Blog - Growing Writers

Second grade pilot – what happened?

June 29, 2018 by sallyberg

If you were following my Second Grade pilot this past school year, you will notice a long silence starting in January. That’s when my dad had his first stroke and parts of my life went on hold. He had another stroke in January and then a third at the end of February, and died on March 30.

April, May, and June were for healing myself, being there for my mom, and doing the best I could to end the school year on a strong and positive note. I was very close to my dad and watching what he went through was hell. Plus, his first stroke was on the very day that I had a fantastic meeting with a school principal in Tenino, Washington, and was feeling great about Growing Writers. Part of me was terrified about another bad thing happening if I experienced more success. The unconscious mind was saying, “Yeah, be careful how much good you allow in your life because every time something good happens, something bad will follow.”

Then one day my sister asked me to clarify “good” and “bad”. I realized that my dad passing away was not necessarily bad. It was hard, but it was also having an effect on our family in some positive ways. My mom was learning new skills like how to put gas in the car and handle finances, and making some new friends. My dad’s illness and death showed us how many true friends he had and how wonderful and generous people can be. It was forcing me to look at how I want to live the rest of my life and things I wanted to change.

Also, putting the meeting that made me feel good in the “good” box could be untrue as well. Maybe it created false hope. Maybe it would lead to nothing.

By the time I had let go of this good/bad mindset and was ready to start blogging, marketing, and improving Growing Writers again, it was time for report cards and wrapping up the year.

If you are planning to do the 2018-19 Second Grade pilot, it will be available at the end of August. Second grade teachers, please try it out and read my posts about using it starting in October! I’m already looking forward to Year 5 of work on second grade. You will love how it is coming together.

Second Grade Pilot – List activities and Book 2 Lessons 1-5

November 30, 2017 by sallyberg

I hope you enjoyed (or are enjoying) the List activities. Since I’m learning and changing things as I go, I saw a need to modify the writing pages. Instead of Sentence 1, Sentence 2 and Sentence 3, I modified the page to say Who sentence, What sentence, Where sentence, When sentence, Why sentence. For three days, I chose a List, students picked an item on that list, and we wrote sentences using the method I’ll tell you about here. Unfortunately, all their work went home at conferences so I don’t have anything to show for that bit of writing.

Let me know if you need a copy of the redesigned writing page. It was a fabulous success and using it will really help you do Lessons 1-5 in Book 2.

Please read the whole post even if you’re not to Book 2 yet. It will help you know how to prepare your kids.

Now, I’m going to tell you to ignore some of the directions I wrote for the 2017-18 Pilot. Instead of beginning Lessons 1-5 with the conventions page (as the directions say), you are going to start with everyone opening their writing books to the creative side, which begins “My topic today is ____”.

In Lessons 1-5, you will continue to pick the list each day that students will choose an item from. For example, you might choose the list of Animals. Students may choose an animal from the list for their topic. Everyone will be writing about a different animal, but nobody can choose from a different list. The reason for this is that you will be guiding sentences 1,2, and 3. It is easier to guide everyone along similar lines if they are on similar topics.

I had some students who did not get to every list, so if, for example, the Animal list is blank, just have that kid pick any animal to write about.

It is important to keep this lesson moving along at a brisk pace. Kids who often dawdle will need to keep up. Do one section at a time – My topic, Sentence 1, Sentence 2, and Sentence 3.

The pacing might sound like this: “Everyone, now that you have your lists and your writing books ready, find your Animal list. [give about 30 seconds and comment aloud about who is finding their list quickly] Choose one animal from your list and write it on the line at the very top of your page [as you show this on the document camera]. You have about one minute to get this done.”

Don’t go on to the next part until every single student has finished the first line. I’m not at all shy about pointing out who is dawdling “We’re waiting for Alex and Cody.” I really don’t mind if all eyes are on these two. The message underneath my message is “I expect everyone to be on task today.” I’m going to make sure the peer pressure is working to my advantage.

Now, for the next three sections (Questions 1,2, and 3) the writing time will vary but stick with the rule. Nobody moves to the next question until everyone is finished with the current one. However, students may begin on their pictures in between questions.

You will decide what Question 1 will focus on. If you’re starting with a Why question, students could think about why they like this animal. Give everyone about 5-6 minutes to write their sentences. (This is approximate, I really didn’t time it) Model a whole sentence so students don’t begin with “Because…” Walk around and help kids who need it. Hopefully the dawdlers will not want All Eyes and they will not want to stop the whole class from moving on.

Do the same with sentences 2 and 3. You won’t tell them which type of sentence it will be (who what, where, when , why) until you get there. This will deter anyone from getting ahead, and it adds a bit of suspense. When it is time for the next sentence, students who have been drawing pictures will need to stop and pay attention again.

If you choose Where, give students some ideas to help them get started, for example “Where does this animal live?” or “Where have you seen this animal?” (it could be that you saw it on TV or in a book).

Use the peer pressure, All Eyes, The Whole Class is Counting on You, to finish in a timely manner. Walk around and if you have kids who have rushed and been sloppy, they can use the extra few minutes to do the sentence over. Some students will have a good head start on a picture – in pencil only, no crayons.

Now, gather the group and begin the lesson as outlined in the teacher directions. The only difference is, everyone will have a huge start on the creative side, needing only to add more words if desired and more to the picture.

These lessons are rather long and you probably won’t have time to share, but that’s OK because after Lesson 5 there is a plan for students to edit and share their favorite writing from 1-5. More on that next time.

Here are some pictures, which will probably be worth more than the 857 words I just wrote.

Frontload your writing year

November 19, 2017 by sallyberg

A second grade class writes animal reports in the fall. As kids start to write the teacher sees lots of run-on sentences, misuse of apostrophes, and misspellings of common words. This is getting in the way of looking at the content of the writing. If you were this teacher, what would you do?

You could stop everyone and do a big lesson on run-on sentences and apostrophes, which you probably weren’t planning on, and don’t have the time for. The risk here is having a lot of kids on cognitive overload as you cram them with new information.

You could decide to modify the project and give everyone fill-in-the-blanks worksheets on their animal so they don’t have to write so much. This would help, but it would lower the level of writing practice and diminish the experience of real writing.

You could do a week of editing. Since second graders don’t yet see all their own writing mistakes or those of others, this means a lot of work on the teacher’s end. Do you have a couple of hours to spare? OK, great! But just keep in mind that even when students fix mistakes, it doesn’t mean they have learned strategies and rules for preventing them.

Or, maybe you just decide to let let all the mistakes go because, after all, they are only second graders. I know that none of my readers would choose this option, because you always have a high standard for success!

Well, how about preventing this whole problem?

How? By frontloading all the skills you know will be needed. Work on sentence writing skills and punctuation skills for a few months and get your class excited with the knowledge that they are building up to some big writing projects. When sentences have been mastered, do lots of practice with writing good paragraphs and adding details. Practice things like neat handwriting, writing to the end of the line before starting a new line, and spacing.

Each grade level has skills that should be frontloaded during the first half of the year. If you are teaching kindergarten, handwriting and basic drawing should be priorities before doing other writing projects. For first grade, handwriting, sound spelling, spacing, and some writing stamina should be firmly in place before giving important assignments.

For those of you using Growing Writers, this means focus on Growing Writers for the first half of the year! Spend all the writing time you have on it, 3-5 days a week. First graders should ideally be finishing Book 4 by the end of January, because these are the basic writing skills that will enable them to do class writing projects in reading, science, and social studies. These four books cover all the letters for handwriting. If you are still on Book 4 in March or April, it means that handwriting is still being introduced very late in the year.

For second grade, Book 1, the Lists activity, and Book 2 should ideally be completed by mid-January. This work, done thoroughly, will set the tone and the standard for all the writing done for the rest of the year.

Kindergartners should ideally be done with Books 1 and 2 by Winter Break, giving them a good start on fine motor control and handwriting.

Here’s an example.

When I taught first grade, I finished Book 4 by the end of January. We always took a field trip to the local Children’s Museum in early February. On our return that day, I would give students a piece of paper with lines (we called it hat-belt-foot lines) and simply say “Write words about what you liked about the Hands-On Museum.” Up until this time they had only written in their Growing Writers workbooks, where pictures were always allowed after a few lines of writing. This was a whole blank page! At first I would get some looks like, “Are you kidding me???” And then, magic. Every student, even the lowest performers, wrote about the field trip with perfect handwriting, spacing, and fairly understandable sound spelling. I didn’t expect punctuation because I hadn’t taught that skill, but every skill I had taught was there. What a proud bunch of kids I had as they handed in their work. If we had chosen to edit and do a final draft, the editing would have been on spelling and punctuation – fairly easy for the amount they wrote. You can see some examples of these on this website under Results.

If you started late in the year, or haven’t prioritized teaching basic writing skills, resolve to start earlier next year and prioritize skills over projects. You will be amazed at how easy every other writing assignment becomes later on.

Frontload skills, frontload skills, frontload skills.

You will have a more successful classroom. Guaranteed.

No more “Do your best”

October 22, 2017 by sallyberg

Yes, you are hearing me correctly.

Don’t tell children to “do their best”.

There are three reasons why teachers say this (that I can think of), and two of the reasons aren’t good. The not-good reasons are…

We know that what we’re asking is a little beyond what many can actually do with confidence.
The assignment has no clear criteria for success.

Let’s think about the first reason.

We are usually uttering those words, “Do your best!”, with hope in our voices, when we send children off to work independently. The question is, are they going off to complete work that they have seen repeatedly modeled? Have they had lots of exposure to this kind of assignment? Have they had plenty of guided practice? Do they have all of the preliminary skills needed to do a good job?

Something I remember from Anita Archer’s training last summer is that it’s not “I do it, we do it, you do it.” It’s “I do it, we do it, we do it, we do it, we do it, you do it.” Guided practice is where the learning really sinks in. We often think kids are ready for independent work when they are not.

Instead of “Do your best”, you will be saying, “Your work should look like the examples we have done together over the last few days.” If you have taught it well, there will be no confusion, no hands in the air, no sense of impending failure.

Now, for the second not-good reason, which is, not holding students to a high standard.

When you say, “Do your best”, who gets to decide what the best is? Yup, you have just given complete power to the student to set the standard for success. This isn’t exactly setting children up for success in real life.

An example of this is how handwriting is traditionally taught. Children are taught to make a row of letters, told to “try your best”, and then circle the best letter. The result looks something like this:

I’m reading this 6-year-old’s mind: “My teacher wants me to make a lot of letters, but she’ll accept anything as long as I have one good one in each row. I don’t really feel like working that hard right now so I’ll just say I did my best.”

Here’s an example of a child who knows there is success criteria:

Here’s what’s going on in her mind: “I know my teacher is going to look carefully at my work and I’ll have to re-do anything messy. I think I’ll just do it right so I don’t have to erase and start over.”

Which student is going to get the most out of the lesson? And, the other interesting thing is, the first sweet teacher who was being so nice but not making her students work as hard, reported to me that her students were bored with handwriting. If the game is too easy to win, it gets boring. Up the ante, expect more and better, have higher standards, and children will find anything a fun challenge.

Are you wondering what my third – and good – reason is for saying “Do your best”?

Sometimes I give a pre-assessment to find out how much my class knows before I begin teaching a skill or topic. In this case, I explain to students that I know there will be some things on the assessment that they will not know, but I’m getting information on what I need to teach them. I say, “Do your best so I can see what I need to teach.”

Let me know if any of this is helpful to you. Or if you can think of any other reasons why teachers use this famous phrase!