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Dear Families of OESU Students,
Throughout your child's career as a student he/she will be asked to write about diverse topics and in varied genres or styles of writing. Your child's teachers will work to guide him/her through this writing to not only become a proficient writer, but also to instill an understanding that competent written expression is a necessity to convey information, express oneself, or to share a response.
Our goal is to help all students become fluent writers who have the stamina to creatively express themselves through their writing, and we hope that along the way, every student will grow to enjoy writing. Like many tasks in life, to become skillful, your child needs ample opportunities to practice writing. Therefore, the teachers of the OESU endeavor to make writing an essential part of all curricular areas.
The writing that your child will be instructed in will take three forms.
Daily Writing Opportunities: Necessary to Build Writing Stamina
First, is daily writing that may be a seven minute write or daily journal writing. This could include the students writing about a personal experience, a hope or dream, or something they believe. Students may be given a list of writing prompts to choose from, given a particular prompt, or be given free reign to write about whatever they want. These pieces are usually unscored, but are important to a student's daily progress in that they help to build writing stamina and are often springboards for other pieces of writing. They also show teachers what areas of writing students need help in, enabling them to plan lessons around those skills.
The actual length of this writing will be determined by the grade level of the student. In earlier grades this may include illustrations on which students label parts of their "story" or make attempts at writing words they may have been exposed to in class, letters to represent words they have attempted to sound out, names they know, etc. As the students emerge into conventional writing, better sentence structure will appear with more correctly spelled high frequency words, more and better attempts to sound out words will be noticed, some evidence of understanding of vowel sounds will be seen, etc. Of course, over time and through continual practice, the students growth will become very evident.
Process Writing: Documenting Writing Process Over Time
Writing has a process that we teach students to take their writing through. We teach skills to help them brainstorm or collect ideas for writing (planning or prewriting), and then we teach them how to sit down and begin their writing (composing or drafting). After they have completed getting their ideas down on paper, we teach them the importance of conferring with teachers or peers in order to go through revision and then, too, to go through editing. Throughout this process we are conveying the message to the students that writing is a form of communication, and therefore we also teach them that they may desire to publish their writing, which usually involves making a finished form of their writing, so that others may enjoy it.
Although writing has "a process," every person goes through that process differently. For example, while one child may need days to plan their writing, another may need very little, but may take a lot of time in the revision stages. Therefore, a visit to a class where writing is occurring (a writing workshop) will show students in varying stages of writing. Although it may seem that there is no rhyme or reason to the class, students are trained to know what they need to do, where supplies are, what they need to do with their piece next, etc. making a transition from drafting to revision or planning to drafting smooth.
Most of the writing that your child does that involves taking a piece through the entire writing process will be in the form of portfolio pieces. There are seven portfolio genres of writing. They are response to text, report, persuasive writing, procedural writing, narrative writing, reflective essay, and poetry. The schools of the OESU have a Writing Portfolio Assessment Plan that teachers follow in order to introduce genres of writing at developmentally appropriate times. This plan is used so that students have ample opportunities to practice using the writing process in genres that are grade appropriate to their skills. The plan can be found under its name on this website. Throughout portfolio writing pieces students are challenged through mini-lessons and individual conferences to include strategies in their writing that are grade appropriate. For example, a second grade student may be shown examples in which authors used conversation in their stories, and then encouraged to try this themselves. A seventh grader may be shown essays in which writers showed evidence of reflection and then the student is encouraged to try to include reflection in their writing.
Through the course of a year your student will be expected to take at least 4 (grades K-4) or 5 (grades 5-12) pieces of writing through the writing process. Upon completion of the piece the writing is scored by the teacher, using a rubric for that particular genre, and included in the student's portfolio. These portfolios are available for parents to see during conferences or at any time upon request. At the end of the year some of these pieces will be passed on to your child's next teacher, and others will be sent home. The importance of portfolio writing pieces is that they show the students progress over time, and they show what a student can do with guided instruction. The more opportunities for this instruction, the more likely that the student will absorb the strategies taught and use them appropriately in all types of writing.
Non-Process Writing: Independent Assessment Pieces
Not all writing is taken through the entire writing process. The earlier mentioned daily writing opportunities, for example, usually only involve planning and drafting, unless the student decides to expand upon that piece and develop it into a portfolio piece.
Some writing that we require students to do, that is not taken through the writing process is called on-demand writing. This takes two forms.
One form is a single paragraph response to a prompt, which you may hear referred to as a Constructed Response. This is expected of students in 2nd grade and higher. In this writing a student is asked a specific prompt (e.g., about an article or story, an event that happened or is to happen, something about themselves). The student is then giving sufficient time to write their paragraph. Whether the student chooses to plan their writing or takes the time to do some editing will be up to them, as this is a time when teachers are not to instruct the student, but to see what they can do independently.
Upon completion of the assignment, the teacher scores these pieces using a rubric designed by teachers of the OESU. This rubric can be found here under the name Constructed Response Writing Rubric for grades 2-12. Through the scoring process the teacher determines what strategies the student is using well in their writing, and the next steps the student needs to take in order to become a better writer. Opportunities to write Constructed Response pieces should happen in classrooms intermittently throughout the year so that by the end of the year the teacher has at least 15 points of data to assess your child as a writer. Examples of these will be kept in your child's writing portfolio.
A second form of non-process writing is Extended Response writing. An Extended Response is an on-demand multi-paragraphed piece of writing. This writing follows many of the same rules as a Constructed Response, with teachers giving students sufficient time to answer the prompt, and again seeing what the students can do independently. The rubric used to score these pieces was also developed by teachers of the OESU and can be found here under Extended Response Writing Rubric for Grades 4-12. Some of these pieces will also be kept in your student's portfolio, others will be sent home.
What a parent can expect
It would be wonderful to think that every piece of writing a student does is perfect with a good beginning, middle and ending, perfect spelling and grammar, wonderful transitions, strong support for their focus, etc. This doesn't usually happen. It is likely that you may see pieces of writing (sometimes even published pieces) that have many errors, weak sections, poor grammar, etc. Please don't be overly alarmed by this. Every day a teacher has to make a decision about what is most necessary to bring a student to the next level of writing, and teach it either through a conference or mini-lesson. If a teacher were to point out every error, every weak spot, every missed opportunity to include action, conversation, etc. in a student's writing, then it would be likely that the student would become discouraged and give up. So, we take the students step by step and choose our next steps carefully as we confer with students and read their writing on a daily basis. While doing this we strive to maintain the integrity of the student's writing and ensure that the enjoyment of writing is foremost in instruction. We encourage parents to do the same at home while working with their child. While the temptation may be strong to "dot every i and cross every t," consider what one thing will help your child the most, and teach them that.
Teachers often will collaborate in their attempts to look at student writing for the very reason that sometimes we miss seeing something obvious and a different pair of eyes may notice something that may help the student. So, please, if you have a concern about your child's writing do not hesitate to discuss it with the teacher. They will likely welcome your input.
As Literacy Teacher Leader for the OESU, I would also welcome any discussions with concerned individuals, and may be reached at the OESU offices. We expect the 2008-2009 school year to be an exciting year of growth for all students in writing. Although some students of the OESU were found to be proficient in their writing skills last year, others may need substantial improvement in order to become proficient, confident writers. Wherever your child is, the teachers of the OESU are committed to helping them to further improve as writers. We welcome and encourage your participation in this process.
Sincerely,
Carol Owen
Orange East Supervisory Union
Literacy Teacher Leader
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