#TCRWP – Day 2 Writing Institute 2015

TCRWP Highlights from Day 1 and 2 with Celena Larkey (Develop Toolkits to Support Narrative Writing – Advanced K-2)

Quotes:

“In five days, you will get a good start. You will not be able to say, ‘It’s done!’”

“During this week, we will make and use tools to lift writers’ process, qualities, and behaviors daily.”

Share – “Pay it forward” – share with partner so you can have the idea as well.

Teacher writing folder is not conferring toolkit.

Toolkit is my “wingman” so I can have it if I need it.

A memoir is not just person, place or time because it also includes either:

• Conflicting emotion time
• Turning point times

Planning – blank page – try them on and discard (“don’t have to be married to the page”)

Even when planning in 2^nd grade: Say, sketch, and then Picture, picture, picture.

Planning – Make it quick; don’t make it good!

Scaffold – only if needed. Don’t have to have something to “leave behind every time.”

Check to see if “it’s sticking first”… If yes, good to go. If not, use scaffold.”

Our schedule for the week:

Monday – narrative

Tuesday – Launching/ Small Moment

Wednesday – Authors as Mentors/ Lessons from the Masters

Thursday – Realistic Fiction

Friday – Fairy Tale and other (adaptations)

If you choose to continue on, you will learn more about:

A. Primary Writing Process (K-2) and Volume of Writing

B. Tiny Topic Journal

C. Marking up a Model Text

Thank you for continuing on .  .  . 

A. Primary Writing Process

1. Gather ideas
2. Plan your ideas
3. Write your ideas

Teach how to do the first three steps with ease and automaticity but be mindful of these three parts so students can practice all them! These go very quickly as students will blink and say, “I am done!“

Written pieces are the beginning of the process. You do NOT designate a day for gathering ideas, a second day for planning or a third day for writing. And you also don’t learn how to do this in one day and then you are done and you don’t ever do it again. Think about learning something new like “how to shoot a basket.” You, the learner will NEED lots of practice in order to shoot baskets well. Similarly, pieces by beginning writers will not be sophisticated.

What is the expected volume of writing for primary students?

This should be a focus for primary teachers!

Grade Level	Number of Pieces /Each Week
Kindergarten	5 new pieces
First	3-5 new pieces
Second	2-4 new pieces

4. Revise a lot (Exception in K, if child cannot read back to you – no point in revision)

Revision (re- vision) want to see it with fresh eyes (or new perspective) so it sometimes means the child is starting over. A student needs to revise on many drafts before moving on in the process.

What do K-2 students revise for?

Readability (Language / conventions)

Structure

Development

When writing has additional pages, cross outs, revisions start tipping to the side of quality! At this stage behaviors would include: “I can go back, get a revision pen and revise” or “when I start a new book, I would apply my revision in the air.”

Revision can happen on the first day by adding to the picture, a page, or adding on to the ending. At the primary level ADD is synonymous to revision. Students are not really “taking out” much.

AFTER MANY, MANY revised pieces, THEN

5. Choose 1 piece to “fancy up”! (this is not visible in the picture/it was at the bottom of the chart)
6. Further Revise
7. Publish

Stop / Pause / Think

How does this process match up to the process that your K-2 students use?

What is different?

Where might you begin your study of the writing process?

B. What is a “Tiny Topic Journal”?

• Tiny topic notebook
• “There is narrative in anything (not the Pulitzer), but yes a story!”
• Tools for oral verbal work
• “I tell a part, you tell a part”
• Small Moment writing ideas will be recorded here.

When might you consider using a “Tiny Topic Journal”?

• Are your kids writing a summary of their actions?
• Are your kids just recording information?
• Are your kids just making a list?

You will need to model how you observe life around you and how you pull ideas from “everyday life” to record in your “Tiny Topic Journal”? This could also be to jot down “current” topics for those of us who are older and tend to revert back to “when I was a child” for our small moments. We need to show students how we find ideas as we live our lives.

Stop / Pause / Think

Do you have students who need to work on “observing” life around them for ideas?

How would a “Tiny Topic Journal” or “Seed Journal” be helpful?

C. Toolkit Text

For the purpose of this work this week a Toolkit Text is that one text, “one book that I use”, that I can pull everything from for conferring. It’s not my “model and teach” stack of books. It’s one book that I have marked up with EVERY single thing that I can teach on the page! The stickies stay on the pages!

The toolkit Text that Celena shared was Goal!

Mentor Text Tips

• Paperback
• Put in toolkit

Make mentors

• Read like a reader
• Read like a writer
• Mark it up and keep in toolkit
• Don’t use your best literature!

The table that we are using looks like this and we used Henry and Mudge and the Happy Cat for our mentor text markup.

Henry and Mudge and the Happy Cat – Mentor Text for K-2
What do we see?	What do we call it?	Why would we use it?	Who else tried it?
p. 5 title	question	Create interest
p.5 “and”	Repeated word	structure
p. 5 “Henry”	Repeated word	S – and to show relationship to Henry
p. 5 ‘	apostrophe	Possessive – show relationship/connections
p. 5 Henry, father, Mudge	Characters	Introduce characters
p. 5 “one night” “watching TV”	setting	Jump into story

I would have all these items marked in my book. They would be color coded by: structure, development, and conventions. And because I work with teachers of many grades I would also have those ideas in mind that I would consider using for an author study of Cynthia Rylant with upper elementary students that MIGHT have these additional boxes for this page.

Henry and Mudge and the Happy Cat – Mentor Text for UPPER ELEMENTARY
What do we see?	What do we call it?	Why would we use it?	Who else tried it?
p. 5 Chapter title	Hook	Create suspense, as a form of foreshadowing, if we haven’t seen the title
p. 5- 3 characters	Build relationship between the 3 characters	Develop theory of characters – how they will interact
p. 4 picture of family	Text/picture match	As a part of “show, don’t tell”

The way this looks in my mentor text . . .

Seventeen words

Seventeen words and we found six things for K-2

Seventeen words and we found three additional things for grades 3-6+

Seventeen words from Cynthia Rylant

Structure – green; Development – pink; and Conventions – blue

Seventeen words

Rich and powerful!

Stop / Pause / Think

Do you have ONE mentor text marked up for your conferring toolkit?

How do you organize your “annotations” in your mentor text?

Thanks to Celena Larkey for this awesome learning at the 33^rd Writing Institute at TCRWP!  Errors in this blog are due to “old ears” and “lack of understanding” – not the fine, fine, fine quality of instruction!