Sec guidelines
- 1. Write-Away Days 2010-2011 Prompt Writing Guidelines for Middle School and High School The following guidelines may be helpful to Middle School/High School teachers regarding Write-Away Days: • Make Write-Away Day into Write-Away Week. No matter what day it is scheduled for, use the whole week as content/standards related reading and writing instruction and practice. • Teachers should create their own prompts, either individually or collaboratively. This makes for much more relevant prompts that are curriculum-based or meaningful to content and text being covered in class. Teachers make excellent professional decisions about what prompts can elicit a well constructed writing response from students based on genre, themes, text, and content. (See the Power Point on “What Makes a Good Prompt”.) • Prompt Writing or Constructed Response Writing makes for an excellent PLC study. • Keep in mind that prompt writing is first draft writing regarding the test. Write-Away is a chance to do lots of instruction using the Four Square power points on the web such as writing response to reading/text, organization and development, vocabulary, transition words, etc. Students do not necessarily need to take prompted pieces through the edit, revise, and publish process. • Scoring of Write-Away papers should be done by the teacher and used as a class instructional exercise based on the 1-6 point holistic scoring rubric. The teacher does not need to spend a great deal of time grading these papers but simply scoring 1-6 according to the rubric and hopefully adding some feedback regarding one particular skill or concept as a curricular focus. Students benefit by instructional time spent during the week on how scores are given, without using student names of course, and on the curricular/content focus of the writing. Multiple ways to recognize improvement is encouraged. (See the Power Point “The Scoop on Scoring”. • The Four Square Graphic Organizer helps most with organization and development and are key to obtaining a proficient score (four or better) as well as being helpful in all writing situations. Instruction in the use of the Four Square graphic organizer is time well spent in all content areas. • Students need to be aware that the Four Square Organizer is intended for pre-writing and brainstorming of about five minutes. It is a way to organize thoughts for the development of the essay and should be used to jot notes and thoughts. The graphic organizer is not for the actual writing of sentences and paragraphs.