You will want to remind your writers to draw on editing strategies you taught ear- lier. Before, presumably, you emphasized writing quickly, giving tricky words their best try, and moving on. You have probably already taught kids to use words they know to help them spell unfamiliar words. You’ll want to keep referring to these strategies throughout January, not just at the end of the unit when your children are getting ready to publish. Once an editing strategy is introduced, it should become part of kids’ automatic ways of working. In teaching editing, tell children that their texts are going to teach important information to their readers and thus need to be clear and accurate. How can readers learn about the topic if the writer’s words are misspelled?
By now your kids will have studied many spelling patterns and high-frequency words through word sorts and the word wall. Certainly you will want to teach kids specifically how to use the word wall when they are working “on the run.” Never assume that just because the chart or word wall is there, your kids will automati- cally use it! During the editing phase of this unit, you may want to teach your kids explicitly that when they use the word wall, they will find it helpful to look at the whole word, take a pretend “photograph” of it, and then write the entire word as best they can without peeking. They should try notto look at and copy the word one letter at a time—words are learned by practicing the whole word. This time of year is also a good time to do a quick informal assessment by looking across kids’ inde- pendent writing to see which high-frequency words many kids continue to mis- spell. Even if these words are already on the word wall, you may revisit them again and again until most of your children have begun to spell them correctly in their independent writing.
This unit is a good time to teach children to use commas to offset definitions of words in context: “Rings, two circular handlebars hanging on ropes from the ceiling, require a huge amount of upper-body strength.” This is also the perfect time to revisit paragraphing of new ideas. Remind children when and where to use paragraphs to signal a new idea. In addition, students are ready to investigate abstract vocabulary that advances an idea by signaling agreement (in addition, furthermore), comparing or contrasting a viewpoint (however, on the other hand), or interjecting (or, yet).
A CURRICULARPLAN FOR THEWRITINGWORKSHOP, GRADE3, 2011–2012 81 © 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points
Before embarking on this unit and deciding on the trajectory you will follow, you will need to assess your students and to study what it is they need to know. You can use an on-demand writing assessment to better understand your students’ level of compe- tency with informational writing. You will probably want to evaluate the on-demand writing using the RWP Informational Writing Continuum. See Assessing Informa- tional Writing (page 75) for the exact prompt that will get your kids writing and give you a sense of where their skills are already strong and where they need more sup- port. Level 6 of the continuum aligns with the Common Core State Standards for third grade, but you will want to gear your teaching just above where your students actually are, perhaps using the continuum to guide your planning.
Of course, your assessment will be ongoing, not just at the start of this unit but at many points along the way, and you will use what you learn from studying your stu- dents’ work to inform how you progress through the work outlined in the unit. The teaching points offered here are just one suggested way the unit could go. Your ulti- mate pathway will be based on observations you make of your students and assess- ments of their work.
In Part One of the unit, the goal is for students to generate a great many notebook entries, first generating topics they know a great deal about, then planning for possible chapters they might write in their books about those topics. Study your students’ writ- ing for evidence of strategy use and for volume. The goal is for students to write pro- ductively, move independently from entry to entry, and use a variety of strategies, such as writing possible back-cover blurbs or making lists of possible chapters for their books. If your students are slow to generate ideas, you may want to spend more time teaching strategies for choosing topics of expertise, either in small-group or whole- class sessions. If students are not writing with fluency and volume, you may decide to use a timer and call out mileposts: “By now, your hand should be flying down the page” or “By now you should have written half a page.” You may need to coach a small group of students to write more quickly after diagnosing what is slowing them down. Then, you will turn your teaching toward helping your writers choose a seed idea for their books. It is important that they have a variety of topics from which to choose. If students struggle to choose a topic, they may need one-on-one coaching.
In the second part of the unit, you will support students as they plan how their chapters might go, using text structures that should be familiar to them from writing- to-learn work in social studies (see the TCRWP 2011–2012 Content-Area Curricular Calendar for specific teaching). In addition to choosing and possibly further focusing a topic, it is crucial at this point that your students have a strong sense of the subcate- gories that will fill the pages of their books. You will be helping students decide which chapters have enough information and which either need bolstering or, if that’s not possible, need to be cut.
In the third part of the unit, your students will be drafting their informational books and may need a different level of support from the one outlined in this unit,
A CURRICULARPLAN FOR THEWRITINGWORKSHOP, GRADE3, 2011–2012 82 © 2011 by Lucy Calkins. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
depending on their competence with expository writing. If your students have prac- ticed different text structures in social studies and find them within reach, you will probably be able to use these teaching points. If your students need more support, you may decide to proceed more slowly, reteaching (or perhaps teaching for the first time) some of the text structures (like compare–contrast, problem–solution, pros–cons) that are mentioned in the content-area calendar.
The way you support your students during revision will depend on what you observe in your students’ drafts. We recommend that you once again call on the RWP Informational Writing Continuum. Study your students’ drafts through the lenses of structure, elaboration, and craft and identify the most crucial lessons within each of those categories to teach right away. During all parts of the unit but particularly this one, you will want to ensure that your teaching supports students’ independence. Your teaching will support revision, but your writers may move from drafting sections to revising and back to drafting. Study your students as they work for evidence that they are using a repertoire of strategies and that they are making choices about what to work on next.
As you head into the final part of this unit, note how you can help your students edit themselves effectively. They will likely be using high-level vocabulary, and some may need additional spelling support, perhaps in small groups. Notice common punctuation errors and teach your students to avoid them, possibly through mid- workshop teaching points or minilessons.