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You've found my page of materials for one of my favorite teacher trainings: The Seven Elements of a Crafted Writing Lesson
 I often ask the teachers I work with, "So what's your favorite writing lesson to teach?" The most common answer I get to this question is either "I don't have one" or "I've never really thought about it." I am always amazed at these two responses because I have so many favorite writing lessons that I would have a hard time choosing just one to talk about.
But I have discovered that I am a bit of a rarity. Many of the teachers I work with don't enjoy the teaching of writing; in fact, most consider teaching writing to be more chore than pleasure. A lot of these teachers, I've discovered, base this on bad experiences they've had when they were "taught" writing. Or they come from schools where programs have been purchased that turn writing instruction into a scripted collection of just-barely interesting activties. If you ever have the chance to be around a group of teachers from your local writing project, listen to how they talk about writing instruction, because it sounds incredibly different. Writing project teachers are excited to teach writing to their students; they all have favorite writing lessons.
I created my Seven Elements of a Crafted Writing Lesson Workshop to help teachers discover a writing lesson that they could love and count as one of their favorite lessons. The inspiration for this training came from a series of observations and interviews I did back in 2004 as part of a differentiated instruction training program I was helping to coordinate. As part of those observations, I was introduced to a dozen special teachers from a variety of schools, each teaching writing with passion and excitement. I asked for permission to come observe and those teachers further, and I began noting commonalities from their lessons and asking them lots of questions about those similarities.
The result was a list of seven lesson elements that both they and I believed were what made the difference in their writing instruction. My workshop presents these seven elements and asks teachers to think about which of the seven they already use and feel very competent with, and which of the seven they feel they could sepnd some time mastering. |
"Seven Element" Lessons:
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The workshop becomes a year-long experience. I present the materials just below in a full-day workshop, and teacher teams agree to collaboratively design and teach a brand new writing lesson that takes into account all seven elements. Before, during, and after the designing and teaching of the lesson, the teachers talk about the seven elements. And then...they go through the process a second time. The first collaborative lesson usually happens in the fall, and the second lesson happens in the spring.
Between fall and spring, I visit the schools and provide follow-up training and collect data. In the second section below, you will find materials from these follow-ups. Here is data from two of the focus schools I worked with in 2008-09; this data shows where teachers ranked their use of the seven elements before creating collaborative lessons and afterwards. This data shows me that teachers can grow significantly in a short year, but that more growth can happen still; I use this data to show administrators that a focus on writing instruction could (and should) be a multi-year commitment.
The goal of this professional development workshop and its follow-up sessions is to help teachers begin to discover the elements that energize and create strong writing instruction. I want teacher I work with to understand the difference between teaching writing and assigning writing. When you plan for the seven elements of a crafted writing lesson, you are teaching writing.
I believe what I have posted here is detailed enough that even teachers not from schools where I am doing these year-long workshops could make sense of them. I invite you to explore these materials and challenge yourself to work towards mastery of one or two of the elements you believe would help make your writing lessons even better. If you start seeing a difference in your writing instruction, come back to the list of seven. Commit to a few more.
Every year, I make sure I focus on one or two of the elements as my learning goal. I am amazed that every year I learn new things about these seven elements, even though I know them all pretty well. For 2009-2010, I am focusing (actually re-focusing) on teacher/student models and real revision. How about you? |
Materials from my Seven Elements of a Crafted Writing Lesson Full- or Half-day Workshop |
The two "Seven Element" Lessons that I Demonstrate:
 Lesson #1: "Floating Down a River," which is inspired by Jan Brett's picture book, Daisy Comes Home. Click here to access the on-line version of this lesson at WritingFix.
My three favorite things about the Daisy lesson:
- The focus skill (pacing) is one that most teachers have never designed a lesson for; it is an important skill when organizing, and it's important for teachers to see a clever lesson that teaches this skill.
- The two graphic organizers show the importance of the two purposes of a G.O.: brainstorming & organizing.
- Once teachers understand what pacing is, they can really use the student samples to discuss the students' strategies to pace their writing.
 Lesson #2: "Start with What Isn't There," which is inspired by Stephen Kramer's non-fiction picture book, Caves. Click here to access the on-line version of this lesson at WritingFix.
My three favorite things about the Caves lesson:
- The focus trait (voice) is one that most teachers can identify in a piece of writing but have a hard time explaining how it works to students. This assignment shows a strategic technique for inserting voice into writing.
- As my teachers use the graphic organizer and examine the student samples, we discuss ways that these tools can promote structured and meaningful talk throughout the writing process.
- The student samples are so well-written, they encourage students to really want to go back and revise their own setting descriptions.
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What are the Seven Elements?
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Skill (a.k.a. Trait) Focus: The teacher specficially choses a focus skill and a support skill before designing the lesson, and all students' writing is assessed mostly for the focus skill. The support skill is a marvelous element to have if you are differentiating the instruction.
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Mentor Text: The teacher uses a published piece of material throughout the writing process; with the teacher's help, the students look specifically for the focus skill in the mentor text, and they attempt to emulate the author's craft in their own writing. In the training, we learn to classify mentor texts.
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Graphic Organizer: The teacher has designed an advanced organizer that helps students succeed with the lesson's focus skill. The best G.O.s do two things: 1) allow for brainstorming and 2) help students begin to organize the writing; unfortunately, most G.O.s I see do one of these two things, but not both.
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Student Choice: Students are allowed to make good choices (about topics or process strategies) at certain points in the lesson to keep them invested in the assignment. When students don't feel they have a choice (or the "illusion of choice," as I call it), they don't care about the writing they create.
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Teacher/Student Models: In addition to a published mentor text, students examine and discuss a teacher and/or a student model during the writing process, looking specifially at the model's use of the focus skill.
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Talk: The students are asked to think throughout the writing process and to talk to each other about what they are thinking; as often as possible, students should think and talk about the lesson's focus skill.
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Revision: When the writing lesson runs long (which it always does!), revision is the first thing teachers rush through. When revision is done right, which works so much better when students thoroughly understand the lesson's focus skill, it is the step of the writing process where students learn the most about what makes writing good.
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Collaborative Planning at the Full-Day Workshop:
At the end of the full-day training, teams collaboratively present the outline of the lesson they have begun developing. To begin their planning, the teams determine three of the seven elements (focus skill, mentor text, and graphic organizer), and they create charts to explain their lesson outlines to each other.
The teams then decide on a schedule, deciding when to complete the lesson's other four elements and when to present the lesson to their students. Before, during, and after the lesson planning, the teachers continue to discuss and re-think ways to improve their use the seven elements while instructing.
Here are three examples of collaborative teams' first three elements, which were charted at the end of the full-day workshop. Click on the images to see them in larger form.
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Follow-Up Materials from my Seven Elements of a Crafted Writing Lesson Workshop |
If you're reading this part of this page, you're probably at a school where I did my Seven Elements of a Crafted Writing Lesson training. The assignment from that training is that you and your colleagues will continue planning, and ultimately teaching, the lesson you started the day I was there. To keep your minds focused on the content of the workshop I provided, I have created the following forms for you and your collaborative teams to fill out together at certain points of the process.
At some schools I work with, the teachers collaborate to create TWO new lessons, not just one. If you are at one of these schools, you will use all three forms for both your first and your second lessons.
Right before teaching your lesson:
(the group collaboratively fills out this form)
Time to fill out: 10-15 minutes
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Right after teaching your lesson:
(the individual teachers independently fill out this form)
Time to fill out: 15-25 minutes
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One Week after teaching your lesson:
(the group collaboratively fills out this form)
Time to fill out: 30-60 minutes
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- Purpose of this form: Explain your finalized lesson so that another teacher might teach it too
- This form will have you and your colleagues do a final reflection on your completed lesson. This form will have you report on how and when you instructed your students to think about all seven elements while they wrote to your assignment.
- This form is an on-line form that will automatically be e-mailed to me upon completion; the group will have a copy e-mailed to them as well.
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