As a language acquisition specialist, one of my biggest goals in working with students that qualify for multilingual learners support is to grow their writing skills. I'm not alone in this endeavor, classrooms teachers also strive to do this. However, there seem to be innumerable barriers to growing student writing closer to grade level. One of the biggest challenges I find in growing writing is that students rarely have the opportunity to make authentic writing mistakes and learn about the writing process in a way that doesn't cause anxiety.
Be GLAD has a few strategies that, when paired together, create an opportunity for authentic, supported writing with a low affective filter. The paragraph below is an example of the finished product and in this blog post, we'll explore how to support your students in producing this level of writing.
Step 1 - Teach New Content with the Pictorial Input Chart
Materials Needed:
White Chart/Butcher Paper prepped with a pictorial representation of content, in pencil
Mr. Sketch Markers
Picture File Cards
Word File Cards
It is commonly known that if students can't talk about a topic, they can't write about it. We also know that writing is the last language domain to develop and succeed in writing, multilingual learners learning English, is heavily predicated on success in reading, listening, and speaking. For our students to write about a topic, they first need to have a good understanding of the content. One of the most powerful ways to do this is by teaching with a Pictorial Input Chart (PIC). The PIC is a GLAD strategy that is used to make content comprehensible for students. The picture chosen relates to the topic of study and is built in front of students to provide visual, vocabulary, and content support as the image is built. The example we're using here is from the 2nd-grade curriculum about the life cycle of plants.
Another key element of the PIC is the color and shape coding. This separates the stages from each other so that each step in the life cycle of the plant is uniquely represented. You'll notice that each stage also has a sketched depiction of the growth that happens in that stage and a few key facts are listed.
After explicitly teaching the information on the PIC, you'll want to give your students time to process this information. Processing can be done on the same day that you teach the chart but my recommendation is to process on the next day. This gives some time for students to "chew on" the newly learned information and potentially apply it during a science exploration or lab and then return to the information, with context, the following day. When preparing to process this chart, I created picture file cards that matched the content of the plant life cycle and also created word file cards that highlighted the key terms from the chart. These are both pretty rudimentary (images from Bing's Creative Commons search filter and words written to Sharpie on brightly colored cardstock), but what we do with them is the magic.
After passing out the picture- and word-file cards to students, give them a moment to talk in partnership about the content of the cards. In partnerships, students will negotiate the meaning of the pictures as well as use strategies to solve the tricky words. They'll also talk about where the pictures and words fit on the chart. This lowers the affective filter in the classroom because students are working together to solve a small puzzle and then will use that information to help them be successful in the whole-class activity. Once the picture and word cards have been reviewed, you'll re-teach the PIC covering all of the important information. As you mention keywords and phrases, students will come to add their cards to the chart, matching them with the keywords.
Step 2 - Write a Class Paragraph (Cooperative Strip Paragraph)
Materials Needed:
XL Pocket Chart
Sentence Strips
Mr. Sketch Markers (different color for each group)
GLAD Editing Checklist
To get students started on the writing process, you'll come up with a topic sentence that relates to the PIC and that students can build off of. You'll write that sentence on a sentence strip and add it to your pocket chart. For this activity, I chose the following topic sentence:
"The life cycle of a plant is a complicated process."
This topic sentence provides students with a clear topic for writing but also leaves space for students to infer meaning from the Pictorial Input Chart, and apply that learning to their writing. Then, students will work together in small groups or pairs to write a sentence that fits with the teacher-created topic sentence.
Each group or partnership should be given a different, unique color marker to write their sentence. No need to make sure that each group writes a different sentence - we want to see what students produce naturally and will teach editing and revising, later. Before students can write their sentences on their sentence strips, they'll need to orally rehearse their sentences. We do this because if students can't say it, they can't write it. Once the teacher approves the oral sentence, each member of the group must participate in writing the sentence on the strip. Once all groups have a sentence written, groups will be invited to the front of the room to read their sentence and add it to the pocket chart. This process should continue for each group. By the end, you should have 5-7 sentences, which creates a paragraph.
Step 3 - Use an Editing Checklist to Review the Paragraph
While this strategy gets kids writing about the content, we don't want to leave out the importance of the writing process. In this step, you'll go through all parts of the checklist to ensure that your paragraph is written appropriately. I like to use the GLAD-created writing checklist but you can also use a writing checklist from your ELA curriculum.
Read the paragraph out loud: choral read the class-created paragraph with your students. Point to each word as you read to help students make connections between written and spoken words.
Add the Author's Name: you can create a name for your scholars such as "brilliant biologists" or "excited engineers" or you can just be "scholars" or "Ms. Wilson's 2nd Graders." The choice is up to you, but we do want to give the hard-working authors credit for their work.
Add the Date: This is good practice for everything students will write!
Responding: Before we dive into things that need to be changed, added, or omitted, we want to take an opportunity to respond to things we liked about the student-created sentences. Allow a few minutes for a discussion on what is going well in this paragraph. You can annotate these parts with stars and student initials.
Revising: now we're ready to jump into changes, additions, and deletions within the paragraph. Start by reading the paragraph again chorally and then ask students if they have suggestions on things that need to be reworked. A natural place to begin is with flow and organization. Is the paragraph written in an order that makes sense? If not, how should the order be changed? Are there details that need to be added? Are there redundant sentences that can be taken out? Are the verb tenses in agreement? Is there a clear beginning and end? Much of this work is going to be driven by students though, the teacher may want to jump in at critical points. Before moving on to Step 6, you'll want to take a moment to teach about margins and indentations. The topic sentence needs to be indented five spaces and the writing needs to reach to the left and right margins. You can cut/rip sentence strips to fit the width of your pocket chart.
Editing: once the ideas and content of the paragraph are organized, the editing process can begin. My suggestion is to focus on one editing skill at a time and check the whole paragraph for those edits. Starting with capitalization, scan the paragraph for capital letters at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns. Next, ensure that each sentence is properly punctuated including commas to separate phrases. Then, spelling and grammar. It is a great practice to have kids "prove it!" with spelling by finding the correct spelling on a chart in the classroom, a book, or other spelling resources. This increases metacognition.
Add a Title: When your class is satisfied with their paragraph, decide as a class on an appropriate title and add it to the top of the pocket chart. Your finished product will look something like this:
Step 4 - Pull an Emergent Struggling Reader Group (ESRG)
The Cooperative Strip Paragraph is a rather messy process and even the final product shows evidence of the revising and editing that is essential for growing writers and honors the process of writing over a finished product. In the ESRG strategy, we will clean up the process a bit which changes our focus from the writing process to the sentence, phrase, and word level of writing and comprehension.
Materials Needed:
Class-created Cooperative Strip Paragraph in the Pocket Chart
Re-written sentence strips with the cooperative strip paragraph - with corrections made and written in the original color from the Cooperative Strip Paragraph
Scissors
Typed copy of the Cooperative Strip Paragraph
You'll want to think carefully about who your audience is for this small group work. Likely you'll pull your ML students and students that are not reading at grade level. You may also consider pulling students that were absent when you created the Cooperative Strip Paragraph.
Pull your small group of students to a space on the floor where the Cooperative Strip Paragraph can be seen. You'll have the original paragraph re-written on sentence strips in front of you.
As you begin this work, start by reading the paragraph one sentence at a time, chorally. When you finish reading a sentence, give it to a student in your group. You'll complete this process for each sentence. Students can hold multiple sentences at one time and each student should have at least one sentence.
Once students are holding individual sentences, re-read the CSP, and have students put the sentences in order on the floor in front of them. Then, you'll edit and revise for margins and organizational order.
After the first round, you'll repeat but this time cut each sentence into small phrases while you read aloud. Each student will collect various phrases from the paragraph.
Re-read the CSP and have students put the phrases in order on the floor in front of you. You'll again edit and revise for margins and organizational order.
The third time you do this activity, you'll cut each word out of the sentence and disperse it to students. As you re-read the original CSP, students will add the words, in order on the floor in front of you. You'll again edit and revise for margins and organizational order.
After completing three reads of this paragraph while focusing on the sentence, phrase, and word level, students will have earned the typed version of the Cooperative Strip Paragraph. Students will take this typed paragraph and read it to as many people as possible over the next few days. Each time the student reads the paragraph to someone, the listener will sign the paper. The goal is to collect as many signatures as possible. By the time you're done with this activity, students will be very proficient in the content and be fluent readers of the content-specific language.
ESRG Extensions
With your small group, you may want to do some extension activities. Below are some options:
The Missing Word Game: Invite students to close their eyes as they choose a word from the ESRG paragraph. Shuffle the word cards so that the space left is not obvious. Then, invite students to open their eyes and make guesses about which word is missing. The person who guesses the missing word correctly gets to choose the word for the next round.
The Guess the Word Game: Provide clues to students about a word and have them try to guess which word you're talking about. For example, if I chose the word "seeds" this is what my clues might sound like:
I'm looking for a noun
I'm looking for a plural noun, which means it has an "s" at the end and is more than one thing
This word has a vowel team in the middle that says "eeeee"
This word describes tiny objects that are the beginning of the plant life cycle.
Students may need more or less clues to guess the word you have in mind. Once the word is figured out, the student that got it right will generate the next round of clues for the word. This is usually a little tricky for kids so they may need teacher support.
Content-Specific, Detailed Writing is Possible!
These three strategies together create a well-supported and scaffolded writing experience for students. However, this is a time-consuming process. Consider the following schedule when planning these strategies in your classroom:
Teach Pictorial Input Chart: 20 minutes / Session 1
Process Pictorial Input Chart: 15 minutes / Session 2
Write Student-Created Sentences for CSP: 15 minutes / Session 2
Use GLAD Editing Checklist to read, review, edit, and revise CSP: 30 minutes / Session 3
Pull ESRG: 40 minutes / Session 4
ESRG Extensions: 10 minutes / Session 5
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