Carol suggests that we talk about getting some ideas for writing. We don’t have many. It’s a good idea:
….when it comes to the baby steps of writing that eventually morph into the upper level writing, there are not many comments aside from timed writing. Could anyone comment on how and when they get their kids writing aside from reading, reading, and more reading, dictation, etc.?….
Both of us have been at this game a long time, chill, and over those years, as you say, writing output has received little attention beyond free writes. It is because for so many years we were totally focused on input. But then our kids got better and better and so it becomes natural to look at output in the form of writing in terms of specific techniques, much like we have done with the input skills. I brought in dictee in about 2003 and it’s been a good tool, but is there more?
Personally I have just lately been working with five “stations”. Trust me and you know it, I am an opponent of output in the first two years, so just to be clear I am doing this bc I must force output as per my employers. They are forcing me to force output (not Diana – we only weigh it at 15% of the overall district score but the kids still have to take it, and another summative output assessment in speaking, in April).
Long story short – there is so much data-gathering in my district that I have to play the game. So, ever the good employee, I put up butcher block type charts up two days ago. The charts are to help the kids write from a district prompt, a file that is projected up from my computer on the LCD, of four panels very much like the old AP exam images that a kid had to describe verbally. It is from our district writing assessment and Diana sends the file out to all of us. In Lincoln we use it to gather writing samples for the data machine that exists within our high school (we have to feed two monsters, locally and at the district level). The actual writing rubric that has taken years to finalize is a piece of art, in my opinion.
Anyway, that image of the kid going through his day from (9:45 a.m. in the first panel, sitting in a classroom with the kid next to him sleeping and the professor talking and his hand up in the air ends in the fourth panel with him relaxing at home at 8:30 p.m. after playing basketball during the day). There are so many details in the prompt that a kid could write many pages, but we only ask them to describe what they can. The goal is a story described through those four time frames with conjunctions glueing it all together. Without conjunctions, as we know, we don’t have much. Sentences with Spanish or English words don’t count. 10 to 12 nice French sentences gets them a 5 on the Lincoln scale and a 10-12 on the district scale, which corresponds to Intermediate Low or whatever, I don’t have the chart in front of me.
I did this yesterday and I am so happy I put it off for so long in this second year class, focusing on input only, esp. reading the last few months, bc the saved time from getting them writing too early was a good move from what I could see that I collected yesterday. It was a kind of proof that massive input provides nice healthy output over time.
Now, about those other big charts all over the room – they really helped them write. Think of it as a big open book writing test, with the nitty gritty of what they needed to write all over the room plainly visible to all on those charts. All the kids had to do really was look around the room and pull information into what they were writing. I should video the room instead of trying to describe it.
One buthcher block chart was full of conjunctions, one was full of prepositions, there was one that tells what happens when a preposition runs into an article (link below), of course there was the Word Wall full of verbs, and there was one with the subject pronouns on them (we can’t assume anything), and I think that’s it. The prepostiion/articles chart is on this site on the posters page under TPRS Resources:
https://benslavic.com/Posters/prepositions-articles-contractions.pdf
It’s funny, though, because after putting up all those charts, I don’t even think the kids used them that much – they didn’t seem to need them much. Of course, this writing idea is only a few days old, so it times well with your question, Carol.
One thing is for sure – if anyone is having trouble selling CI to snotty concrete sequential kids were to bail to this kind of writing, all the little left brainers in the class would come right into line bc they would think that finally they were “doing something” in their language class. So I will file this article under the “Bail Out Moves” category as well as the Writing category.
I look forward to reading what others are doing for specifics in producing writing output from their kids.