL chart on large chart paper (see page 18 for example) Chart marker

Day Two: BUILD BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

Class set of copies of “What We Learned” worksheet (page 18) 5-10 highlighters

Day Three: PRE-WRITING

Web graphic organizer copied on transparency (page 21) Overhead projector and markers

Day Four: MODELED WRITING

Copies of completed web organizer transparency for each student (from Day 3) Day Five: ASSESSMENT DAY—WRITE!

Copies of completed web organizer transparency for each student (from Day 3) Class supply of 2-sided prompt paper (pages 29-32 and pages 33-36)

Pencils with no erasers Erasers

Dictionaries and other spelling reference materials Materials for sponge activities for early finishers For Scoring: 6 copies each of scoring rubric and

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Teacher Instructions: GETTING READY

1) Review all introductory material and instructions in this manual, and prepare materials for the lessons prior to beginning assessment. For all PWA lessons preceding Assessment Day, feel free to make any modifications that seem appropriate to the needs and abilities of your current class. This might mean adding, skipping or changing lessons/materials, according to your expert judgment as classroom teacher. See page 5 for some suggested mini-lessons you may wish to teach prior to beginning the assessment.

IMPORTANT: On Assessment Day, be sure to follow instructions exactly, with NO modification of materials or procedure. See page 8 for details.

2) During your regular Writers’ Workshop or Language Arts time, introduce the lessons over the course of one to four weeks.

3) After Assessment Day, collect assessments and evaluate in grade level teams, using the included rubric and forthcoming anchor papers to guide scoring.

4) SUGGESTED-Continue the writing process with the students, helping them revise, edit and publish or present their work.

NOTE: Throughout the week, you may find that your students need more or less time than indicated to complete the included activities. Please use your judgment in ending or extending lessons. You may schedule lessons in two parts, complete them over a couple of days, or overlap lessons.

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Teaching Tip: Throughout the instructions, look for teaching tips marked with this symbol.

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Say: Throughout the instructions, look for the words you will say aloud to students marked with this symbol. Except on assessment day, feel free to modify the language you use with your students to suit their vocabulary, interest and understanding.

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Teacher Instructions: ASSESSMENT DAY

1. The assessment must be completed in one sitting. You may wish to schedule the assessment before recess or lunch to accommodate students who need more time to finish the prompt (whether because they write slowly, want to complete very detailed drawings, have a lot to write, or have an IEP indicating extended time for assessments). Students who have not finished may get up, get their food, then return to their table to finish drawing and writing. Midway through the writing time, reassure students who are worried about running out of time about the plan to give them more time.

2. It is essential that you transcribe all emergent student writing for later assessment. Students who are not yet writing phonetically to create decipherable text should be asked to read their work aloud to you. Record what the student says below the text, even if it does not match. Use both the student writing and the transcription for assessment.

3. This assessment may be conducted entirely in students’ primary language. Student writing in the primary language may be assessed using the grade level rubric by a teacher literate in that language.

Teaching Tips for Assessment Day

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Have the children complete the assessment at a time when they normally write.

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If guidelines for a silent writing time have not already been established, be sure to establish them before beginning. Talk about how to get help and materials without disturbing other writers.

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Be sure children know what to do when they finish writing. It should be an independent, silent activity that is commonly available (so as not to provoke undue motivation to finish writing quickly in order to get to the second activity).

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Some students may need regular reminders about time elapsed or a time deadline in order to finish their writing. A timer may be helpful.

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You may wish to allow time for students to share their writing with each other or the class at the end of the activity or later in the day.

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Day One: PROJECT INTRODUCTION (40 minutes)

Academic language that students may need to know for this lesson: fiction, non-fiction, report, facts, topic, subject, research, investigate, ______________________ __________________________________________________________________________

Introduce Project

1) Generate interest

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Say: This week, we are going to learn how to do a special kind of writing that helps us share what we know about something. This kind of writing is called a report. Show one or two familiar books with report writing and read an excerpt or two, or remind children of non-fiction books in this genre you have already shared.

2) Define expository genre: What is a report?

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Say: A report is a piece of writing that gives true facts about one topic. People like to read reports because it’s a great way to learn about things that interest them.

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Say: In a moment, I’m going to give you and a partner two books. I want you to look at them both together for a few minutes, and decide if either one of them is a written report about something.

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Teaching Tip: ELL students may be partnered with English-speaking students for the Think-Pair-Share to provide them with language models. See page 14 for

important tips on partner share.

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Teaching Tip: Distribute books to the reading partnerships in accordance with reading and literacy levels. You may want to give obvious examples or reports to low readers and challenge advanced readers by giving two fiction books.

In partnerships, students work together to examine two books and decide whether or not either fits the definition of a “report.”

Call on 1-2 partnerships to show their examples of reports and talk about how they identified them.

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Post a chart with this definition of a non-fiction report: If students have not already figured out that all

reports are non-fiction—

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Say: Reports are a type of non-fiction writing, because the facts in them are true. It is the author’s job to research the facts of a report.

3) Introduce the topic of the class report

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Say: Report writing can be pretty complicated, so we’re going to start by working all together on one report. We are going to write a class book about an animal! See if you can guess in your head which animal our class book will be about. Read a series of clues about the animal subject and let the class guess its identity.

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Teaching Tip: Use one or more of the suggestions below to choose and introduce the teacher-selected subject of the Class Animal Report.

Introducing Assigned Writing Topics

There are times when instructional goals—such as providing adequate scaffolding for a difficult writing genre—supersede the importance of offering topic choice to young writers. Whenever writers are asked to write about assigned topics, it is critical to inspire motivation. Here are some ideas for this project:

• Write about the class pet or another class’ pet you’ve borrowed or visited. • Bring in your own pet to share and write about that animal.

• Bring in a small, temporary class pet such as a cricket or a snail to write about. • Write about an animal featured in a recent read-aloud.

• Write about an animal that you observed as a class on an outing or field trip. • Choose an animal connected to the science or seasonal curriculum (rabbits, frogs). • Slowly uncover a drawing of the subject animal, letting the children guess.

• Conduct a class survey of favorite animals. The class report can be about the most favorite, and students can go on to write subsequent reports in future weeks.

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Teaching Tip: The topic of the report does not have to be an animal. You could choose to write a class report on any topic that you are studying together as a class, for example: the life cycle of a butterfly, or plants. The report writing prompt lends itself particularly well to the science or social studies curriculum. The more

knowledgeable they are about a topic, the more successful students will feel writing about it. For example, if you have already been growing plants in your classroom, you could choose “Trees” as the topic of the class report.

A Non-Fiction Report has: • One topic

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Activate Background Knowledge

4) Oral language development

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Say: Something authors do as they’re getting ready to write a report is figure out what they already know about the topic and what they need to find out. Let’s start with what we already know.

Invite the students to share with a partner or with the class some things they know about the subject animal. If the animal is a pet, they may share things like the pet’s name, age and special attributes, or a story about how the pet came to live with its owners. If the subject animal is a species, they may share information such as: where it lives, what it eats, what eats it, special adaptations like venom or camouflage, how it raises its young, etc.

Students briefly take turns sharing knowledge with partners about the subject animal. 5) Introduce KWL Chart: What We Think We Know

Invite some students to share with the class what they think they know about the subject animal.

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Teaching Tip: During any group discussion, you can use name sticks to promote broader participation among ELL students. Simply write every students’ name on a wooden clothespin or popsicle stick and keep in a can. To choose the next speaker, pick one name from the can. Keep choosing different names until all students have had an opportunity to speak.

As the students talk, take notes in the “What We Think We Know” column of the KWL chart. At some point, call students’ attention to what you are doing, emphasizing how you are using words and phrases to represent complete ideas (notetaking).

Example—Modeling Notetaking

Student says: You write:

“Zebras stripes help protect them from predators because when they stand all together in a herd, it looks like one giant mob of zebras. Then the lions don’t know which one to attack!”

stripes as camouflage live in herds

lions eat them.

Encourage students to question each others’ facts, and put question marks next to these “facts.” If a student asserts something you know to be untrue, refrain from correcting right away. Instead, review the completed column together and when you get to a false fact—

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Say: I’ve heard something different about this. Let’s put a question mark next to this fact so we can investigate it before writing the report.

6) Continue KWL Chart: What We Want to Know

Next, complete the “What We Want to Know” column. Indicate that you want to check questions about “What We Think We Know” by drawing an arrow from those items to the second column, or putting a big checkmark next to them in the second column.

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Say: What else do you think we need to find out about our topic in order to write a complete and interesting report? What would you like to know about our topic? Record student responses in the second column of the KWL chart.

Students take turns sharing questions about the subject animal. 7) Conclusion

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Say: Tomorrow we will begin investigating our subject animal. As we do our research, we may even learn the answers to some of these questions.

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Teaching Tip: This lesson might be more successful if you complete it in two segments, separating the introduction of the project and the KWL chart by some other activities.

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Teaching Tip: If you have classroom computers, bookmark in advance a few sites that give information about the subject animal at an appropriate reading level for your class. Students may be interested in looking at these throughout the week.

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Teaching Tip: You can extend this lesson by ending with an optional read-aloud of a non-fiction book about animals, a non-fiction book about the subject animal, or a fiction book featuring the subject animal as a character. Throughout the week, you can read aloud from different books about the subject animal to enhance and deepen children’s knowledge. Also, you may want to make a collection of books at a variety of reading levels about the subject animal available to students during sustained silent reading, center/choice time, Workshop, or to check out and take home.

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Best Practices in the Teaching of Writing:

Think-Pair-Share

or Partner Work

Talking with a partner about writing ideas is a wonderful way to develop vocabulary and writing community. Think-Pair-Share is a teaching strategy in which the teacher asks the whole class to think silently about an explicit topic or question, then turn to a partner for a brief discussion before finally sharing their ideas out loud with the whole class. This strategy helps differentiate instruction in the whole-group setting by allowing teachers to pair students in ways that support their learning, and allowing students a chance to formulate their thoughts and develop vocabulary before being asked to participate in a whole-class discussion. However, children need clear expectations and lots of practice for any kind of partner work such as this to be successful. Some tips:

 Pair children who work well together.

 If you have assigned seating, try assigning students sitting next to each other on the rug and/or at tables as “writing partners” for several months at a time.

 Model and give students that chance to explicitly practice the skills of:

1) listening with kindness and attention; 2) taking turns; and 3) staying on topic.  As students become more skilled at talking and working with a partner, teach them how to ask follow-up questions and give them a chance to practice this skill.

 Give explicit instructions and a clear guiding question before directing children to begin sharing with a partner, including the signal for attention you will use when partner sharing time is up.

 When partners work well together, point out to the class specific behaviors you noticed (i.e. “The whole time that Tonya was talking, I saw Maria looking straight at her and nodding her head. Tonya, I bet you could tell she was really listening!”),  If problems occur, stop the action to correct them. Common problems you will need to address include: who goes first, active listening, staying on topic, kindness.

 Circulate actively as partners talk to listen to the content and help partners who are having trouble.

 When time and/or attention are short, limit the “share” portion of the activity to 1-2 students. Choose students whose ideas you overheard during the “pair” segment of the activity that you believe will help move thinking forward for the entire class.

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Day Two: BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

(60+ minutes)

Academic language that students may need to know for this lesson: author, chart, column, fact, true, false, question mark, text, captions, graph, table, table of contents, index, note-taking, attributes, predator, prey, habitat, camouflage, defense, etc.______________________________________________________________

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Teaching Tip: Throughout the week, you may find that your students need more or less time than indicated to complete these activities. Please use your judgment in ending or extending lessons. You may schedule lessons in several parts, complete them over a couple of days, or overlap lessons.

Investigate

4) Review KWL chart

If time has lapsed since the first part of this lesson, reread the chart to/with the class, especially the list of questions. Draw children’s attention to the empty third column of the KWL chart.

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Say: Now we are going to spend some time trying to learn just a little bit more about our topic, so that we have a lot to write about. This will also give us a chance to check our facts and answer some of our questions.

5) Model partner research

Show the class the selection of non-fiction books you have collected about the topic.

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Say: You are going to work with a partner/group to research our topic using these books. We will record what we learn on these pages.

Post a copy of the “What We Learned” (page 18) in a visible place.

Ask for a volunteer partner to help you do some research together using one of the books. Using a book you have previewed, quickly model reading several pages with your partner. Start by identifying the table of contents. Model getting information from the text, captions, graphs and tables, and pictures. One of you should be the reader and one the recorder. Be sure the recorder models drawing pictures and using a note-taking format on the “What We Learned” page.

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Teaching Tip: For classes with little experience in non-fiction research, it is highly recommended that this segment of the Assessment be extended for up to one month. A series of Investigation sessions can each begin with a different mini-lesson about getting information from non-fiction texts. Possible topics include: Important vs. Interesting, How to Take Notes, Table of Contents, Index, Graphs and Tables, Captions, etc.

6) Collaborative research

Set up the collaborative work by establishing guidelines for working together, assigning partners/groups, reviewing the use and care of materials, setting expectations for noise, and giving students a time limit and signal for attention.

Students work in collaborative partnerships or groups to complete the What We Learned charts using available books on the report topic.

Encourage students to pay some attention to the questions in the second column of the KWL chart, but don’t allow them to get hung up on finding the answer to any particular question. Instead, encourage students to do further research at home or at other times of the day to find the answers to these questions.

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Teaching Tip: Depending on how much time you plan to spend on research, you may wish to provide each student with a copy of the list of questions from What We Want to Know and encourage them to add their own questions to the bottom of the list. Alternatively, you can assign one question to each partnership/group in order and have students report the results of their investigations to the entire class.

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Teaching Tip: If possible, you may want to have some “expert readers” available to help during the Investigation part of the lesson. Be sure their reading level matches the materials. Toward the end of the work time, pass out highlighters. Invite each partnership to use the highlighter to identify the most important fact OR the most interesting fact they learned today.

Invite some students to share what they’ve learned using Popcorn-style sharing, as follows: very quickly, call on students in sequence. When it is their turn to share, students stand up in place and say one important or interesting fact in an audible voice, then sit down again.

7) Conclusion

Clean up and collect the What We Learned charts.

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Say: What great researchers you are! Tomorrow we will begin organizing what we know about our topic in order to get ready to write our report.

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Before the next lesson, go through the What We Learned pages and add some notes from each one to the third column of the posted class KWL chart.

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Teaching Tip: Leave a pointer near the posted chart so that children can

“read” it during centers/choice time or Workshop, or set up a writing center near the chart with paper and pencil to copy the words.

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Teaching Tip: Make opportunities throughout the day/week for more research. For example, at convenient times throughout the day you might give students the opportunity to do some research online by looking at age-level appropriate

bookmarked websites about the topic. Or your class may dedicate its computer lab time to doing some guided online research. You might create a What We’ve Learned box where students can deposit notecards with their notes about the topic. At

different times throughout the week, you can check the box and add the notes to the KWL chart and/or the Web Organizer. Consider giving homework that allows students to continue their research on the topic or opportunities to practice writing what they know about it already.

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Teaching Tip: Because this report has an assigned topic, some children may be slow to get excited about the project. Try giving them a special role, such as

observing the class pet during Workshop time, or finding all the books in the classroom library about the subject animal, treating these special tasks as great privileges and responsibilities.

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Names: _______________________________

What We Learned

Research Topic: _________________________

Use pictures and words to TAKE NOTES below.

Draw

Write 1-3 words

___________________ ___________________ ___________________ ___________________ ___________________ ___________________

___________________ ___________________ ___________________

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Day Three: PRE-WRITING (30 minutes)

Academic language that students may need to know for this lesson: graphic

organizer, web organizer, category, detail, beginning, middle, conclusion, _________ __________________________________________________________________________

Graphic Organizer

1) Introduce Web Organizer

Using an overhead projector, introduce the children to the web graphic organizer.

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Say: Authors take time to organize their thoughts before they begin writing. Today we’re going to use this web organizer to organize our facts and ideas about our topic. Write the topic of the class report in the center box of the web organizer. 2) Categorize

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Say: I’m going to read through the things we’ve recorded on this KWL chart about our topic: What We Know and What We Learned. You can see that I added the things we learned in our research yesterday to the last column.

As I’m reading through our facts, see if you can identify any categories. A category is a group of facts that tell us the same kind of thing about our topic.

Using the notes on the KWL chart, give one example of a category, and label one of the outer boxes of the organizer with the category name.

Begin reading the first column of the KWL chart to/with the class. Invite students to raise their hands when they identify a possible category, and label the outer boxes of the web organizer according to the categories identified. Possible categories for Animal Reports include: Description, History, Food/Prey, Activities, Personality, Predators, Defenses, Adaptations, Camouflage, Habitat, Raising Young, Life Cycle, etc.

3) Include supporting details

When you have two or three categories labeled—

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Say: Wow! I’m starting to see how we can use this Web Organizer to organize all of our facts about topic! Let’s see…model adding two to three facts about one of the categories to the graphic organizer. Emphasize that you are just writing notes to represent the whole idea.

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Say: We know so much about our topic, I could really use your help completing this Web Organizer! Talk to your partner for a few minutes about where we could write each fact from this KWL chart on our Web Organizer. We might need some new categories. Let partners chat, then call on students to help you complete web.

Students take turns making suggestions for categories and locating details appropriately on the web organizer transparency.

4) Order ideas

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Say: There is so much information here! I wonder what we should write about first?

Invite the students to talk with their partners about what could come first, next, and last in the report. Let the partners chat, then solicit ideas. Allow for debate, then label the boxes of the organizer on the transparency 1, 2, 3, etc. in one suggested order. Be sure to pick a strong category (one that makes sense for beginning a report and has a lot of details) for number one.

Students help organize main ideas of report into a possible order for writing. When all the boxes are labeled—

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Say: This is one way we could organize all these facts into a report. I think we could do it in another way and it would still make sense and easy to read, so I’m going to erase all these numbers. But I am going to leave this box labeled #1, because I think it will make a strong beginning for our report.

5) Conclusion

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Say: We’re ready to write, and tomorrow’s we’ll begin! Let me know if you learn anything new about our topic that we should add to our web organizer before then.

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Day Four: MODELED WRITING (15 minutes)

Academic language that students may need to know for this lesson: rough draft, paragraph, indent, _________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________

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Teaching Tip: This lesson needs to move quickly in order to keep children’s attention. Aim for ten minutes and make sure you’re done before twenty! Involve children periodically by asking for their help or advice, but don’t get bogged down asking them to guess what it is that you’re doing or modeling. This is an opportunity for direct teaching: tell the students what you’re doing, and name these strategies for them. You may periodically say something like: I bet a lot of you know about this already…

Introduce Prompt Paper

1) Generate interest

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Say: Today I want to show you how authors use their Web Organizers to make sentences. I’ll pretend that I am the only author of our class report, and I’ll just write a little bit so you can see what I mean. I have some paper right here!

Tape a piece of the dotted line prompt paper on pages 29-31 to the board, right next to a copy of the completed organizer.

Strategy: Modeled Writing

2) Plan

Write your name and the topic (as title) on the paper in the appropriate spaces.

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Say: I am going to start with a paragraph describing our topic, because we decided yesterday that it would be a strong beginning for our report.

Now say out loud approximately three to five sentences that you intend to write, incorporating the facts from the web organizer. Use the think-aloud strategy to model how you are transforming the notes from the organizer into complete sentences.

As you are speaking the sentences, use a finger to indicate where you will write those words on the prompt paper.

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Ask a student to show you where s/he thinks you should begin writing. Repeat the first sentence out loud, again bouncing your finger on the lines where the words will go, modeling directionality and one-to-one correspondence.

3) Write

Begin writing, using the modeled writing strategy described below. Use a

combination of modeled writing, think-aloud and student participation to focus attention on your process, maintain interest and highlight important concepts of print. Without discussion, model indenting the beginning of the paragraph.

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Teaching Tip: If students pick up on the fact that you indented the beginning of the paragraph, briefly tell them why you did it, then invite them to look for

indentation in their reading throughout the day and week.

Work quickly and focus on modeling getting your ideas on the paper (not perfect letter formation).

Model spelling phonetically and spell words without error, but do not focus children’s attention on this aspect of writing. Your emphasis should be on modeling the purpose of a first draft—get the ideas down on paper.

Strategy Summary: Modeled Writing

1) Say each sentence and word before writing, using a finger to plan where you will write.

2) Sound out each word, and use think-aloud to determine what letters to write. 3) Model searching for and copying: letters on the alphabet strip, words on the

vocabulary chart, labels around the classroom, and sight words from the sight word bank.

4) Briefly touch upon concepts of print such as: capitalization, spaces between words (model using two fingers of non-writing hand to leave spaces), use of the solid and dotted lines in letter formation, and punctuation at the ends of sentences. 5) When finished, invite the class to reread your text with you.

As you are writing, also model checking off the notes on the web organizer that you have already incorporated into sentences.

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25 4) Conclusion

When you’re done, say

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Say: We are ready to write this report! We have done great research, we’ve organized our ideas, and we know how to turn our notes into sentences and

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Day Five: ASSESSMENT DAY—WRITE! (45 minutes)

Academic language that students may need to know for this lesson: approximated spelling, sound it out, penmanship, capitalize, upper-case letters, lower-case letters, Word Wall, sight words, period, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, apostrophe, comma, character, setting, _______________________________________ NOTE: Leave the KWL chart posted throughout assessment week. Make sure that the students have access to copies of the completed web organizers while writing. DO NOT, however, leave the modeled writing you did on Day Four out for students to see/copy, as this may interfere with your ability to accurately assess students’ own writing.

Generate Interest

1) Introduce activity

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Say: All week, we have been talking about and researching and organizing and getting ready to write our Class Animal Report. Today we are going to put all those ideas together and actually write! Each one of you is going to work on our first draft, and later we will put all our writing together into one report.

Introduce Materials

2) Introduce prompt paper

Show samples of the prompt paper to the class. Indicate where to write first and last names and where to begin writing (some students may comment about the need to indent the beginning of a paragraph). Explain that students can choose either of the paper types from pages 29-32 or 33-36, depending on whether or not they think the dotted lines will help them write so that others can read their writing. Review expectations about use of drawing and writing materials.

Give Directions

3) Give prompt

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Say: Now it’s time for each of you to write everything you know about our animal subject.

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27 Read the prompt aloud to the students:

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Prompt: Write everything you know about our topic. Be sure to group related ideas together.

4) Give guidelines

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Say: This is a first draft. The most important thing is to get your ideas down on paper. But you will be publishing this eventually, so it’s important that you and other people be able to read your writing. Do your best work on spelling,

punctuation and handwriting, without erasing. If you don’t know how to spell a word try sounding it out. You can also use the Word Wall or our KWL chart as spelling resources.

Write!

5) After setting expectations for the activity (time, noise level, materials, getting help), distribute the copies of the completed web organizers, prompt paper, and pencils and let the students begin work.

Students work independently and silently on the first drafts of their animal reports.

As students draw and write, circulate through the classroom to assist and encourage. Do not correct students’ errors or prompt them to remember punctuation as they work. Do not provide spelling but encourage children to sound out words.

6) Give prompts for writing and revision

When students first indicate they are finished writing, individually give the following prompt for initial revision.

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Say: Look at your Web Organizer to make sure you included everything we know about our topic.

When most students are nearly finished and have already gone back to add more facts, give the following prompt for initial editing to the whole class. Make erasers available.

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Say: Before you turn your draft in, please reread it and check to make sure it will be easy for me to read. Did you use capital letters at the beginning of sentences?

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Did you put punctuation at the end of your sentences? Did you use quotation marks around the words characters say? Did you check your spelling?

7) Conclusion

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Say: Look at all this fabulous writing—I can’t wait for us to work on putting this all together into the best Class Report ever!

Collect all the papers and see instructions for scoring and reporting. Be sure to transcribe any emergent writing.

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Teaching Tip: Give students the opportunity to revise and publish their work. Cut and paste sentences as is from each student’s first draft into a Class Report. Make copies for the whole class. Talk about what’s really good about the writing in the report. Invite students to find their own sentence within the class report, reread what they have written, and correct errors in spelling, capitalization or punctuation using a color pen or pencil. Type up the corrected draft and publish with student

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Class Report on ______________________

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AUTHORS: Please write your first and last name on the back of each page of your story, on the lines below. Do NOT write anything else on this side of the page.

Author’s First Name: _________________ Author’s Last Name: ___________________

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Class Report on ______________________

Teacher: Be sure to have the author read the story aloud and record a transcription here if necessary.

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Teacher: Be sure to have the author read the story aloud and record a transcription here if necessary.