Today Diana Noonan came by and saw me using bWT. She didn’t like it. She said that the story we wrote together was more about production and critical thinking and so did not go along with what we in DPS know CI to be. I had to agree, but I am still going to use the hell out of bWT because it is so easy to do and the kids and I like doing it. Diana then asked me why I was writing in the first place and again pointed out that I was focusing on structure in the form of the class story being projected while it was being created on the LCD. I told her that we had to do the end of year exit testing on writing so we were practicing. She suggested a way to practice writing that is probably better than bWT in terms of gains, mainly because it involves more direct involvement of the kids. I’m going to call it kWT, since Diana credited one of our super strong young TPRS/CI Spanish teachers in DPS, Katherine Kuypers, with creating it. Thank you Katherine! Here it is combined with some of the details from bWT, so the information will overlap somewhat, with the new (kWT) information in red:
1. Students write 4 to 6 sentences – or any number you want – from a prompt: in the first step of this template we give a prompt – an image – to the students in paper form (we need the document camera for the second step so for this step the images must be copied and distributed but one set of 35 copies can be used for all our classes) and ask them to write just 4 to 6 sentences in the present tense about the image, or 8 to 12 sentences if they are in level 2. I allow them to refer to various writing charts around the room, mainly the Word Wall with all those verbs on it, but also a butcher block chart full of conjunctions/connecting words (absolutely key in writing stories), plus a chart full of prepositions, and there is one that tells what happens when a preposition runs into an article (not important except for grammar addicts who are not yet fully recovered from their previous years of teaching from a textbook).
2. We then use R and D to talk about the image in L2: in the second step of this suggested CI writing template, which lasts about five minutes. We just use R and D to talk about the image with the kids. They have their own sentences in front of them as something to offer to the growing group discussion about the image. In the R and D about the picture, we just make stuff up. An idea for a group story often begins to form in this step, during this R and D. We ask the kids to name the characters – all stories, no matter how simple, must have characters in them and it is a lot easier for the students to write if they have named the people in the image. The purpose of this R and D step is to bathe the minds of the kids in sound – the auditory reps set up good strong conections for the writing. Kids who haven’t heard (and read) the language much are vastly underprepared for writing.
3. After a few minutes of that, we go through the following steps with our kids:
- Reading of a Document: We take a text from one of the stronger students and put it under the document camera. We begin to asking the students to quietly read the text to see if the text communicates ideas, stressing that that is the main purpose of the exercise. We praise the student for communicating ideas in the target language.
- Group Editing of the Document: We then try to draw the attention of the kids to any repeating errors in the text. This could include 1. third person plural agreement errors, 2 adjective agreement errors, 3. object pronoun or adjective location errors. In short, we try to point out recurring errors in a conceptual way, looking for patterns.
- Pair Share Editing: We then ask students to pair up and compare their own writing – their two writing samples – with each other, looking for errors similar to those just discussed. The students silently critique each other’s work in that way with the original document still up on the document camera. The students circle or highlight errors that are similar to the original document, but in their partner’s work. [Note: This is a good step to use when being observed, because meaningful pair share work is rare in TPRS/CI classes, so if a badge walks in with a checklist, use this.] IT IS IN THIS PAIR SHARE EDITING TASK THAT THE KEY TO GROWTH IN OUR STUDENTS’ WRITING LIES.
- Pair Share Editing (cont.): After students compare and critique each other’s writing, highlighting or circling errors similar to those discussed in the original document in step (b) above, the student returns the paper to its writer and a discussion of both pieces of writing ensues between the two students.
- Adding of Transition Words: After the pair share work, the teacher asks where some transition words might go. Any document created by any student can be used in this part of the template – you can start with the original document provided by the first student or put some other writing up. In this step, the teacher need not/should not use the offending term “conjunctions”, but rather just encourage the class to find some places to add words like first, next, then, afterwards, suddenly, now, later, finally, etc.
- Adding of Descriptors: In the same way, we next ask the kids to look at the text and add to it some details, by saying to them, “Can we answer when this happened?” or “Can we answer how this happened?” or “Can we answer what color the X was?” and things like that, with the goal of expanding the text via adverbs and adjectives, time and weather expressions, etc. This is because good writing always has lots of describing words in it.
In this way, using a static image, we begin to teach our students how to write a story by themselves, which is what we in Denver Public Schools now require our second year students to do for their summative (end of year) assessments.
One more point: One good thing is that this template eats up gobs of time, so people struggling with CI input as stories and R and D reading can just get some soft circling practice with the text the class creates in step 2 above while getting the kids into some group work that is effective. Doing this can be a boon to those in TPRS pain – both bWT and kWT are good R&R from the TPRS/CI input wars.