#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat Topic: Informational & Argument Writing

Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven & Kristy, 2 Peas and a Dog host #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Tuesday evening from 8 - 8:30 PM EST. #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Sunday, we post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Tuesday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last week and we hope that you will join us again.

Looking for the recap? Click on the image below.

We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group, even if you aren't on Twitter. 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, resource links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction.

On Tuesday, September 26, our #2ndaryELA chat will be about informational and argument writing.

The Format:
8:00 – What and where do you teach? Include a link to your blog if you have one. #2ndaryELA
8:05 Q1: How do you teach the difference between informational and argument writing? #2ndaryELA

8:10 Q2: What are your students’ favorite assignments for either or both? #2ndaryELA
8:15 Q3: What are students’ struggles with these types of writing? #2ndaryELA
8:20 Q4: How do you address these struggles? #2ndaryELA
8:25 Q5: Share tips for getting students to avoid plagiarism and use proper citation in these types of writing. #2ndaryELA

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Tuesday from 8-8:30 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “Latest.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @2peasandadog) will post questions every 5 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged, so be sure to use a link shortener like tinyurl, bitly, goo.gl or ow.ly Just visit one of those links and paste your long link to shorten it for Twitter. Using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

You can also check out a quick video tutorial in this blog post.

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Tuesday evening and in our 2ndaryELA Facebook group!

Get caught up on past chats here:

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.

#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat Topic: Informational Writing

Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven & Kristy, 2 Peas and a Dog are hosting #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Tuesday evening from 8 - 8:30 PM EST (we are trying out the half hour chat). #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Sunday, we will post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Tuesday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last week and we hope that you will join us again.

Looking for the recap? Click on the image below.

On Tuesday, November 17, our #2ndaryELA chat will focus on informational writing in the ELA classroom.

The Format:
8:00 Intros: What and where do you teach? Include a link to your blog if you have one. #2ndaryELA
8:05 Q1: How do you incorporate informational writing in your classroom? #2ndaryELA
8:10 Q2: What are your students’ favorite assignments? #2ndaryELA
8:15 Q3: What are your students’ struggles with informational writing? #2ndaryELA
8:20 Q4: How do you address these struggles? #2ndaryELA
8:25 Q5: Share a resource for informational writing that you find invaluable (book, article, blog post, type of technology, etc.). #2ndaryELA

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Tuesday from 8-8:30 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “All tweets.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @2peasandadog) will post questions every 5 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged, so be sure to use a link shortener like tinyurl, bitly, goo.gl or ow.ly Just visit one of those links and paste your long link to shorten it for Twitter. Using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Tuesday evening!
Get caught up on past chats here:

Creative Writing 101: Talk Show Interview

When I think of creative writing, poetry and short stories are the first things that come to my mind, and probably yours too, but not all students are interested in that type of writing. In my creative writing elective class (which students had not elected to take), I wanted to come up with a creative writing topic that all of my students would be interested in. Since everyone has at least one person they are interested in, whether a famous athlete, musician, etc, I came up with the idea of having students write a script for a talk show interview.

As I thought more about it, I realized this assignment would also require students to engage with nonfiction sources and use their research skills, but because students would be focused on a person of interest, they wouldn't even realize it! Sneaky, sneaky me.

I allowed students to choose any famous person, living or dead. I discouraged students from using someone non-famous, like their grandmother, because that would be more difficult to research in class. Some choices were: Beyonce, Steve Jobs, Kevin Durant, President Barack Obama, Aliyah, and Will Smith.

After students selected a person of interest, I asked them to identify three credible sources of information about their person. As my students were in 10-12th grades, we just did a quick review of what makes a source credible or not. If your students are younger, you may want to spend more time on the topic. Students emailed me the links to their three sources and once I checked them to see if there was enough information and that they were credible sources, students received the okay to begin developing the questions and responses for their talk show.

Once students had an outline of their Q & A, we examined samples of written interviews to properly format our own. We also discussed the idea of dialogue (narrative skill) and making our written interview sound as if two people were actually speaking to each other. Watching clips of a view interviews would help students get the flow.

After students wrote out a rough draft, they typed it up in Google Drive where I could easily make suggestions about revisions.

In my English classroom, I might use a similar project to have students "interview" a favorite poet from our poetry unit or a favorite author at the end of the year. You could also "interview" a character from a novel, but then students would be using a fiction source rather than nonfiction and would not employ research skills.

A talk show interview isn't limited to the ELA classroom. This writing project would require nonfiction sources and employ research skills regardless of the subject area.

Some ideas:
1. In history/social studies, have students select a historical figure from a unit or time period to "interview."
2. In science, have students select a scientist who made a significant contribution to the unit or course topic (i.e. chemistry, physics, anatomy) to "interview."
3. Similarly in math, have students select a mathematician who made a significant contribution to the unit or course topic (i.e. algebra, geometry, calculus) to "interview."
4. In gym/physical education, a famous athlete.
5. In music or art, a famous musician or artist from the genre or style you are studying (i.e. jazz, Cubism).

For this and other creative writing activities, check out this engaging, common core aligned resource.

Common Core Writing: Wrap Up & Additional Resources

This is number ten and the final post in a series about my online course, Common Core: Implementing the Writing Standards. If you are looking to get caught up, check out:
Post #1: an overview of the writing standards
Post #2: the gradual release process and writing
Post #3: explicit teaching of writing skills
Post #4: argument writing
Post #5: informational writing
Post #6: narrative writing
Post #7: research and writing
Post #8: writing across the content areas
Post #9: assessing student writing

In this final post, I wanted to wrap up what I learned from the course and share a few additional resources to help you align writing in your classroom with the Common Core. As this was a series of ten posts, I will leave you with a top ten list of what I learned.

1: The Common Core standards are standard across grade levels; they just increase in complexity.
2: The gradual release process should be used with writing just as with any other lesson in the classroom to ensure students have ample time to practice before working independently.
3: Explicitly teach students even the most basic of writing skills because any gaps in knowledge will only continue to be a hinderance.
4: Argument is the most important type of writing and must be grounded in evidence.
5: Find great mentors texts on interesting topics to hook students when doing informational writing.
6: Narrative writing can be blended with nonfiction and research by writing historical fiction or science fiction pieces.
7: Practicing research skills is not limited to research papers and can be done with shorter assignments.
8: Schools should take a unified approach for teaching writing across content areas.
9: Assessment should be used as a tool to plan future teaching and students should be active participants in the assessment process.
10: Likely you are already doing parts of 1-9, but as you approach each type of writing, look back closely at the related standard to ensure that your lesson is truly Common Core aligned.

As you shift your teaching to better align with the Common Core, there are several valuable resources related to writing on the Common Core State Standards Initiative website.

The English Language Arts Appendix A reviews types of writing and related language skills. Pages 23 - 24 define the three purposes in writing: argument, informational, and narrative. Pages 24 - 25 explain why argument writing is so important as well as the difference between persuasive and argument writing. Pages 28 - 29 introduces teaching and learning the conventions of Standard English (grammar and usage). Page 30 has a graphic showing an example of the progression of a skill across grades. Page 31 showing the progression of all language skills from grades 3 - 12.

The English Language Arts Appendix B focuses on text exemplars and performance tasks, which will show you what kind of readings students should be analyzing in their writing. Page 2 discusses selection of text exemplars. Pages 4 -13 are a table of contents of text exemplars listed by grade band and by type of text: stories, drama, poetry, and informational texts for ELA, history/social studies, and math/science, and technical subjects. Excerpts of the listed exemplars are on the pages that follow.

The English Language Arts Appendix C offers samples of student writing so you can see what student writing should look like at your grade level. Samples are broken down by grade and the three purposes in writing: argument, informational, and narrative. Pages 3 - 4 are a table of contents of samples broken down by grade and the three purposes in writing: argument, informational, and narrative. Pages 6 - 107 are the samples, each with an annotation that breaks down how each piece meets the grade level standards, citing examples from the piece to support each point.

I hope you enjoyed this series on implementing the Common Core writing standards, and as always I would love to hear how you are implementing these ideas in your classroom.

Common Core Writing: Informational Writing

This is my fifth in a series of posts about my online course, Common Core: Implementing the Writing Standards. In my first post, I gave an overview of the writing standards. In my second post, I showed how the gradual release process can be used with writing. In my third post, I explain why it is so important that basic writing skills be explicitly taught, no matter the age or grade level.

My fourth and most recent post focused in on argument writing, arguably (oh, I am so punny!) the most important of the three types of writing called for in the Common Core standards: argument, informational (this post's focus), and narrative writing (my next post).

Informational writing, otherwise known as explanatory writing, communicates information accurately. This kind of writing has one or more, often interconnected purposes: to increase readers’ knowledge or to help readers better understand a procedure or process. You can read more a more thorough explanation in the Common Core's Appendix A (page 23).

Informational writing strongly ties in with Informational and Literature Standards 1 & 2, citing evidence from the text and providing an objective summary. Objective. Meaning no one cares what you think or feel. Somewhere in middle school or elementary school someone taught my students to start everything they write with "I think" or "I feel" or "I believe." I am constantly reminding them there is NO first person in objective writing. Connected to that struggle is stating main idea, yes still a struggle in ninth grade. Again, main idea has nothing to do with what you think or feel; it is based on the facts of a text.

One way I practice summarizing and stating main idea is with "money" summary sentences. Students are given $2 to write a summarizing sentence. Each words costs 10 cents and words like a, the, of, etc. are free. Students' goal is to write a summary sentence that "spends" as close as they can get to $2 without going over.

I practice with this set of four passages, perfect for the gradual release process of "I do, we do,
two do, you do," but you could also try this strategy with any text you are reading in class. Tying it in to money makes it fun for students while pushing them to succinctly communicate the main idea. As students share their money summaries, I constantly ask them to self assess: "Is that the big idea or just a detail? Is that objective or does it include your opinions?"

Once students have mastered a summary sentence or if I feel like that strategy just isn't working for some students, I will often use a second strategy for writing summary topic sentences. This is a three step method: identify the item (story/article) + a summary verb + finish your thought = summary topic sentence. The item, the title of the text, is given by the teacher and the summary verb is selected from a list, so the first two steps are low stress. The third and final part is what the student must come up with, the "finish your thought."

I provide sample summary topic sentences for students along with the list of summary verbs. Students then have four opportunities to practice with texts that they have read recently in class. You can assign the items or let students select.

Finally, students select two of their topic summary sentences to develop into full summaries. After your approval of their topic summary sentence, students will generate a fact outline. You may also want to check their fact outline before they proceed to writing their summary. I tell my students that their summary can only include the approved facts, no other ideas.

To get students excited about writing informational texts and to expose them to the features of effective informational writing, make sure your students are reading exemplary informational texts or "mentor" texts. Will they read boring stuff on standardized tests? For sure! So why subject them to boring stuff in class?

Mentor texts can and should be complex and difficult, but it doesn't have to be boring. All of the elementary school teachers out there are saying duh!, you should always use mentor texts, but this is a newer idea at the secondary level. For a great read on use of mentor texts (and even mentor sentences) at the secondary level, check out "Making the Most of Mentor Texts" by Kelly Gallagher. It's a topic that really deserves its own post.

Where to find great mentor texts? My go to place to find them is in magazines. I subscribe to a variety of magazines connected to my students' interests. I keep magazines in the classroom for independent reading and when issues get too old, they are always handy for collages or other projects. But before putting them out in the classroom, I skim them for articles I think might be good reads.

One example would be an article from a recent Sports Illustrated issue (in general SI has really strong writing, just keep that swimsuit issue out of the classroom), titled "Young, Gifted & Homeless." Anything about sports = 99% of my boys are now interested in reading, hooray! One of the article's strong features is its weaving of interviews with statistics, mixing narrative elements with fact. Another strong feature is the evidence of the author's careful research, drawing on a number of sources for information. After reading the article and discussing how it was written, students could choose their own topic to engage in writing, making sure to include those same features that made the mentor text effective.

I would love to hear about how you use informational writing and/or mentor texts in your classroom. Next up: narrative writing.