Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Writing Curriculum
I am not sure what grades everyone teaches, but in the middle elementary level (3-5) a lot of teachers in our school are frustrated with the writing curriculum. We have been given a framework for lessons for each of our large units (narrative, informational, opinion, and writers launch). We then are expected to take one of the large projects and create lesson plans for all the teachers in the district. In essence, the district is asking us to write the curriculum for ourselves. I am a big believer in 6 traits writing, yet we have few resources for this "curriculum". However, 6 traits is not a curriculum, but more of a scoring guide. I have used the scoring guide and 6 traits framework to build my own curriculum focusing on each trait. My question is does anyone have any 6 traits lesson that they think are amazing or "must have" lessons that focus on one of the traits for middle elementary students? Furthermore, how are your schools and teams dealing with the writing curriculum conundrum?
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In terms of the writing curriculum, I would say each person on our team handles it a little bit differently. We all access the writing units that were created to examine the lesson objectives, but as we haven't received all of the lessons that go along, we teach those objectives differently. I've also cut out some lessons that had been taught at a different point (perhaps in phonics or whole group writing time) and have added in lessons where I see holes in my kids' work. Some lessons I create from scratch, but for many, I use online resources or Lucy Calkins. I know it's time consuming to come up with lessons rather than having them already laid out for us, but I find that if I have to really think about what I'm going to teach, it forces me to carefully examine my kids' work and base my lessons on what I see.
ReplyDeleteHave you had a chance to sit down with your team and talk about what they are doing for a given unit? Talking with my coworkers, or even just walking around their classrooms, has given me a lot of ideas for lessons I need to teach.
I am feeling your frustration and so is the second grade team with writing. We spent that day of staff development working on the remaining units for writing. The writing units are the "big" writing pieces for each unit. I am wondering about how all the 6 traits also is fitting into the units along with grammar. We have had nothing in our units about sentence structure yet or paragraph writing. I have had to use my own lessons or just the assessment of my students to guide my lessons. I guess it is a good thing that we are teaching to the needs of our students, but a little more structure would be nice. It is not clear what we are using 6 traits, Lucy, or what? We have also gotten to the point where we are working on All Abouts and they are confusing with Research. I sure hope that they figure out something soon or these kids are going to be having holes in their writing due to lack of structure and good curriculum from the district. Good luck on the writing!
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