Writing In The ELA Classroom: Informational Writing

This #2ndaryELA Twitter chat was all about informational writing in the ELA classroom. Middle and High School English Language Arts discussed favorite assignments, students struggles and solutions, and helpful resources. The highlights are below.

Favorite assignments:
*Kelly Gallagher Article of the Week
*How-to pieces written as a script with an accompanying video
*Responses to watching CNN Student News
*Writing a "travel for dummies" piece about a dream destination
*After reading Steve Jobs' biography Thinking Differently, students choose an inventor to research, report on, and create a body for
*Responses to TED Talks

Struggles:
*Appropriate tone and incorporating text features
*Stamina
*Paraphrasing
*Summarizing
*Plagiarism
*Structure

Solutions:
*Post transition/signal words for different types of text structures
*Use mentor texts
*Look at cases of musicians who have gotten in trouble for plagiarism
*Modeling
*Working in pairs/small groups
*Writing conferences
*Frequent feedback
*Mini-lessons
*Examine bad examples
*Graph stamina by recording time spent writing
*Identify transitions/signal words in sample texts
*Use a site like KidBlog to publish student writing and create a real audience
*Create competitions
*Use Google's Voice Recorder option

Helpful Resources:
*Pinterest boards like this one and this one
*Kelly Gallagher
*Dave Stuart Jr.
*Erin Klein
*Write the World's monthly contests
*Hemingway Editor or Analyze My Writing
*Lucy Calkins Units of Study for Informational Writing
*Read and Write for Google

Hope you'll join us tonight at 8pm EST to discuss argument writing. The questions for our next chat will be posted here on Sunday. If you missed this chat, scroll down and read the whole thing below.