Writing Strategies Galore

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Last week I had the pleasure of going to a two-day seminar with Gretchen Bernabei. I can't even begin to explain how much I learned in twelves hours. True, most of the things we talked about were things I already teach, but the strategy to teach those things made me wonder how I didn't think of that in the first place. By the end of the seminar, I had a composition notebook full of stuff to take back to my classroom.



Here are a few of my favorite:

The Kernel Essay

Kernel: tiny yellow seed with the potential for yummy, buttery goodness when microwaved. 

Writing kernels are the same minus the butter and microwave. However, they can still be yummy. Sometimes. They are made up of four sentences that become the structure of the essay. 

Here's mine for the prompt "Write an essay about your favorite place" or something like that:

I have used this strategy in class in the past and the kids really latch on and get it. I am going to amp it up this year though. Also, this can be done with any type of writing, expository, narrative, or procedural.

You can go here to see a HUGE list of possible structures kids could use when writing kernels. Or, they could come up with their own. 

Expository vs. Narrative

When we did this together, I nearly face palmed myself. It's so simple and clear that I don't know why this isn't how we all show the difference between writing modes. It also employs our advice of "show not tell." My problem before was always just TELLING them the difference. Then, when I read essays, I would be so frustrated because I would be reading stories instead of essays. Then, I'd tell them again. Rinse and repeat. But this simple T-chart SHOWS instead of TELLS.

Before we did the chart, we chose an object from our childhood to write about. I chose a little stick man made of toothpicks that I used to decorate my Dad's "Over the Hill" cake when he turned 40.

Now, draw a T-chart like this:

We then wrote for two minutes. First on the left side, then on the right. Here's what I came up with:

I didn't finish, but you still get the idea. 

And, BOOM! There's the difference. The kids can actually see the difference in front of them. Then we took those short paragraphs and wrote kernel essays on note cards. 

Here are mine:

Gretchen then took them up and read them aloud having us guess which one was narrative and which was expository. So, the practice could continue from this one activity.


Expository











Narrative 

Pitchforking

Again, an oldy, but a goody. This strategy gives kids a more direct way to add detail to their writing. Take this sentence for instance: We baked a cake. Not terrible, but not great either. It offers so little explanation of my experience baking a cake, that you as the reader have to imagine a time when you baked a cake just to stay interested. That equals not good writing. That's where pitchforking comes in. 

Here's what my paper looked like at the end of this activity just for ONE SENTENCE!

I turned "We baked a cake" into "We laughed, decorated and sweated in the hot kitchen as we baked Dad's birthday cake, a moist, delicious reminder he was over the hill." Ummm.... wow!!

Just imagine if we could get our kids to pour over one sentence like that! But after a lot of practice, this strategy won't be a strategy anymore, it will just become natural.The great writers sitting in my classroom do this naturally, so hoping for that for the struggling writers isn't beyond our reach. 

These strategies only skim the surface of what I learned. For more, you can visit Gretchen's blog. A word of warning: combing through all the strategies there might take hours. So, make sure the kids are fed, all water facets are off, and there's no laundry to do in the near future. 

Be a ROQC STAAR

The SAQ

As an English teacher, I look at the SAQ (short answer question) and think that those are the easiest questions on the whole test. Just give an opinion and prove it. Seems simple enough. But to our kids, it's excruciating work, and several just skip them altogether. And, in my experience, some teachers say that skipping them isn't the end of the world. I have heard a teacher tell a student, "Just get more multiple choice questions right, and you'll be fine." I couldn't believe my ears. When I look at the SAQs, I see multiple choice questions, just without the choices. To me, if a student can't answer an SAQ, then there's no hope of just getting more MC questions right. However, when we look at data, we see the majority of our kids are getting one out of three points for each SAQ. And that's just plain awful. There's no way to sugar coat that. Teachers who believe that the SAQ's are so tricky and misleading that the kids just don't get it, so they should just get more multiple choice correct to counter the low scores they'll get on the SAQ are fooling themselves. So, if they can't skip them, we need to give them the tools they need to answer them successfully. 

The Origins of ROQC (pronounced roxy)

During my years in my inner city school, which will remain nameless, other teachers showed me the APE strategy. It looks like this:

Look, how cute!

     A -- Answer

      P -- Proof

      E -- Explain

But, to get kids to remember what they were actually supposed to do when using this strategy, my cute little APE turned into a massive 400 pound gorilla. I had to write this:

 

Not so cute

        A -- Answer -- rephrase the question and give opinion

        P -- Proof -- quote from the story

         E -- Explain -- connect to life lesson

Needless to say, APE was very cumbersome. The kids could remember what each of the letters meant, but they had to remember even more things to know how to use those letters. It just wasn't working. In my third year trying to manage this APE in my classroom, I had an epiphany. I looked at the letters on all my notes for my pneumonic and realized the solution was there all along, and ROQC was born. 

       
   

          A -- Answer -- Rephrase the question and give Opinion

          P -- Proof -- Quote from the story

          E -- Explain -- Connect to life lesson

But, I had to test it. I tried it on my Saturday school tutoring students first. These were students who had never taken the TAKS before. We were proactive in our remediation (at least I was) and through classroom assessment I decided who should come to Saturday school. I had about ten students coming regularly. So I created a foldable that included notes for ROQC, SAQ questions from excepts, we even did some cutting and pasting just for good measure. Saturday school ran for four weeks before the TAKS.  When the day finally came, I knew they were ready. I had five out of ten of those students pass the TAKS that year. The five who didn't pass all made ones on their essay (back when that mattered so much), but ALL TEN made ALL TWOS on their SAQs and I knew it was because I threw out the APE and gave them ROQC. 

Introducing ROQC to the Masses

After that pivotal year six years ago, I knew I had to use ROQC in all my classes. And now, I have students who are teaching their junior teachers how to do it. It's become a campus wide initiative and it's working. 

I've introduced ROQC a few different ways throughout the years, but my favorite has been through the flip lesson. I made a video on the ELMO going through the steps of ROQC. The kids watch it at home and fill in their fill in the blank notes. Then the next day we read something short and answer the SAQs in class. Getting the notes the night before helps tremendously. 

Each time we do ROQC, the notes look something like this:

Our initial goal is to get a score point 2.  

After score point 2 mastery, we work toward getting a score point 3. 

Update: I made a video that I have the kids watch prior to class as a flip lesson. Here's the link. 

Scoring 

I am a staunch believer that teaching directly to the test is evil. However, not teaching to the test is equally evil. It's like sending a blindfolded kid into a shark tank with a bucket of chum around his neck. Expecting a student to just figure out how to take a test isn't the best test taking strategy. My job as a teacher is to teach ALL aspects, and that includes how to take a high stakes test, that includes, STAAR, ACT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, PPR, MCAT, NCE, BAR, and any other tests included in the educational alphabet soup. So, this means teaching the kids how SAQs are scored. 

My past naive self would hand out the SAQ rubric, have the kids turn it into "kid friendly" language and then say, "OK, now you know what they are looking for. Let's answer some SAQs." Now, I wish I could go back to all those kids and tell them I am so sorry for torturing them like that. I know there's nothing wrong with what I did, but I was missing a step. I showed them the what, but I never showed them the how, which is the most important part. Sure, go ahead, show them the rubric, have them do table talk about it, draw pictures about it, write a skit, whatever it is you do, but the next step should be "And this is how you accomplish all that." For me that's what ROQC did in my classroom. It gave them the how. And, it ended up being very simple. 

R+O= 1

R+O+Q= 2

R+O+Q+C= 3

Kids can see this, remember this, and do this. It's a formula, I know and formulas are of the devil bad. But, for the kid who can't fill those ten blank lines with anything, this formula is empowering. And with enough practice, the training wheels can come off.

Revising

Now, we rarely go through all this without trading papers and grading. I am a firm believer that #1 kids don't see the flaws in their own writing and #2 kids love pointing out the flaws in other kids' writing. 

Part of the fun, is figuring out where all the arrows will take you. 

TAKS vs. STAAR

You may be thinking, "but you created this from TAKS. STAAR is completely different." You are right, wise one. STAAR is more analytical, which makes ROQC work even better with those SAQ questions than with TAKS open-endeds. 

But, here's the real beauty of ROQC. It works with everything. It works with life itself. How often are we called on to make an assertion (R+O), back it up with evidence (Q), and then explain the impact (C)? ROQC puts a framework to the thinking we do everyday as adults. It lets kids in on the secret of how to analyze a situation, problem, argument, or text. This is so much more than a test taking strategy, but only if you show your kids the power it has in it.