Feedback from the Field

"All of our teachers agreed that CraftPlus has been a fantastic program.  We are very excited to see results in another couple of months.  As we "dissected" writing samples, we saw evidence of CraftPlus in every child's piece."
-Amber McLaughlin, reading specialist, STEM Magnet Academy, Chicago, IL

Feedback from the Field

"I am a 4th-grade teacher at Mermentau Elementary. This past summer, I was introduced to your writing program by my instructional assistant, Jackie Hanisee. I looked over the program and received special permission from my school board to utilize the program this year. I am now going into week eleven of the program, and I can't tell you how impressed I am with my students' progress. This is my 12th year teaching 4th grade, and it is the first time that I actually feel like I'm getting through to my students in writing! Writing time is now something my students and I look forward to each day. My students have taken to the skills I've taught them. They are not only using the skills in writing, but in other subject areas. When we are reading, they stop me to tell me about some good writing practice they see in the reading. I am so confident in my teaching of writing that I asked my principal to observe my teaching of writing for my formal observation. I just wanted to share with you the success I'm having, and let you know how thankful I am to be using this writing program."

 

Sincerely,

Amanda Miller

4th-grade teacher

Mermentau Elementary

Feedback from the Field

"We are loving CraftPlus and thank our lucky stars every day for having it. Our children are enjoying learning about a thesis statement, strong verbs, and descriptive attributes. We like how the assessments are built in each week and how grammar is integrated throughout...we find it very user friendly."

-Lori Rosenberg, primary writing teacher at Imagine Charter School at Broward in Coral Springs, FL

Ways to End an Expository Piece

A good ending is like a great dessert: it ends a delicious piece perfectly. Many students struggle with ending their writing pieces, but good endings are not rocket science. They are chosen by the writer from a list of possible ending types.  The K-5 writer should have practice with at least four

common expository ending techniques:

· Remind the reader of a piece’s major points: “Remember, if you ever find yourself in a house full of germs, drink lots of fluids, get your rest, and wash, wash, wash your hands.

· Give advice: "Take it from me, if you want to save yourself a lot of trouble, just do your chores.”

· Feelings statement: “I love the way that butterflies change during their lives.”  

Give your students a chance to create a satisfying ending by helping them master just three simple writer’s techniques. (Reader, you’ve just been reminded. J )

Yours in joyful writing education,

Susan Koehler

Free-writing: Bringing smiles or tears?

Free-writing time should be a joy for young writers. Sometimes, though, when you announce a time for writing about anything that comes to their active little minds, students react as if they are being punished. Or tortured.  What’s up with that?

How do you handle a student with writer’s block? Or the one who finishes after two sentences? What if a student is reluctant to share his or her free-writing with you? How do you handle the writer who wants to draw? And what about the student who doesn’t want to stop free-writing and move on to the mini-lesson? As teachers, we’ve seen them all.  This Free-writing Troubleshooting Guide from The Complete K-5 Writing Workshop helps you keep free-writing in the smiles-only column!  I would love to hear how you handle free-writing challenges!

Susan Koehler

Seven Ways to Begin an Expository Writing Piece

Ever notice the different ways that writers begin their writing pieces? I just used a question, which—along with onomatopoeia and an exclamation—is one of three hooks that young writers should have under their writing belts as they enter second grade.

By the time young writers are in third to fifth grade, they should have been introduced to many more hooks. Four good ones for expository writing are a startling fact, an anecdote, a definition, and a quotation.

Introduce these one at a time with a literature or teacher model, and ask students to try it out for a social studies or science writing assignment. As always, choose positive student examples to share during response time. What you've done works double duty: they have practiced a writing skill that is easily integrated into content-area studies and which can be applied to other genres as well. Here's a list of hooks with examples from The Complete K-5 Writing Workshop. I'd love to hear how this works for your classroom.

Yours in creative writing education,
Susan Koehler

Practicing Setting

When young writers practice setting a scene,  describing a character, or otherwise explaining how something looks or works, they are also practicing seeing.  Writing a personal description offers a good starting place to hone this skill. As you ask them to write a personal description, set their Target Skills: use interesting descriptive attributes (adjectives for specific attributes, like size, shape, color, texture, etc.), try a comparison, use strong verbs, and begin sentences in different ways. As they begin looking at themselves and write to hit the Target Skills, they will begin to learn how to evaluate what is before them – a handy skill to have in writing, and in life as well!  Teachers of grades 3 and up can use these worksheets from my book , The Complete K-5 Writing Workshop, to scaffold and assess their first attempts. Click here for the worksheets.
Let me know how this works for you! 
Susan Koehler