Today we had a half day of staff development today about Critical Writing in Content Classes. We were given five really great strategies to use in our classroom. And I’m pumped to try them out in my room.
I know my kids can write but it is difficult to help them write and communicate effectively. I really feel that these strategies will help develop these skills. The first one was Word Bank. You give the students a word of academic vocabulary and ask them to use as many as they can in three effective sentences. I love that they have to use the vocabulary together which means they really have to know the meaning of the words to use them effectively.
The next was a “Say, Means, Matters.” This was the one I was most excited about. The students must paraphrase what a passage “says” then condense into their own words of what it “means” and finally they state why it “matters” to them and the world. What a wonderful way to have them process an article or book passage!
Next was a written discussion from a prompt. The first person responds to a prompt. Then they pass it to another who responds to the first, by either agreeing and adding supporting ideas or giving a counter-arguement. Then it is passed again and the next person responds, and then once more trade then the original person gets it back. Then they can have a spoken discussion of what was written.
Another one was a descriptive activity where the student chooses from a bag a word or phrase to describe. The key is they cannot use the word in their statements, but someone has to be able to figure out what the word is by their description.
The last was a new way to look at word problems. Turn it around the process, give them the numerical problem and have them write the word problem. I think this one could be even cooler if you turned around and used their wording on a test!
There are so many other strategies out there. What are your best ones?
O's Bureau of Scientific Investigations 