Professional+Toolbox+-+Writing

News Q’s Example: For a reading about the Cassini spacecraft [|searching for life on Saturn’s moons] , we asked: “Do you think life exists — or has ever existed — somewhere besides Earth? Why?”
 * Responding to Current Writing user:marcyray**
 * This example pulls from the New York Times but really students could choose from multiple different sources to keep current on world event besides what's trending on twitter. I imagine until the routine is solidified, teachers would need to bring in sources and demonstrate how the articles were found. After that students question the articles or respond to them. Initially, the purpose of the activity will be to get students writing in a thoughtful manner. After they are used to the exercise more demands or restrictions can be added to what they write. Here is an example of a prompt:**
 * Other examples ask the teacher to activate background knowledge by asking questions of what students know or have experiences in the past, or by showing a video to give them background knowledge. I think this can be a powerful strategy because it gets students involved in current events in thoughtful ways and teaches them that their thoughts matter. What better incentive for fully formulating those thoughts!**

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/category/lesson-plans/common-core/?_r=0

This website is made by Duke University as a guide to writing scientifically. I liked the part about teaching students nominalizations because this is a key part of writing discussion and analysis sections of a lab report. It shows students how use a nominalization of a word is a great way to discuss data, for example: We analyzed the data. This ** analysis ** demonstrated the need for additional experiments. They have a variety of other notes about scientific writing and some lesson worksheets to go with them. Some of the things I do because of practice but I don't always think about so it was helpful to look over this guide.
 * Scientific Writing: Nominalization user:meganbatty**
 * Link to Page**

**Imagining a Dialogue Between Authors user:mattcrichlow**
When scaffolding students for a writing assignment for more than one source, setting up an activity where students create a dialogue between authors can be a starting point. This strategy asks students to think about what the author had in mind at the sentence-level and in the overall text. This can be an effective, engaging strategy for allowing students to take on the mindset of a writer, and think from different perspectives.

Link- [|http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/922#Six] (Strategy #6)

Taken from field placement with Mr. Bullis. After a reading, students respond to assigned reading by each student writing for one minute. However, they respond in order, so the first student writes, the second student responds to the first student’s writing, etc. No more than 3 per group. Students will need this to be modeled for them, and it is a practice that needs to be taught. Students usually struggle with it the first time around, but it is a great way to start a conversation about a reading without creating a high stakes writing assignment.
 * Write Around: user:rfay1**

This is something which we talked about over the summer in one of our courses and I have used it in my classroom before. It allows students to apply content in a creative and interesting way. In this assignment, there are many different options for a role, audience, format and topic of different writing assignments. Above is a template of what it looks like. This can be done in any field area.
 * RAFT writing user:sarahnewman4**

Resource for Creating Writing Assignments user:remenger

http://cmsw.mit.edu/writing-and-communication-center/resources/teachers/creating-writing-assignments/

This website lists and explains multiple strategies for teachers when designing engaging and productive writing assignments. This source can act like a sort of checklist or self-check when designing a writing assignment for students by asking meaningful and important questions of target audience, finished product, and lesson takeaway. This site also gives a few examples of writing assignments that can be used.

There is a lot to know about playwriting, but there are many highly beneficial mini-lessons that can be learned about writing in general from even the most basic playwriting practice. Playwriting requires thinking about a specific audience and designing sufficient **dialogue** and descriptive **detail/**stage directions to meet the needs of that audience. Further, playwriting provides an excellent opportunity for students to **check their own work** and the work of their classmates because the product itself is something that can be presented, edited, and presented again. In my experience, there is much to be gained from presenting (or better yet, having classmates who did not write the script act it out) multiple times: having students watch the work of their classmates multiple times fosters curiosity about what the writer(s) changed, what he/she/they kept the same, and what they could do in the future to make it even better, and also promotes accountability and investment from each student.
 * Playwriting to Teach All Writing user:kala9 **

There are many benefits to teaching playwriting, but because it is so different than the writing students are generally asked to do, it will likely pose some challenges. One activity that may help to get the students writing meaningful dialogue is having them **record and write down** a conversation they overhear verbatim. They will likely find that people use //um// and //like// and non-word sounds an overwhelming number of times in conversation, which provides a foundation for discussing authentic dialogue compared to the dialogue we see in novels (which is similar to the dialogue we strive for in playwriting), and even compared to the academic language found in textbooks.