English Language Learning (ELL) Specialists
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Writing Strategies
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Writing Strategies
Session 3 is all about STRATEGIES!
We will discuss and share resources in our next session (January 17) but feel free to start the discussion now by commenting below. We have previously started a padlet as our strategy collection method, this could be something we continue to develop and will help with organization. Add your resources here!
Below are some questions to guide your thinking and discussion of writing strategies we can use in all our classrooms.
- What are some effective writing strategies you use to help students generate ideas and plan their writing? How do you scaffold the pre-writing process in your classroom?
- How do you teach students to effectively use graphic organizers, such as mind maps or storyboards, to organize their thoughts and structure their writing?
- What strategies or scaffolds do you employ to support students in developing strong thesis statements or main arguments in their writing?
- How do you teach students to incorporate evidence and support their ideas with relevant examples or textual references? What scaffolds do you provide to help them with this process?
- How do you teach students to revise and edit their writing effectively? What strategies or scaffolds do you provide to help them improve their grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure?
- What role does peer feedback and collaboration play in the writing process? How do you structure peer review activities to provide constructive feedback and support students in revising their work?
- How do you differentiate writing instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners in your classroom? What strategies or scaffolds do you use to support struggling writers and challenge advanced writers?
- What digital tools or resources do you utilize to enhance writing instruction? How do these technologies support students’ writing skills and provide additional scaffolding?
- How do you assess students’ writing skills and progress? What types of formative and summative assessments do you employ to evaluate their organization, coherence, use of evidence, and overall writing proficiency?
You can share your thoughts and resources below as a comment in preparation for our January Session! By adding to our padlet, we can ‘bookmark’ our strategy bank for use now and beyond!
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This discussion was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
Andy Wong.
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4 Replies
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Discussion from breakout room:
– Set clear expectations for students with student-facing rubrics, checklist, etc. with lots of visuals
– Scaffolded planning with organizers, mind map, jot on post-its, etc.
– Oral planning before writing, talking out ideas with a partner, dramatizing stories before writing, etc.
– Think, tell, sketch (with labels), write
– Bilingual resources (word banks) with vocabulary to use in writing
– Sentence starters and guiding questions when asking students to give peer feedback
– Have an assigned writing buddy so students get comfortable giving peer feedback
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Our discussion group spoke about the following themes:
– Opinion Writing: planning papers for organising ideas.
– Writing: sample papers, analysis, then “I Do, You Do, We Do”.
– grammar translation method, valuable meaningful activities (optimal input), dictation.
– Writing remediation feedback loop: students write then teacher moves forward by analysing student writing and making bespoke classes. -
Talia, Stephanie, Haddon, Marie
1 and 2. Graphic organizers are good for all writers for planning work. Beginning with images can sometimes help get ideas flowing before the writing process begins. Approaches can differ depending on what kind of writing is being taught.
3. Depending on the age of students, the focus can be between formatting and the arguments themselves. In the lower grades, formatting is more of a priority. Mentor texts also play a large role in guiding students in the right direction.
4. Providing a basic structure OREO (opinion, reason, example, opinion) for students to follow.
5. For younger students–providing 2 stars and a wish. Handy for pointing out punctuation, spelling, and other early errors.
6. Peer feedback and individual conferences.
7. Scaffolding is extremely important to help support language learning students and one way it is provided is through providing a variety of differentiated texts.
8. PebbleGo.com (a paid site)
9. Canva for assessing writing 3 times a year.
