Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ™

Research-Backed Writing Strategies from a 5th Grade Classroom

• Episode 216

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Struggling to make writing click for your students? 

In this episode, 5th-grade teacher Elise Frank shares practical strategies to tackle the challenges of teaching writing, inspired by "A Path to Better Writing" by Steve Graham and Karen Harris.

Key takeaways:

  • Simplify the hidden processes of writing for your students.
  • Boost ownership and feedback.
  • Integrate writing across all subjects.

Packed with actionable ideas, this episode is a must-listen for every teacher! Tune in now and transform your writing instruction!

Resources: 


We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Lori:

Today's episode is for elementary and middle school teachers looking for easy and effective ways to teach writing. If you've ever wondered how to teach various writing types, work through difficult prompts or give meaningful feedback, this episode is for you.

Melissa:

In this episode we talked to Elise Frank, a fifth grade teacher from California. She has successfully given students the tools and the time they need to become competent writers. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with strategies to help your students write more and write better.

Lori:

Hi teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa:

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori:

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Melissa:

Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Lori:

Hi, elise, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thank you for having me.

Melissa:

Hi, elise, we are so excited. Hi, thank you for having me. Hi, elise, we are so excited to talk to you about writing today. I know I taught sixth grade for most of my teaching career and writing was always a challenging thing to teach, both for me as a teacher, and that was when my students would get a little grumbly and like, oh, we have to write. So writing is definitely challenging. Can you tell us, you know, from your perspective as a fifth grade teacher, why do you think writing is just so difficult? You know, in the article A Path to Better Writing by Steve Graham and Karen Harris they do talk a little bit about this, but we are just so curious what you think as a classroom teacher.

Elise Frank:

Yeah, I think something from the article that really resonated with me was about how the processes for writing are one, mostly hidden, and two involve the use and orchestration of a variety of different mechanisms, including physical, mental and emotional apparatuses. And for me, like many teachers who end up back in school for our careers, reading and writing came easily to me in school. So many of the internal processes that happen when I write are hidden, internalized, and all happen really really fast. In order to write, first you have to understand the question or purpose of what you're writing. Then you have to apply background knowledge and newly acquired knowledge to synthesize into an answer. You have to select which words are the most accurate words to communicate what you're wanting to express. You have to be able to spell those words and then either find those letters on the keyboard or form them with your pencil, all without losing the big idea of what you're expressing, not to mention putting those words into conventional grammar. That's often different from how we communicate when we're actually speaking. And then when you add, finding and including text evidence on top of all of it, it's really hard.

Elise Frank:

Writing has so much going on with it and, unlike math where it's natural to write out the steps to solving a problem, or to utilize different kinds of visual models to make the thinking process explicit. Or even reading, where you're breaking words down into their sounds and sound parts, and there's this quick feedback mechanism either you got the math question right or you got it wrong. You either read the word right or you read it incorrectly. There's so much that has to happen when you're writing that's usually not broken down, it's not made visible and the feedback is a much longer, slower, disconnected process. And then, as if all of that wasn't enough, most teacher preparation programs devote minimal to no time to supporting teachers in how to teach writing. I know for me I didn't receive any training or coursework in how to teach this incredibly important, challenging skill until PDs later on in my career.

Lori:

Yeah, I agree, elise. I remember having courses like teaching me how to write as a writer, but not necessarily helping me be able to teach other people, which is a big skill you need in education, right to teach kids how to write. And you know, I do want to bring up this idea of time, like giving students more time to write, because it's not just teaching writing, it's actually giving them more time. We know that students having more time is a research-based solution to this problem, just one of many. And you know, and I think the article that you mentioned A solution to this problem, just one of many. And you know, I think, the article that you mentioned, a Path to Better Writing we're talking all about it this month. You know more writing time is important, so I want to hear from you and how more writing time plays out in your classroom and the impact that you've seen from that.

Elise Frank:

Yeah, I think more writing time definitely has a clear positive impact, but it's a relatively small positive impactparalleled increase in test scores for the sixth grade team. And whenever teachers or admin were asking what did you do differently, like what led to this huge gain in test scores, their answer was more writing time. We wrote more. We just wrote. The kids wrote more. We wrote more, we just wrote, the kids wrote more.

Elise Frank:

After diving more into these different studies and seeing some of the other components that lead to strong results and gains for students, the writing time is a piece of it, but there's a lot of other layers and other approaches and strategies to put on top to lead to even greater results. And for me, in my experience I've previously worked at schools that focus on a writing workshop model where there's tons of writing time Students spend tons of time every day writing, but in my experience that also led to solidifying some bad writing habits. It led to some students just practicing every day long run on sentences or led to students every day writing in a way that wasn't necessarily growing. And for me right now, in a class of 30 students, it's not possible, effective, efficient or even equitable to have this one-on-one feedback approach being the main way to increase writing. That being said, those students need to have time to write and they need to have multiple practice opportunities, not only to address the emotional and physical challenges, but also because writing is this incredible tool for comprehension for all content.

Lori:

Yeah, aliza, I want to talk about a whole lot more, but I do want to go back to that idea of more isn't necessarily more and like kind of just define more, because if I am a teacher listening right now, I might feel really stressed. Like Elise, I only have 60 minutes to teach ELA. I don't have any more time. I can't have 75 minutes, I can't have 90 minutes to have them spend another 30 minutes writing. So I do kind of want to talk about the idea of more in terms of time. Like I'm thinking, okay, in that 60 minutes, how can I maximize writing in that time? Like maybe I'm asking students, instead of to do something that we normally do, one way, to have them be writing instead, right, maybe I'm asking students, instead of to do something that we normally do, one way, to have them be writing instead, right, maybe I'm having them write before or after something where I normally would have had them speak instead and then use writing as a tool for speaking in a different way than I've used it before. So I want to hear your thoughts there.

Lori:

And then I also do want to just elaborate on that idea of more in terms of, like that great example you gave with the workshop model, because I think that it's worth digging into a bit in terms of more. Isn't more in that way and why? So can we kind of start with first, like very logistically, like time, like what does this look like in your classroom? Like how did you get students in your sixth grade classroom where I don't know how many minutes you have to teach? But I'd love to hear, like how, how did you get students in your sixth grade classroom where I don't know how many minutes you have to teach? But I'd love to hear how did you get them to write more?

Elise Frank:

Absolutely, and I think a big part of it is what you said.

Elise Frank:

For me it was starting to shift my understanding of writing in the classroom away from writing is only during this writing workshop block, or writing is only happening during the time that's designated in the day to writing instruction, to when we're writing.

Elise Frank:

It doesn't need to be leading towards this final published piece that we can hang up in the wall Like writing can be happening in little bursts and little chunks throughout the day. First of all, I'd say as ways to increase just by smaller chunks of the minutes, instead of needing oh, now I need to add 30 minutes, having opportunities for writing throughout science instruction and social studies instruction and the different content areas throughout a day. And I think the other part of more being more a big shift since starting to use SRSD as the approach for teaching writing is this idea that writing instruction and writing time in the classroom is not always students writing In order for writing gains to be made for students. A lot of that is actually direct teacher modeling and making those processes that strong writers do really explicit by modeling as the teacher. So sometimes writing in the classroom, students aren't actually picking up the pencil during multiple days at a time, as they're learning and seeing what it looks like.

Lori:

So it might be like an interactive writing kind of experience. Exactly it could be interactive.

Elise Frank:

It could be collaborative, it could be a model, absolutely.

Melissa:

Elise, just a quick question. So you teach fifth grade. Do you have your students all day? Do you teach all the subjects? Yes, Can you give some examples of like some writing assignments or any? Any, it doesn't have to be an assignment, just some writing that you've done in the different content areas, even outside of ELA? Yeah, absolutely.

Elise Frank:

I think a strategy and approach that I've started this year that has been really exciting is from a book that I think was featured on a different episode about teaching strategies and powering up using brains, and one of those strategies is the idea of using a brain dump, or using two things. And it's different ways. For example, in math, if we're learning a new content, for example, we're learning volume. After we've been learning about volume for a little bit, one of the days at the beginning of math I'll say okay, take out a piece of scratch paper For five minutes, you're just writing down everything you know about volume, and the gains and results have been really astounding and surprising to me to see how excited students are when, given that prompt, knowing it's not graded, for them to have the opportunity to just show what they know and to express their thinking. And that's an example of writing where we're not using our structures, we're not using our different mnemonics and our different organized ways in order to create a writing piece, but we're just practicing writing and getting comfortable with writing.

Lori:

Can you share at least what students would show on their paper for an example of volume Like I'm just picturing? Perhaps it would not just be words.

Elise Frank:

Exactly, yeah. So, students, they're drawing diagrams and they're labeling the diagrams. They're writing equations and they're explaining what the equations mean. They're writing out the definition of the vocabulary. We're using the vocabulary acquisition strategies that we use in order to learn volume. They're writing with prompting and all that.

Lori:

They're writing examples of where you would see volume in the real world can't for the sake of this podcast episode, but it would be really amazing to see your students like fifth grade math brain dumps from August all the way till June. Maybe at some point you could, maybe in June you could email us and share that, if anonymously. If that would make you feel comfortable, I would love to see it. Yeah, absolutely Absolutely.

Melissa:

And I just love that example because, like you said, it's not I feel like there's a lot of pressure, like you have to go through the whole process of writing for everything. And you know, I just love that example is like, yeah, they're still practicing like a part of writing, that's you know that like kind of brainstorming, first part of writing. They're getting that practice without you having to then like have them write a whole paragraph about volume at the end. They can. That's okay too. It doesn't have to be a full process every single time, which I think is really important. Yeah, I think so too. So I want to. You mentioned before that you know, just giving them more time is not necessarily going to solve all the problems. And also you mentioned SRSD, which a lot of people are talking about SRSD right now. So we would love to hear from you about what is it right Like, what is SRSD? What is it? What's happening in your classroom with SRSD? Just give us an overview of what you've learned about it and what you're implementing in your classroom.

Elise Frank:

Yeah, absolutely SRSD. And at my school we've evolved in our collective understanding of what SRSD is over the past couple of years. So it's self-regulated strategy development, which is a writing instruction method that's designed to improve writing quality by teaching students specific strategies to plan, draft, revise, edit their work. That has this focus on self-monitoring and self-regulation so that they're ordered to achieve independence in writing. And aha, for me in my understanding of what SRSD is is that it's a formula for students to internalize and understand, to create competent writers. So this approach, this strategy, is not necessarily going to support creative novelists. We are teaching different structures for the different genres of writing, teaching how to make a plan. Here are helpful linking and transition words to use to practice, and then students are able to build on that. So overall, in a nutshell, I would say my understanding of SRSD is that it is an approach to teaching that involves these specific strategies in this really structured way that students completely internalize.

Melissa:

I'm wondering if you can give us some actual examples from your classroom. You shared some really fun ones with us in the pre-call, so we want to hear from you. What does it really look like in your classroom?

Elise Frank:

Yeah, absolutely so. The way that it looks, there are these. It's tons of mnemonics. At first it feels like a lot of mnemonics but the students internalize those really fast. They really like those. Like when they are lining up to go to recess and they're supposed to be quiet as a group, they'll start chanting these mnemonics, which I can't get mad at because we're practicing our writing strategies, even if we're supposed to be quiet in line. So that's a big piece of it. So the first like overarching mnemonic is whenever we write, we use pow and pow is P, pick my ideas, o, organize my notes, w, write and say more Pow, pow, pow.

Melissa:

Elise, can we pause you for a second? Can you actually talk through? Since people can't not everyone can see you Can you talk through what you were doing with your hands as well?

Elise Frank:

Yeah. So each of the mnemonics have a body movement that goes with it. So for P pick my ideas. We're pointing to our brain. O organize my notes. We're showing with our hands how we organize and then W is we are writing, pretending to write with our hand and then doing our mouth. Hand that we say more and we're writing, we're not just copying over our plan. So the POW mnemonic is this predictable internalized mnemonic to structure writing and ideas before we actually write. So we talk about how for P, pick my ideas. Sometimes you got to choose. Sometimes you're writing an email, sometimes you're doing fun writing.

Elise Frank:

Usually at school your idea has been picked for you, your topic has been chosen. This is the idea. O is organize my notes, which is really about genre identification. So for O, students are identifying is this narrative, persuasive or informational writing? Each of the different genres has a matching mnemonic that accompanies it. So, for example, if it's informational writing, they know we're using tied. So then there's another mnemonic for tied. And tied is topic.

Elise Frank:

Where we point to our head. Topic, important evidence. We point to our eyes detailed examination. We point to our mouth and we point to our chin. And in teaching this mnemonic and what we practice a lot is why do we point to our head? For topic? Because that's the top, that's where we picked our ideas, that's where we're writing what we're writing about For eye, important evidence. We're pointing to our eyes because that is the evidence that we're. Just look, our mouth is closed. We're pointing to our eyes. That's we're copying directly from the text. That's our text evidence. That's important evidence. It's not our brain, it's our eyes. It's what we saw that someone else said Detailed examination. We're pointing to our mouth because that's our ideas, that's our words, that's our understanding of what the important evidence was communicating. And then end is our chin. It's not the same as our head. It's got to be a little bit different, but it's not that different from the topic. So, after after we've done POW from O, organize my Notes, we're choosing which mnemonic and which structure is appropriate for the genre.

Elise Frank:

Can you, can you share what like options are for O yeah, so for O, organize my Notes if it's informational writing, it's tied the T, I, d, e. If it is narrative writing, it's C space, which is character setting, problem, action, conclusion, emotion. And then, if it is um persuasive writing, it's tree, which is topic, reason, explanation, ending. It feels like a lot and it feels super overwhelming to be receiving it at the same time, but the students actually really do internalize it pretty quickly, especially with the chance and the body movement and all of those components Does your school.

Melissa:

Do it in different grade levels. We do so. They know it year over year. That's helpful.

Elise Frank:

That's very helpful yeah that's hugely helpful and a big part of SRSD is internalizing these mnemonics so that students aren't reliant on graphic organizers or worksheets, but they always have this strategy to create their own organization on a piece of paper.

Lori:

And are they the same from like? Are the mnemonics the same from kindergarten through? You know forever, so do they change Like, for example, does C space become, I don't know, C something else in grade six? Do you know what I mean? I totally do, and they stay.

Elise Frank:

The base of it stays the same, but they do get more complex as the thinking gets more complex. So instead of tied, it will become T-I-D-I-D-E, as they have multiple pieces of evidence. Or it'll be well, if I'm writing a whole essay, I have multiple tied or T-I-D-I-D-E, multiple paragraphs put together.

Melissa:

Right, exactly.

Elise Frank:

Exactly. And the way that students internalize the language is really incredible, where, whenever because we've been working on it all year whenever they're given a prompt, students will say things like well, okay, do I need TIDE, or is this TIDIDE? And students will say to each other it says two pieces of evidence, so we need TIDIDE. Like they really internalize and take ownership over the acronyms.

Lori:

That's neat, so you could even be like add more IDs for if they need three pieces of evidence per se, right?

Elise Frank:

That's like exact feedback I've given to students before when we're writing, which is incredible, like that's a great tool to be able to get, because giving feedback as a teacher can be really challenging for developing writers. But to have the language that they understand of saying this is really strong. It would be stronger if you added another ID and they know what that means, and then they can go off and do it.

Lori:

Right, that's so helpful. I love that you have language for both teachers and students. It's such a teaching tool. Yes, exactly.

Elise Frank:

Exactly.

Melissa:

Lisa, I'm wondering. Sometimes these kind of mnemonics can get a little bit of a bad rap. You know it makes formulaic writing and like you kind of mnemonics can get a little bit of a bad rap. You know it makes, like it makes, formulaic writing and, like you kind of mentioned before, like I don't know, it might stifle them as writers. What is what? What are you really seeing in your classroom Like? Is that the case? It doesn't sound like it. I just want to let you talk to that.

Elise Frank:

Totally, I mean for me, want to let you talk to that Totally, I mean for me. My biggest goal as a teacher is for all students to reach a level of competency and then beyond. So, before I'm really too concerned about them being stifled, I want all students to have the opportunity and the tools and support to reach that level of writing competency. Once students have internalized these structures and understand what good writing is, then they learn how to break the rules or they learn how to adjust or adapt or play with these structures and they're also they start to become able to see how real examples of writing whether it's an article or a book how they play with these structures and how they do have all these parts, whether it's an article or a book, how they play with these structures and how they do have all these parts.

Elise Frank:

But it might not always be in the same order. But for me in my classroom it's a huge priority to support all students in reaching this writing competency. Which is something I've struggled with for my whole career as a teacher is to make sure that all students are able to be successful with writing. So no, srsd is not going to inherently support the most creative, the most flourishing writers, but it will support and create this baseline competency, which is a much more solid foundation to build on in order to push from there than a shaky foundation.

Melissa:

Right, and like you said, you need those basic building blocks before you can do anything else, right? Like you can't just jump straight to that, let's be super creative and break all the rules if you don't know the basics first. Exactly.

Lori:

Yeah, and I don't think that it stifles kids' creativity. I mean, I think that that would be something that we would hear as a pushback in terms of, like you know, a formula to writing. So I think, like, if we're really preparing our students for the world, for life, for career, for whatever it is that they want moving forward, they need to be able to write emails, like you said, elise. They need to be able to communicate. They need to be able to write papers in college. They need to be able to draft different plans for work in the future, whatever that might be, communicate clearly with a supervisor and a teammate. And if they want to go ahead and become a creative fiction writer author, those kids are going to do that with your solid foundation, not the other way around. You know, I think of it like. The breaking the rules thing, like really stands out to me a lot in terms of like sports and dance, like things that I did as a kid growing up. I'm like you.

Elise Frank:

Actually, you cannot break the rules of ballet unless you know the rules of ballet like you know Exactly and in my experience over these past two years of starting to use SRSD in my classroom, is by providing this structure and by providing this very reliable, predictable routine that really increases the accessibility for all students in the class, then they're able to become more creative in the actual thinking. It's not they need to be creative with the structure of how they're citing evidence or the structure of how they're forming a paragraph. No, they're able to be incredibly creative and thoughtful and insightful thinkers about their understanding of a text or what they're communicating or what they're conveying. And by using this structure, it takes a lot of the mystery out of it. For because if you see a strong writer and this is something that happens in a lot of classrooms when a teacher is modeling writing, it looks so easy, Like we already did it ahead of time.

Elise Frank:

We planned it the night before. We have the secret little notes on our side that we're just copying over on the big chart paper. We're writing and classroom management and talking all at the same time while doing it, and it looks like magic for a student who's sitting there like well, she's a right, like she's a teacher, she knows how to do that. I could never do that. So, instead breaking down this process into steps that make sense and are always the same, it actually opens up so much room for deep thinking, which is really what I think we're looking for. In writing.

Melissa:

I'm curious about one thing that you brought up a few times, elise, which is feedback. I know you mentioned that you know in the workshop model it would be tough to give each student individual feedback. I know you mentioned that you know in the workshop model it would be tough to give each student individual feedback, so I'm wondering what that does look like in your classroom.

Elise Frank:

We talk about how good writing is fun to read. We pretend to look at a book. Fun to write, pretend to write makes sense, pointing to our brain and has all its parts showing that organization, and that's really all of the feedback that I'm ever giving. So, having this become internalized for students, I'm then able to use those same four different components, either one-on-one, or to make small groups or to give as a form of a rubric.

Melissa:

Can you say them again?

Elise Frank:

Yeah, absolutely so. Good writing is fun to read. So that gets into sentence structure and word choice and that's really those main things sentence structure, word choice, interesting like the kind of is it fun to read, fun to write. Gets into the strategy development and the self-regulation part that we haven't talked too much about yet. But that's that piece of it Makes sense is do the ideas make sense?

Elise Frank:

Is this logical? Is it? Does the writing make sense? Is it on topic? Is it staying on the same line of thinking? And then has all its parts ties back up to the different, exactly so. Does it have T-I-D-E, does it have T-R-E-E? And being able to look and see, oh, like you're missing D here. And students understand what that means and are able to be like oh my gosh, I wrote the quote, forgot to explain what it means. And they're able to have the tool for understanding what the feedback meant and a mechanism for how to improve as a writer, moving forward, instead of relying on traditional rubrics or instead of the traditional model of the teacher going through with the red pen giving specific feedback on those sentences in that particular case. That is really hard to apply to future writing.

Melissa:

Do you ever have your students give each other feedback or even read their own writing and, with those four things, look in their own writing for it?

Elise Frank:

We're working towards that. I haven't done the peer-to-peer feedback yet, but their own writing all the time and we're working towards peer-to-peer feedback Pe peer-to-peer feedback yet.

Melissa:

But their own writing all the time and we're working towards peer-to-peer feedback.

Elise Frank:

Yeah, Peer-to-peer feedback is tough. Making sure we all understand all the structures first.

Lori:

Absolutely yeah, you could really go off base or really on course, you know, depending on Exactly. I do want to go back, elise, to the idea that you said fun to write, and we really haven't talked about that. I'd like to give you some space to share, like, what does make it fun to write. I know SRSD has a lot of self-regulation strategies and I just want to give you some time to share about what makes it fun to write.

Elise Frank:

Yeah, and the self-regulation piece of it was another huge shift for me just a couple months ago as far as my understanding of what that means. I'd been in some training spaces where the self-regulation piece of it is you write a positive message on the top of your paper to yourself Like you can do it, and when you get stuck you look back at it and that didn't feel super authentic to me and that wasn't really sticking with my students. But a shift in the self-regulation that I learned about recently that has made a huge difference was that the self-regulation piece is really modeling self-talk as a teacher during the writing process. So if we're doing a teacher directed model of writing or interactive writing or collaborative writing, it's not just positive self-talk, it's also modeling the writing process as being challenging and showing how to overcome these challenges. So, for example, if I were to model some kind of writing and I tell the students like, okay, this is going to be like a look into my brain, I'm going to be talking out loud the things that I'm saying to myself and then I could say things like okay, how do I even start? How do I even start?

Elise Frank:

Miss Frank just gave me this writing assignment. What do I don't want to do this, but okay. Okay, the first step. P, pick my idea. Okay, we have this prompt. We already wrote our do what statement as a class, okay, okay.

Elise Frank:

Next, o organize my notes. This is informational writing, so I know I need to use TIDE. Okay, I can start by just writing T-I-D-I-D-E on the side of my paper model. Doing that, okay, t. I know how to do the T because I just look at my do what statement and I'm writing that next to my T. Okay, I'm already done with the T.

Elise Frank:

Next is I I know what I is and that just modeling, going through this self-regulation and talking to myself and having things throughout this model of oh, I don't feel like doing this anymore. This is my hands tired. How much longer till recess? I'm going to take a deep breath. Okay, I just have two more parts in my TID IDE, then I can take a break. All right, then modeling by quietly writing, not multitasking, not classroom managing, and writing and talking all at the same time, but showing oh, it actually does look hard to write. Ooh, oh, I like how that sounds. That was pretty brilliant, ms Fratley. Ooh, that was a good D statement, okay, okay. And that kind of modeling for the self-regulation which felt so much more authentic to me, and the idea being that students hear your voice, which becomes their own internal self-talk, both in writing but in general in life, is coaching themselves through these challenging situations.

Lori:

Yeah, oh, my gosh. Just listening to you, I was like you're right, writing is an emotional rollercoaster, like it's just especially when you're trying to get through something for the first time or for a, you know a time where you're like I don't know that I have all of the information. Okay, I might need to go read something else or learn something else in order to do this. Like that is, that's a hard pill to swallow as an adult, let alone as a 10 year old. You're like no, I just want to get this done so I can go play recess.

Elise Frank:

You know, exactly, exactly, and then for each part of it. Just going back to, like the first question of why this is so hard to teach, it's also the physical act of either forming each of the letters with your pencil, finding where the letters are on the keyboard, if you think of the word, trying to figure out how to spell that word, or is it easier to just use a less fun word but that I know how to spell reliably? So there's so much that's happening rapidly. That's usually really invisible for students until they're in the situation themselves.

Melissa:

Lisa, I'm wondering if you can. Just, I have this memory when I was teaching and I want you to give me some advice which I was? I was teaching writing and I remember I don't remember exactly what, but my students were struggling with something. So I was like I'm going to model this for them. So I went up and did it and this was my vivid memory was like every single one of my kids had their erasers. They erased what they had and then they started writing what I had and I was like what? That was not what I wanted to happen. But do you ever like I'm wondering like, how do you handle that with the model? Because I love all the modeling that you're doing, but how do you handle the like modeling the writing, but then students still writing their own thoughts and not writing what you're writing?

Elise Frank:

Totally. The modeling that I do is never the same prompt that they're writing about. So they're not. And especially just with the physical, cognitive demands of needing to copy, a lot of my students would lose the whole lesson because they would be caught up on copying and the handwriting and all of that. So instead, what I will do because I also it's a group, it's 35th graders, they cannot actually it's very challenging for them to actually sit quietly and listen while I narrate my brain for 20 minutes, like that's a big ask for them.

Elise Frank:

But what I'll do instead is they'll go along and follow the steps on a piece of paper. So they'll have a piece of paper that has, you know, we'll have power, we'll have TIDE and once they see me complete that step, they'll check it off on their list. So they're not actually writing what I'm doing. It's a way for them to promote the engagement, to help them see kind of the timeline, following along, of where we're going. And then, for example, if I was writing a persuasive piece on one side of the issue, their writing assignment the next day or a couple days later would be to write the other side of the issue or a different topic, so that it's not just copying the same handwriting practice but them actually applying. Hopefully what they saw, my process, but with their own thoughts and ideas.

Lori:

Oh my gosh. Well, I would love to give you the space, Elise, Is there anything else you want to share that you didn't get to share?

Elise Frank:

Um, I think something that's been so exciting for me with this whole journey into SRSD is I. It's been really exciting to see how successful students have been able to become and seeing the student ownership has been the most exciting piece of it and being able to see the predictable, consistent routines of the writing process really pay off so that whenever we have to write, students have a starting place and they have a structure that's reliable, that they know. They don't need me to print off a worksheet, they just need a piece of paper, they know how to set up their notes and that's half the battle right there. Once they have that, then the teaching is able to become around the comprehension instead of the structure. It's been exciting, it's been a big shift. Having getting to experience a program that feels like it's working has been really exciting and new for me for writing instruction.

Melissa:

Well, elise, thank you so much for your time today talking about. I loved hearing about what you're actually doing in your classroom and how your students are just picking up all of these things with writing and owning it and becoming some confident writers themselves. So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us today.

Elise Frank:

Thank you so much. It was really fun to get to talk about and I really appreciate it.

Melissa:

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Lori:

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Melissa:

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Lori:

We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us. Thank you.