1. Improving Student Writing With a focus on support and conventions

2. Return to Process Writing The process writing approach involves a number of interwoven activities, including creating extended opportunities for writing encouraging cycles of planning, translating, and reviewing stressing personal responsibility and ownership of writing projects facilitating high levels of student interactions encouraging self-reflection and evaluation

4. Writing Focus: Support Quality of details used to explain, clarify, or define Specific word choice and use of figurative devices Ample development of supporting ideas (i.e. descriptions, details, examples, definitions, dialogue, and anecdotes) Support for information or events is even throughout the writing

5. Implications Teach strategies at the paragraph level Share examples of richly developed paragraphs with supporting details Model use of vivid details and sensory images Point out effective use of dialogue in literature. Have students imitate in their writing.

6. Writing Focus: Conventions Research studies support the conclusion that most students do not benefit from grammar study in isolation from writing, if indeed our purpose in teaching grammar is to help students improve their writing

7. Implications Teach strategies while immersing students in reading and discussing literature Focus, while reading and writing, on punctuation to provide details Sentence combining Participial phrase Absolute phrase Guide students through the writing process with a focus on editing and revising. Revisit writing for a specific purpose (i.e. Sentence structure, word choice)

8. Effective Teaching Strategies Reading-Writing Connection Use literature as a model for teaching skills and strategies and as a spring board for writing ideas; drawing upon literature fore effective models of sentences and paragraphs. Teach Using Student Writing Use actual student writing as a basis for mini-lessons (anchor papers, current work, past student work, as well as current student writing pieces). Mini-lessons (followed by practice with students own writing) After a skill or strategy-based mini-lesson is taught, have students revise or begin drafting their own writing pieces focusing on what was learned during the mini-lesson. Small Group Instruction (feedback) During independent writing, meet with small groups of students to provide instruction based on identified needs. Partnership/Conferring Pair students to work together often to discuss their writing using a peer editing handout focused on conventions and give each other feedback Modeling Think aloud while writing in front of the students, so that they can see and hear the process. Pre-write or make notes about what you plan to model to make sure you are including your intended focus. Focus on Revision and Editing from a limited list of conventions

9. Douglas Cazorts List – 15 most common grammar mistakes 1. Wrong tense or verb form 2. Fused or run-on sentence 3. Sentence fragment 4. Lack of agreement between subject and verb 5. Wrong word 6. Missing comma(s) with a nonrestrictive element 7. Unnecessary shift in tense 8. Missing comma in a series 9. Missing or misplaced possessive apostrophe 10. Unnecessary comma(s) with a restrictive element 11. Confusion of its and its 12. Dangling or misplaced modifier 13. Lack of agreement between pronoun and antecedent 14. Wrong or misplaced modifier 15. Vague pronoun reference

10. Benefits for Students Editing from a limited list of conventions allows students to focus on a selected list and find the task of editing manageable. They have a road map for the first leg of a journey toward competence.

11. Benefits for Teachers A limited list not only provides a method for targeting individual or small group needs, but also works as a tool for measuring a students progress in understanding conventions.

12. Heres what it might look like… Take a passage from Chapter 9 of The Giver, written by Lois Lowry, and put it through a regression process and turn it into a piece of writing that any middle school student might have written:

13. His training had not yet begun. He left the auditorium. He felt apartness. He made his way through the crowd. He was holding the folder she had given him. He was looking for his family unit. He was also looking for Asher. People moved aside for him. They watched him. He thought he could hear whispers. Short, choppy sentences

14. As a group, discuss how the first two sentences might be combined into one, longer, more interesting sentence. Invite students to rewrite the altered passage, revising the paragraph toward what they imagined they would find in Lowrys actual text.

15. Student Samples Joe wrote: Training had not yet begun for Jonass assignment. Leaving the auditorium Jonas felt apartness. Making his way through the crowd was tough because of the number of people. Trying to find Asher, and his family unit, Jonas thought he heard whispers.

16. Ann wrote: His training had not begun yet, but he left the auditorium feeling apartness. He made his way through the crowd, she was holding the folder she had given him. He was looking for his family unit. But he was also looking for Asher. People were moving aside for him. The crowd was watching him. He thought he could hear whispering.

17. Compare the student writings to Lowerys passage But his training had not yet begun and already, upon leaving the Auditorium, he felt the apartness. Holding the folder she had given him, he made his way through the throng, looking for his family unit and

18. Extensions For future response to literature prompts, students could be required to revise and edit with a focus on sentence combining. Essay revision could include a peer editing component to identify choppy sentences. This process could be repeated with a focus on participial phrases, word choice, etc.