How to Effectively Improve Writing in High School

Select 2 reasons WHY students struggle with literacy skills. *Low skills*Well-being *Nutrition*Limited English *Low motivation*Teacher expertise *Technology*Poverty

 Will cause 3,000 students to drop out of high school each day  Without sophisticated reading and writing skills, students often fail to achieve in ALL content areas – including math, science, and social studies  Teachers need on-going support to stay current on trends and share findings from their classrooms with other teacher-learners

 What percentage of 9 th and 10 th Palmer students test below proficient on CSAP?: 10 %25 %40% 15%35 %50%

 60% score proficient or advanced  9% scored Advanced on CSAP  36% take Higher Level English Courses Grades 9 (36%), Grade 10 (35%), Grades11 (38%)  40% of PHS are Below Proficiency in Writing Portions of CSAP...

Providing concrete “thinking models” Using research-based strategies Allowing for differentiation Using common language across content areas Using predictable routines Assessing with student-generated/modeled rubrics Give examples of how you currently use these WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) strategies with students?

 Helps students by providing concrete models for “what has to happen in the mind”  Provides writers with specific, concrete strategies (combats blank page/blank mind syndrome)  Allows for differentiation of instruction depending on student need or ability (this could look like...)

 PLAN  P ay attention to your ideas  L ist main ideas  A dd supporting details  N umber your ideas

WRITE  W ork from your plan to develop thesis (main idea)  R emember your goals  I nclude transition words or phrase for each paragraph or new idea  T ry to use different kinds of sentences  E xciting, interesting words used to describe

 Pick  Pick a topic  Pick your audience  Pick the appropriate textual format given the topic, purpose and audience  List  List ideas about the topic  This is to be used for sentence generation  Evaluate  Evaluate your list of ideas  Determine if it is complete  Plan the best way of organizing/sequencing the ideas that will be used to generate supporting sentences  Activate  Activate with a topic sentence to introduce the paragraph  Students are instructed how to write short and simple topic sentences that will “activate” the written idea for the reader.  Supply  Supply supporting sentences  Use the list generated for supporting sentence ideas  Gradually enhance the idea by generating clarifying or “expansion” sentences.  End  End with a concluding sentence to summarize the paragraph and hold the ideas together.

 Your participation & candid comments are valuable!  Prompts + classroom practices in basket  Please JOT the following PLUS/DELTAS from today’s PD  Please DOT the following Continuums  Where you are currently in terms of classroom writing  Where your comfort level with writing strategies currently falls **Thanks for RETURNING PENCILS TO BASKET**