The Writing Workshop: Heather's Reflection

Persuade Me!     Heather's Reflection

 The shift from our previous Saskatchewan curriculum to our renewed curriculum has compelled us, as educators, to evolve our pedagogy to one that really encourages the learner to become a deeper and more critical thinker.  More elaborately, we are encouraging our students to not always rely so much on what to think but how to think from a micro to macro level.  Logically, our persuasive writing journey certainly embodied that pedagogical approach where our high number of reluctant writers had to move away from worrying about what is the “right and wrong” answer, to taking risks in choosing something they felt passionately about. As a result, many chose a topic that reflected some kind of social responsibility (i.e. stopping animal product testing, violent video games being linked to violent behavior), defended it with logical reasons, and facts to further stabilize their argument.  Simply stated, this was a learning experience where the students were encouraged to feel safe enough to think outside the box yet stayed within our curricular grid.

            As with any learning process, especially in writing, students need to develop a confident foundation of understanding to then scaffold.  The need to establish a foundation was definitely our starting place as my students’ November VAAW informed me that they had limited knowledge and/or confidence with this literary style.  Shirley modeled and created a foundation for me as well, a first year classroom teacher, how to be approaching a writing project like this and, perhaps more importantly, why.  We had regular conferencing and the collaboration allowed for us to reflect on the lesson from the day, and differentiate and plan for the next in order to better meet the needs of the students.  Therefore, this writing experience had a strong sense of direction.    

The importance of Shirley and I modeling how persuasive writing could look and sound as a whole, and its parts—modeling how to use the student-friendly graphic organizer, how to be effective researchers, the use of the anchor charts as a framework to help the students “check in” (self-reflect) with their writing to see if they are following some of those persuasive writing techniques--was routinely practiced throughout this whole learning experience.  We really wanted to embed all of this information through these different entry points listed.  Fortunately, it became evident to me that when the students were writing their rough draft, they were making the connections from their previous learning by translating their information from their graphic organizer and those various persuasive writing techniques into a literary piece that truly possessed their strong voice.  In the end, the students were able to make sense of a complex writing procedure and, ultimately, they produced work that has been worth sharing.  In fact, a book with their “published” work is now available to share in our Resource Centre, our Principal came to hear their presentations, some will be chosen at random (and out of their own volition) to present at our talent show while some others will have their work put into our Monthly Newsletter. So this project has really manifested into one where they were not only pushed to take a risk and think critically, and where you could see and hear a student’s sense of pride, accomplishment, and confidence in their work, but one which has now moved outside of our four walls of the classroom and into our community.  What a memorable experience for all of us!         

Frayer Model

This model is often used to define vocabulary. It can also be a way to keep track of learning during an Inquiry.  A chart is divided into 4 sections and labeled:  Definition, Characteristics, Examples and Non-Examples.  In the center is an essential question such as:  What is tolerance?  Who is a hero?  Students add information or take away inaccurate information during the Inquiry.

 

The Writing Workshop

Persuade Me!

I recently had the pleasure of working with Heather Matichuk on writing with her grade 6 students. 
 Kelly Gallagher says, “Writing well does not begin with teaching students how to write; it begins with teaching students why they should write.”  It was evident Heather had spent time earlier sharing the many purposes or reasons writers write with her students. We also shared some real-world examples of why being a persuasive person/writer would come in handy.  And so… our persuasive writing unit began.
As an introduction to persuasive writing we engaged students in oral activities that would help build their understanding of a well-constructed argument and to see both sides of an argument.  These included:

Sorting Activity from First Steps Writing Resource Book

Arguing Both Sides from Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke







Writing is more interesting and fun to read when it is filled with voice, so we spent some time explicitly teaching the voice trait. We asked students to revise a short piece where the voice was absent. We used the picture book Dear Mrs. LaRue Letters from Obedience School by Mark Teague as our mentor text because it is filled with voice.  We also asked students to identify the persuasive writing techniques that were used in this picture book.
Anchor charts were useful to keep track of our learning.  Some anchor charts we created included: 

Tips for Writing with Voice

Persuasive Writing Techniques

Lead Sentence and Opening Paragraph

Closing Paragraph












We often noticed students referring to the charts during independent writing time. 
The minilessons for the opening and closing paragraphs were based on Lori Rog's Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching Intermediate Writing, Grades 4-6.
Throughout the unit we shared short persuasive writing text with the class and asked them to identify the persuasive writing techniques used. We encouraged them to try some of these techniques in their own writing. Many of the short text was from the professional resource Writing to Persuade by Karen Caine.
Although students are usually provided choice when it comes to graphic organizers to plan their writing, we chose the graphic organizer Lori suggested in her book.

Heather completed a shared writing lesson using the graphic organizer.  The class chose a topic and argued both sides. They generated  reasons for each argument, and gathered evidence by looking at the research.   From there they took one reason, along with the evidence and as a class composed a paragraph.  Finding evidence to support their opinions can be quite challenging for our students.  Quite often they will come up with another opinion to support their opinion. 
Therefore it was important to give our students time to do research. They needed to find accurate facts and statistics to back up their arguments.  Heather had spent time earlier with her class talking about reliable websites and doing searches, so students were very competent and independent with this task.

Without question, the students produced some quality writing.  They were engaged and their stamina and hard work paid off.
They are planning to share their work with the Grade 3 class, who will also be working on persuasive writing.They will create a class book of their writing and place it in the library, so a larger audience has access to it.
This class was a perfect example of a community of writers!