Time for Meaningful Learning

I have seen this little message floating around social media and I can't even tell you how much I agree with it!

First, a little disclaimer:  I believe education is absolutely important. I think our kids still doing their e-learning/remote learning is so important to make sure they aren't losing skills. I think our teachers are still working to provide important opportunities for our students the best they can in these uncharted waters. I am not at all saying to dismiss student's school work!  

Second disclaimer: E-Learning is a struggle in our home for the little one (thank goodness the high schooler is independent and can manage her own learning). He is a social butterfly. He can hardly sit still and would love to just run around outside all day (shirtless) or jump and flip on the trampoline all day. He feels lonely and is missing all the social interactions. This mama has a full course load this semester and is scheduled to student teach in the fall, so the pressure is on full blast to not fail a course. Also, I love pinterest and ideally I would be the perfect pinterest mom. But truthfully, our house is loud and life is chaotic, I'm exhausted, have been rocking yoga pants and the messy (dirty) mom bun and I hope that writing this will also help me accomplish some of the preachy mom things below.

In case you don't know, I am in a teacher prep program.  Currently on my last prep course (woot woot) although I still some general and minor courses I'm also finishing up.

No matter the content that we are learning, our professors, our textbooks and any supplemental sources we are using stress that teaching should be engaging and meaningful.  Meaningful how?  Meaningful that it is connected to real-life situations that our children will use one day with the hopes that they can transfer what they learned inside the classroom to experiences outside of the classroom.  

When I look at this list by the unknown author, I see a list of things that are both engaging and/or meaningful.  Yes, students get summers off but how many parents are still working and children are home with older siblings, a babysitter or at summer camp?  Children don't often get the time these days to be bored.  And boredom leads to imaginative thoughts which lead to creativity and exploration!  (And hopefully some learning.)  

We are always in such a hurry, on the go, or distracted that how many parents have the chance to slow down and make those 1 on 1 connections?  How many have the time to teach their kids to help start the oven, or make the family's favorite dish or a favorite recipe?  How many are impatient due to the hectic lives we live and just do it all ourselves?  How many of us are in such a routine of cleaning and doing laundry that we don't slow down and teach our kids how to wash their own clothes?  These are life skills that we hardly have time to slow down and teach our own kids.  These are also skills that aren't taught in the classroom.  

What if we helped our kids to notice that you are sheltering in place and practicing social distancing to keep your families safe and healthy as well as keeping others healthy. We are already practicing selfless acts, why not explain this to them and help them develop empathetic thinking.  Why not tell them about the people who still have to go out into the real world to work.  The grocery store workers, the nurses, the doctors, paramedics, police officers, paramedics, and firemen.  Let's teach them about the importance of being a community worker and a real hero, and not just wanting to be a millionaire (insert sport) player when they grow up.

Lastly, let's make sure that they see that while their teachers are also at home, they are still lesson planning and making sure our students are getting learning in.  Let's help them see (and I hope you already do) that their teachers care immensely about OUR kids.   That they are still rooting and cheering them on from the sidelines, sending over those activities and finding meaningful, engaging content to help keep students (who are ALL on different playing fields by the way) from falling too far behind.

So keep your kids on task doing the best they can in school learning, but also let's appreciate all the other hands-on, real-life, meaningful and engaging things they are doing and learning aside from schoolwork. They will remember these times we are in forever. They may not remember the addition worksheets their teacher sent or the writing prompts, but they will remember that this is the time mom taught them how to bake. And this was the time that mom made them start washing their own laundry. And this was the time that although there were no assessments and no state testing, his teacher was still on the other side of the camera conducting zoom meetings and lessons and asking how they were.

Their teachers will get them on track next year. All our kids are in the same boat, they will all be a little behind academically. But let's get them ahead in life skills.

6+1 Writing Traits

The 6+1 Traits of Writing:

Trait #6 Conventions

Without realizing it, once you have mastered being an effective writer, the writing process includes many steps, traits and a chosen writing genre. When students are learning to become writers, teachers must spend time teaching all the aforementioned skills. The purpose of writing is so convey our ideas and the writing process is a tool that guides writers to work that is effective at doing this while ensuring the readers can also understand it.

The purpose as a writer is to convey your ideas and thoughts in a way that embodies one of four purposes, but also can be read and understood by the reader. The writing process, which is shown in the picture below is a tool that writers use to help guide them to their purpose. Students learn through meaningful and engaging activities.

However, there are also seven traits that writers must use to create effective writing.

Today we will take a closer look at trait #6, conventions. For those who haven’t taken a language arts class in some time, a refresher of the five elements of conventions are listed below. These are five elements that, as adults, we keep in mind almost every single time we do any form of writing. Two of the main purposes of using conventions in your writing are to do so as a courtesy to your readers, but also to ensure that your work can be read!

So how are conventions taught, assessed and included in the writing process?
One great way to teach conventions is through mini-lessons. Mini-lessons, as the name implies, are quick 10 minute lessons that allows teachers to narrow their focus on one skill. Once this element is taught, it can be practiced through engaging activities that are practical and meaningful. This writing element also is best taught during the editing stage of writing, which is talked about more below.

Ideas include:

• Introducing with a book, such as “Punctuation Takes a Vacation”
• Use of technological tools such as NoRedInk that give students practice
• Using air punctuation techniques, such as those shown here that teach and reinforce the use of conventions. 

When are conventions focused on in the writing process?
In our student’s day to day writing, we should have developmentally appropriate expectations for student’s use of conventions just as we would for any other aspect of their writing. However, when students are doing larger writing assignments, such as creating stories, informational texts or doing persuasive writing, the focus becomes less on conventions and more about the formation of the student’s ideas. Checking for capitulation, spelling, punctuation, grammar and paragraph formations aren’t examined and evaluated until the editing stage of the writing process!

Once the editing phase of writing starts, this is a great time to introduce the mini-lesson and give students examples of correct and incorrect usage.  A best practice in the classroom is to engage students with one another by doing partner checks. During partner checks in the editing phase, the goal is to ‘hunt’ out any errors.

A good tip to keep students on task for this without getting lost in the content of the writing was given by Professor Dr.  Lenarz. She suggests having students read the text backwards so their focus is looking for mistakes and it’ll be more difficult to actually read what is written.



Both students and teachers should incorporate the use of proofreading marks to make the editing process more streamlined, and every student understands what corrections need to be made. During the editing phase, students can also self-assess their work using the same proofreading marks and techniques.

How can teachers assess this specific element in a student’s writing? Should you assess handwriting abilities and neatness?
Of the 7 writing traits, convention usage is actually the only one that should have specific grade level accommodations and expectations.  Also, a student's handwriting abilities or the neatness of their handwriting shouldn't be accounted for in the assessment.

There are two types of assessments that teachers use in the classroom.  The first is a formative assessment and is done during the learning process, which in this case would be the writing process.  Teachers can perform formative assessments by walking around and observing students as they work.  They can also conference with students to check in on how their writing progress is coming along, if they are meeting benchmarks and identify areas of strength and weaknesses.

The second type of assessment is a summative assessment and is done at the end of a lesson or unit.  Summative assessments identify what students have learned.  Writing is most often assessed through the use of a rubric. Teachers will use rubrics that give a score for each of the writing traits that have been learned or able to be assessed. (Samples are below). In this case, the 5 conventions would be assessed as a whole, rather than individually looked at.

If the goal is to assess only conventions (or one of the other traits), then often times a more detailed rubric is used. For example, is assessing only conventions, a teacher could give a score for only capitalization, only punctuations and so on.

A best practice is to give students the rubric you will be planning to use as a teacher before their writing takes place so that they know exactly what you are looking for and assessing them on. There’s nothing worse than doing what you feel is your best work only to learn that you didn’t incorporate any of the skills the teacher was looking for.

Sample elementary writing rubrics:



Professor Dr. Lenarz was kind enough to provide pdf's of how these traits are integrated within the common core standards.  They can be found here, originally posted by Education Northwest.


References:

Writing process graphic:  Pumped for Learning

Primary Grade Writing Rubric:  Teachers Pay Teachers