+ Secondary Literacy 4 Informal Writing Secondary Literacy 4 Domenica Vilhotti Literacy Specialist

+ DO NOW Journal Think for a minute and reflect on how your Before, During, and After reading strategies went this week in your classrooms: How did the BDA activities support comprehension? What planning or management pitfalls did you (or did you not) anticipate? What would you do differently next time? Now, isolate and explore one essential Teaching Tip about one BDA strategy you used that you’d like to share with your fellow CMs.

+ What Did You Write? Whip Around What’s your one essential Teaching Tip?

+ Agenda DO NOW Introduction New Material: Informal Writing Activities - Jigsaw Exemplar LP Analysis: what does Writing to Learn Look Like? Workshop: Planning a lesson integrating informal writing Close/Journals

+ Why Are We Learning This? Informal writing typically involves short, quick, daily assignments that give students opportunities to process what they have learned in writing Informal Writing: Builds comprehension Summarizes, synthesizes, evaluates & extends learning When to use it? As frequently as possible – ideally once per lesson

+ How does this connect to what I’ve already learned? The Journal – session DO NOWs Comprehension activities BDA strategies Doing the strategy is never the objective

+ Informal vs. Formal Writing Informal Writing Formal Writing

+ Think-Write-Pair-Share: what is it? The Pitch Accessible & easy Deep processing Makes “think time” active Pairing: confidence & correction Accountability

+ Think-Write- Pair-Share: let’s practice it Journal Response: List and define as many activities as you can that support reading comprehension that also involve informal writing. Synthesize: how would you describe the connections between reading and writing? Write for 4; pair & compare for 3

+ Informal Writing Strategies Informal writing: short, quick, daily assignments that give students opportunities to process what they have learned in writing. Purpose: evaluate for content, rather than form, style or mechanics Types: just like with reading comprehension strategies, and pre-, during- & post- reading activities, all use specific Bloom’s Taxonomy thinking strategies

+ Knowledgeable CAASE Bloom’s Taxonomy

+ JIGSAW: informal writing activities Content-area groups Get together with your content group (we may need to break this up a bit). Read about your assigned strategy, answer questions at top of handout, and participate in the practice. On chart paper, be prepared to “sell” your strategy to CMs in other contents. 15 minutes

+ Sample Lesson Discussion CM Binder page 474 : “Sample Lesson Overview” & “Handout – Lesson Analysis” Jot down in the margins: What makes the integration of informal writing and instruction particularly effective in this lesson? How does the lesson help students think critically and process what they are learning? Complete the Lesson Analysis Handout Take 8 minutes

+ Sample Lesson Questions What strategy was used before, during or after the lesson? What comprehension strategy was utilized? What was the purpose of the lesson?

+ Partner Journals/ Written Conversation 1. Why is informal writing important? 2. What strategies would you want to try that were just discussed? Why? 3. What would you need to get students ready for these strategies?

+ Debrief What was written conversations like for you? Management concerns? Opportunities? Idea of safety

+ They wrote – now what? Go on. Trust that the writing has served its purpose. Give students a chance to ask questions (pairs, small groups or whole class) Class discussion and/or presentation of counterpoints so that students may clear up misunderstanding and revise writing Collect the papers, read and respond to a few Award points for completion and content only, not mechanics!

+ Workshop: let’s put it to use Revisit a lesson Incorporate a type of informal writing Pre, during or post-reading stage Output on page 477 Take 15 minutes

+ From Handout Guidelines From Handout Content area Objective What is the purpose/type of lesson? Informal writing strategy you’ll integrate Will it be pre, during or post-reading? What comprehension strategy will it target? Why do you think this strategy will be effective for this lesson? What role will it fulfill in the lesson cycle?

+ What did we learn? What is the purpose of informal writing? What is one strategy you’re considering using? How so?

+ Our bigger purpose To help our students improve comprehension, they must write.