Writing Foundation Skills Common Core State Standards

1. Writing Foundation Skills Common Core State Standards Anita L. Archer, Ph.D. Archerteach@aol.com

2. Conventions of Standard English Anchor Standards. 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. 2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

3. 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. Kindergarten • Print many upper- and lowercase letters. • Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs. • Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes). • Understand and use question words (interrogatives) (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how). • Use the most frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with). • Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.

4. 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. First Grade • Print all upper- and lowercase letters. • Use common, proper, and possessive nouns. • Use singular and plural nouns with matching verbs in basic sentences (e.g., He hops; We hop). • Use personal, possessive, and indefinite pronouns (e.g., I, me, my; they, them, their; anyone, everything). • Use verbs to convey a sense of past, present, and future (e.g., Yesterday I walked home; Today I walk home; Tomorrow I will walk home).

5. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. First Grade f. Use frequently occurring adjectives. g. Use frequently occurring conjunctions (e.g., and, but, or, so, because). h. Use determiners (e.g., articles, demonstratives). i. Use frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., during, beyond, toward). j. Produce and expand complete simple and compound declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences in response to prompts.

6. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. Second Grade • Use collective nouns (e.g., group). • Form and use frequently occurring irregular plural nouns (e.g., feet, children, teeth, mice, fish). • Use reflexive pronouns (e.g., myself, ourselves). • Form and use the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs (e.g., sat, hid, told). • Use adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified. • Produce, expand, and rearrange complete simple and compound sentences (e.g., The boy watched the movie; The little boy watched the movie; The action movie was watched by the little boy.

7. 2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. Kindergarten • Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I. • Recognize and name end punctuation. • Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes). • Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound –letter relationships.

8. 2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. First Grade • Capitalize dates and names of people. • Use end punctuation for sentences. • Use commas in dates and to separate single words in a series. • Use conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns and for frequently occurring irregular words. • Spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonetic awareness and spelling conventions.

9. 2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. Second Grade • Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names. • Use commas in greetings and closing of letters. • Use an apostrophe to form contractions and frequently occurring possessives. • Generalize learned spelling patterns when writing words (e.g., cage – badge; boy – boil). • Consult reference materials, including beginning dictionaries, as needed to check and correct spellings.

10. Topics • Teaching Skills and Strategies • Writing Foundations • Handwriting • Letter Formation • Handwriting Fluency • Spelling • Spelling - Regular Words • Spelling - Irregular Words • Spelling rules • Sentences • Sentence Expansion • Sentence Combining • Punctuation and Capitalization Guidelines

11. Teaching Skills and Strategies • Emerging writers need: • Explicit instruction on writing skills and strategies • Opportunities to respond in lessons • Positive, corrective feedback on performance

12. Teaching Skills and Strategies • Model I do it. • Prompt We do it. • Check You do it.

13. Teaching Skills and Strategies • Model (I do it.) “My turn.” • Show • Proceed step-by-step. • Exaggerate the steps. • Tell • Tell students what you are doing. • Tell students what you are thinking. • Gain Responses • Ask for responses.

14. Teaching Skills and Strategies • Prompt. We do it. (“Let’s _____ together.) • Prompt by performing the behavior at the same time as your students. • Prompt physically. • Prompt verbally.- Guide students through the strategy. • Step - do - Step - do - Step - do - Step - do • Gradually fade your prompt.

15. Teaching Skills and Strategies. • Check. You do it. (“Your turn.) • Check for understanding. • Verify students’ understanding before independent work is given. • Carefully monitor students’ responses.

16. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Importance • “Children who experience difficulty mastering this skill may avoid writing and develop a mindset that they cannot write, leading to arrested writing development.”(Graham, Harris, & Fink, 2000) • If students have to struggle to remember letter forms, their ability to express themselves suffers. Handwriting must be automatic.(Graham, 2007)

17. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Importance • Fluent, accurate letter formation and spelling are associated with students' production of longer and better-organized compositions.(Berninger, Vaughan, Abbott, Abbott, Brooks, Rogan, Reed, & Graham, S.,1997) • Measures of handwriting speed among elementary students are good predictors of quality and quantity of written products in middle school. (Peverly, 2007) • Students benefit from explicit instruction on how to form and fluently write letters of alphabet. Accuracy PLUS Fluency

18. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Letter Formations(See Example 1) Introduction of letter form I do it. • Model the letter formation. • Stress orientation to the lines.(Hair line. Belt line. Foot line.) • Model letter formation a number of times. Use verbal prompts. Watch me make a lower case p. I start at the belt line. Touch down. Touch around. Watch again. Touch down. Touch around. Say it as I write a lower case p. Touch down. Touch around.

19. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Letter Formations(See Example 1) We do it. • Guide students in forming the letter using verbal prompts.(“Touch down. Touch around.”) • Monitor the students letter formation. You do it. • Have students continue writing the letter as they say the prompt OR the letter sound. • Continue until the letters are consistently formed correctly.

20. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Letter Formations(See Example 1) • Carefully monitor handwriting practice. • Provide feedback. • Teacher feedback. • This is your best letter p. It starts at the beltline and goes straight down and then around. • Self-evaluation. • Model the process. • Watch me examine my letters. (Circle your best p.) This is my best p. It starts at the beltline, goes straight down and goes around. • Have students evaluate their work and circle their best formed letters.

21. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Letter Formations After mass practice to obtain accuracy, provide on-going practice that is distributive and cumulative. • Dictate sounds. Have students write letters on slates (with permanent lines) or paper. • Provide review worksheets with recently taught letters PLUS review letters. Remember: Mastery plus review = retention

22. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Fluency • Handwriting fluency can be increased by • Having students write frequently. • Involving students in “repeated writings”.(Graham, Harris, & Fink, 2000)

23. Writing Foundations -Handwriting - Fluency(See Example 2) • Repeated Writing • Student writes the same paragraph or material on consecutive days. • Materials - Paragraph in reader. • Adages, proverbs, sayings • Tries to increase the number of letters or words written in a 2 to 5 minute session. • Student graphs number of letters or words written.

24. Writing Foundations -Handwriting (See Example 3) • Stress appearance of work • Appearance DOES make a difference in terms of grades received and response of teachers and others. • Teach “How should your paper look?”

25. Writing Foundations -Spelling - Importance • Strong relationship between spelling and writing. • Learning to read and spell rely on much of the same underlying knowledge (letter-sounds, affixes,etc.)(Moats, 2007) • Spelling instruction can be designed to help children better understand key knowledge resulting in better reading.(Ehri, 2000)

26. Writing Foundations -Spelling - Importance • Writers who must think too hard about how to spell use valuable cognitive resources needed for higher level aspects of composition. (Singer & Bashir, 2004) • 80% of employment applications doomed if poorly written. • 15 to 20 minutes a day

27. Writing Foundations -Spelling - Regular Words Regular Words • 400,000 words in dictionary • Only 13% are truly irregular (memorize) • Focus spelling instruction on patterns that generalize.

28. Writing Foundations -Spelling - Regular Words • Letter-sound associations • Single syllable patterns (e.g., cvc, ccvc, cvcc, cvvc, cvce) • Multisyllabic words • Inflectional endings • Prefixes, suffixes, common roots • Rules for combining forms

29. Writing Foundations -Spelling - Regular Words • Spelling - Regular Words • Selection of words • Words that will be used in writing. • Words taught in decoding strand of reading program. • Words taught in spelling program.Caution - The word lists are the strength of most spelling programs. Many of the practice exercises in spelling books have debatable value.

30. Writing Foundations -SpellingVideo and Example 4 • Good practices noted in video

31. Writing Foundations -Spelling • Alternatives to traditional spelling worksheets • Teacher dictation of words (See example 4a) • Partner dictation of words (See example 4b)

32. Writing Foundations -Spelling RulesExample 5 and 6 Introduce high frequency rules (See Example 5) Teach rules explicitly. • Introduce rule. • Illustrate rule with examples and non-examples. (I do it.) • Guide students in applying the rule to examples and non-examples. (We do it.) • Check understanding using examples and non-examples. (You do it.)

33. Writing Foundations -Spelling - Irregular WordsExample 7 • Irregular words • Teach 3 to 5 per week • Focus on the most common (Moats, 2003)

34. Writing Foundations -Spelling - Irregular Words • Teach students a strategy for independently studying irregular words. • Copy, Cover, Write, Check

35. Writing Foundations - Spelling - Independent Writing • Teach students how to attack the spelling of unknown words when writing. See Example 8. • When monitoring students as they write, give feedback on spelling words visually (e.g., Write the word down for the student.)

36. Writing Foundations -Sentences Example 9 Sentence Expansion Activities • Students can learn the structure of sentences and gain “sentence sense” though sentence expansion exercises. • Students add words or phrases to sentences that answer questions such as when, where, why, and how.

37. Writing Foundations -Sentences Sentence-Combining Activities • Recommended in Writing Next (Graham & Perin, 2007) • Have positive effect on students’ writing. (Evans, Venotozzi, Bundrick, & McWilliams, 1988; Howie, 1979; Kanellas, Carifio & Dagostino, 1998; Pedersen, 1977; Saddler & Graham, 2005; Stoddard, 1982)

38. Writing Foundations -Sentences Example 10 Sentence-Combining Activities (Rewards Writing - Sentence Refinement published by Sopris) • Students start with a stem sentence and combine it with one to four other sentences. • Turn to Example 10. Try out the following items with your partner.

39. Writing Foundations -Sentences Example 11 Primary Sequence • Join two or more subjects • Join two or more verbs • Join two or more predicate adjectives • Join two or more direct objects • Join two or more adjectives

40. Writing FoundationsPunctuation and Capitalization Rules Example 12 • When teaching punctuation and capitalization rules, follow the instructional format for rules. • Introduce rule. • Illustrate rule with examples and non-examples. (I do it.) • Guide students in applying the rule to examples and non-examples. (We do it.) • Check understanding using examples and non-examples. (You do it.)