As November approaches, our attention should be shifting to the next set of Power Standards. Last week, I wrote a post related to RL.2. This week, I'll be focusing on W.4.
My personal experience as a writer - from middle school, high school, and even college to some extent - was highly standardized; as a result, I came to teaching with a lens for looking at student writing that was heavy on conventions: grammar, punctuation, spelling. For several years, "teaching" writing involved posting a prompt, and then returning responses with lots of red marks on them - circled incorrect spelling and punctuation, and brief comments: "vague" or "expand". I was serving as an editor rather than a teacher, and unfortunately this didn't provide my students with much direction, other than to try to get less red ink on the next paper.
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a few days working with Carl Anderson, author of How's It Going? and Assessing Writers. I left the workshop with three "ah ha's":
As a result of my work with Mr. Anderson, I developed a vision for my students that focused on audience, purpose, meaning, and genre knowledge. I still taught detail, structure, voice, and conventions, but they were viewed with the intent of the student's writing in mind, and always built on what the student could already do well. I always had my own writing notebook and a few mentor texts handy to share with students while conferring with them.
Standard W.4 focuses on development, organization, and style in relation to task, purpose and audience. This doesn't mean you have to completely ignore grammar, syntax, and spelling; it does mean that when you emphasize those things, you aren't addressing this standard. Keep that in mind as you create your common formative assessments.
As you work with student writers, remember that they will often accomplish incredible things while crafting their writing; our job is to find it, name it, and encourage it. Learn to notice the beauty in student writing that is often hidden behind conventional errors, and get excited by what your students know and can do. Kathryn Bomer (2010) eloquently states this sentiment in her book, Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brilliance in Every Student's Writing, when she says, "when I'm able to read past all those surface problems, what I find in young people's writing is passionate, surprising, and endearing enough to convince me that I have the best job on the earth."
My personal experience as a writer - from middle school, high school, and even college to some extent - was highly standardized; as a result, I came to teaching with a lens for looking at student writing that was heavy on conventions: grammar, punctuation, spelling. For several years, "teaching" writing involved posting a prompt, and then returning responses with lots of red marks on them - circled incorrect spelling and punctuation, and brief comments: "vague" or "expand". I was serving as an editor rather than a teacher, and unfortunately this didn't provide my students with much direction, other than to try to get less red ink on the next paper.
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a few days working with Carl Anderson, author of How's It Going? and Assessing Writers. I left the workshop with three "ah ha's":
- Conventions are only one piece of the puzzle; I needed to be a reader of student writing, not an editor
- To teach writing, I had to be a writer myself; my students needed to know that I was struggling alongside them [Update: check out this link for another perspective on this point]
- I needed to develop an assessment lens for looking at student writers that focused on what I wanted my students to become, and how the act of writing could help them to become the best version of themselves
As a result of my work with Mr. Anderson, I developed a vision for my students that focused on audience, purpose, meaning, and genre knowledge. I still taught detail, structure, voice, and conventions, but they were viewed with the intent of the student's writing in mind, and always built on what the student could already do well. I always had my own writing notebook and a few mentor texts handy to share with students while conferring with them.
Standard W.4 focuses on development, organization, and style in relation to task, purpose and audience. This doesn't mean you have to completely ignore grammar, syntax, and spelling; it does mean that when you emphasize those things, you aren't addressing this standard. Keep that in mind as you create your common formative assessments.
As you work with student writers, remember that they will often accomplish incredible things while crafting their writing; our job is to find it, name it, and encourage it. Learn to notice the beauty in student writing that is often hidden behind conventional errors, and get excited by what your students know and can do. Kathryn Bomer (2010) eloquently states this sentiment in her book, Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brilliance in Every Student's Writing, when she says, "when I'm able to read past all those surface problems, what I find in young people's writing is passionate, surprising, and endearing enough to convince me that I have the best job on the earth."
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