Teaching (as) the Writing Process: Reflection, Revision, and Recursivity

What does effective writing instruction look like?

What role does inquiry play in writing instruction?
What does dialogic writing instruction look like?
What can “the writing process” teach us about lesson planning?
What is the “process” approach to writing, and how does that affect expectations?
How can we respond (and grade) effectively to individual student writers?

Monday Wednesday
2/2 Conceptual unit design. Crafting quality writing assessments. 2/4 Planning writing instruction. Task analysis.

Read Smagorinsky 8, 5-6. Read Hillocks 1

Discuss conceptual units. Talk Time

Brainstorm unit goals and skills to be taught. Conduct task analysis on Hillocks narrative.
Begin drafting unit goals, articulating skills and designing an assessment.

2/9 Assessing where students are. Characteristics of a process approach to 2/11 Planning activities to scaffold student learning. Building procedural
writing instruction. knowledge. Dialogic writing instruction.

Read Hillocks 3 ; Smagorinski 7 Read: Smagorinski 2; choose from McCann et al 1, 3, 4, 5; Hillocks 4-9

Due: Task 1: Wiki post #1. What characteristics does Hillocks advocate in effective lessons?
Plan a “Hillocksian” lesson together.
Guest speaker: Anne Heintz
2/16 Digital composition. 2/18 Developing criteria for judging students’ work. Consider grammar
instruction.
Danielle DeVoss
Read Hillocks 2; Wilson excerpt; Smagorinski 158-166; skim Weaver text

Talk Time
Begin to collaboratively develop rubrics.
Guest speaker: Christine Dawson
2/23 Responding to student writing. 2/25 Using assessments to revise instruction. Evaluating the impact of
teaching.

Discuss rubrics. Read Hillocks 10-11

Workshop writing units.
Due: Draft of unit for workshopping. Share units.

Due: Writing units

Designing Writing Instruction

Guiding Questions: How can we practice unit design specifically focused on narrative writing instruction? How can we use what we know
about our students and about writing to design tasks and assess them? How can we work with colleagues to design curricular units?

Goals:
• To collaboratively practice conceptualizing and developing a unit with a curricular focus on writing instruction
• To analyze the task to be taught
• To develop criteria for judging the work produced by students in order to assess our teaching
• To invent activities that will help students learn the procedural knowledge necessary to the task being taught
• To integrate standards into planning for, and assessment of, writing instruction

In this unit, we will be turning our focus to two issues: 1) the architecture of conceptual unit design and 2) the teaching of writing. Specifically
we will turn our focus to narrative writing.

Some of the questions we will be addressing about writing are:

Why teach narrative writing?
What makes a good personal narrative?
How can we structure units that will help students develop their narrative writing?
What does dialogic writing instruction look like?

We will also be addressing questions about unit design:

How do we design essential questions and unit goals of appropriate scope?
How do we design cumulative assessments that align with our focal questions and goals for a unit?
How do we articulate units in relation to standards documents?
How do we make decisions about content, teaching and learning strategies?

Finally, we will consider the following questions about teaching and lesson planning:
What does “the writing process” have to teach us about lesson planning?
What does it mean to say: “Teaching is a recursive process?”
How do I make my unit planning responsive to my teaching context?

Your unit should include:

o An explanation of the clear focus of the unit (Embed the writing goals within some type of conceptual unit.)
o Essential questions to guide students’ inquiry throughout the unit
o A strong and developed rationale
o Concrete objectives
o Michigan State Standards
o A summative writing assessment that assesses specific unit objectives
o Select daily lessons that scaffold skills (procedural knowledge) for the final writing assessment
You may choose to complete this assignment independently or in groups. Let’s discuss.