Fruit Salad - Yummy, yummy!

What do you do with apples and oranges? Make fruit salad!!!

I’ve been in the “kitchen” for the past three days as eight reflective, hard-working, and motivated teachers worked to meld Step Up to Writing strategies with the 6 Traits assessment framework. (See the links on the right for more info on these resources individually). I think we were somewhat successful (based upon the daily evaluations) and I am excited at what these enthusiastic teachers might be doing this fall. (Stay tuned to this blog as they share!)

I feel strongly that to teach writing you must be a writer – our pens were moving this week! We created character sketches based upon a bag of artifacts, wrote complaint letters to businesses, and reflected on the mentor text in our life. We wrote. We shared. We revised.

And we left with a “floor plan” design to work with other teachers in identifying the writing activities that will be used in content areas. (Thanks again Richard and Harvey!) I hope that it was worth the energy for these teachers to construct their own meaning and appreciate the risks they took in sharing their thoughts and words. Stay tuned!