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Improving Students' Writing, K-8
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Improving Students' Writing, K-8
From Meaning-Making to High Stakes!



November 2005 | 184 pages | Corwin
No longer the forgotten "R", writing is receiving more and more attention. "Constructed response" writing is increasingly used as a more authentic form of test item to assess content understanding. Mathematics and science standards require writing to demonstrate and communicate understanding. Writing is seen as one of the strongest predictors of success in college and will become a requirement on SATs.

This book offers teachers loads of examples of how to engage children and improve their performance in all types of content and creative writing, from self-selected topics, to limited-selection topics, to focused-topic writing and constructed response to test items. Using student samples, the authors offer various suggestions for identifying how individual students can be guided to improvement. The book will show teachers how to give students skills to collect and structure ideas and information, craft these into words, sentences and paragraphs, and present it all in a way to match what they hope their readers will understand. Special emphasis is placed on helping students write informational text as a way to demonstrate their understanding and process and work toward their own new understanding of information.

Essential for teachers in our current testing environment, this book offers steps and tools to strengthen students' facility with the much-assessed six traits of writing and help students achieve on high stakes assessments. Real student writing samples and classroom conversations make it easy for teachers to transfer tools, strategies and practices to their own classrooms.

 
Preface
 
About the Authors
 
1. Writing to Learn and Understand
Purposes for Writing

 
Yesterday’s and Today’s Challenges

 
Literacy Connections in Your Classroom

 
The Three Hardest Parts About Helping Student Writers

 
Writing Together as a Way of Communicating, Learning, and Meaning-Making

 
 
2. Writing About Information
Informal Writing

 
Formal Writing

 
Connections Between Informational Text and Student Writing

 
Reading Informational Text to Learn About Structure

 
Final Thoughts

 
 
3. Narrative Writing
Narrative Writing

 
Writing Development

 
Gender and Writing

 
Informal Narrative Writing

 
Formal Narrative Writing

 
Final Thoughts

 
 
4. Writing With Purpose for Real Audiences
Part of a Classroom Culture

 
Writing for Real Audiences

 
Writing for Real Purposes

 
Analyzing Writing as a Craft

 
Revision

 
Responding to Writing

 
Editing

 
Writing With Reason

 
 
5. Preparing for High-Stakes Writing Assessments
Historical Perspective

 
Writing Assessment Methods

 
Writing Assessment Tasks

 
Helping Students With Trait-Scored Divergent and Convergent Assessment Items

 
Product Versus Process

 
Final Thoughts

 
 
6. Connecting Writing and Classroom Conversation
Academic Conversations

 
Final Thoughts

 
 
Afterword
 
Appendix
 
References
 
Index

"Purposeful, realistic, throetically based...and clearly written by authors who appreciate bringing the joy of learning into the classroom. For experienced teachers, the book renews my excitement for teaching writing, and for new teachers, the text offers suggestions from a voice of experience-all within the framework of NCLB legislation for differentiating teaching based on learners' needs."

Julia Weinberg, Instructor
University of Nevada, Reno

For instructors

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