TEACHING ADOLESCENT WRITERS KELLY GALLAGHER Laura Yaeger IU5 April 6, 2011

What Would You Do? A) Lying down and curling up, covering your head with your arms B) Running directly at the bulls, screaming wildly and flailing your arms in an attempt to scare them in another direction C) Turning and running like heck in the same direction the bulls are running (even though you know you cannot outrun them) D) Standing completely still; they will see you and run around you E) Screaming bad words at your parent(s) for insisting on a back-to-nature vacation in Wyoming

What Would You Do? A) Go home, curl up on the sofa, play video games and hope the demands of the literacy stamped go away. B) Stare the Information Age in the face, screaming wildly and flailing your arms in an attempt to make it go away. C) Elevate your reading and writing abilities to the point that you can run with the literacy stampede. D) Stand completely still. Pray that the Information Age will avoid you. E) Scream bad words at your parent(s) for conceiving you in the shadow of a literacy stampede.

If kids don’t write more than three times a week, they’re dead. -Donald Graves

1. Let Them Mess Around With Writing  Daily in-class writing activities  Quick writes  Brainstorming

2. Write as a chance to consolidate and review ideas and experiences  The Grocery List Theory  Exit slips  SDQR Chart  Movie Reading

3. Write to reformulate and extend knowledge  It doesn’t always have to be about demonstrating knowledge.  Free response  Looping  Pass-the-reflections  Conversation logs

4. On-Demand Writi ng  A ttack the prompt  B rainstorm possible answers  C hoose the order of your response  D etect errors before turning the draft in

Kelly’s Rules for ABCD  Quarter 1-Repeated practice until students are able to complete A, B, and C in seven minutes or less. They haven’t yet actually written the on-demand essay.  Quarters 2-4-Students write an on-demand essay every third Friday, resulting in ten on- demand essays using the ABC format by the end of the year. D items become mini- lessons.

Encouraging Writing 1. Move beyond the Grecian Urn approach. 2. Adopt a 4:1 grading policy. 3. Talk the paper out. 4. Model how to create a map before writing. 5. Allow for choice within given topics.

First Draft Philosophy in Kelly’s Class  It is a requirement to produce a lot of bad writing.  Before you can get it right you have to get it down.  The first draft is a “sneeze.”

Modeling to Drive Better Revision  The Patti Stock mini-lesson  Pimp My Write, make me a Substitute Take things out Add Rearrange

The Last Word For many students, “make them better” is interpreted as recopying neatly. I caution them that making a paper better is not the same as making it correct. Right now I want them to revise the paper and show how the second draft is better than the first. -Kelly Gallagher