Writing+Committee+Minutes

=Writing Agenda for May 8 meeting=
 * May 26th deadline for last six weeks writing samples. It will be at Tuesday Think Tank.
 * Six Weeks Focus- Changes or additions welcome for next school year
 * Rubrics workshop in August
 * End of year Portfolio

==The next round of writing samples will be due on February 24, 2009. We would like to be able to continue to review the samples at our Tuesday Think Tank meetings if possible. That would require that all members of the Language Arts team come to the meeting with their samples graded and with the rubric they used to determine the grade if it was something other than the TAKS rubric in 3-5. Thanks to all of you who are always at the meeting with your student work ready to share. There have been many creative ideas shared in the TTT writing overviews.==

Writing committee met on Friday, Dec. 12, 2008. We looked at the upcoming list of samples which are now due on January 13. We plan to use the Tuesday Think Tank for our overview like we did last six weeks. Everyone seemed to enjoy seeing the samples from the grade above and below their own.

We shared some rubrics that may come in handy for the six traits and also for the self-evaluation process which all of us will be expected to use in the fourth six weeks of writing. We had a few examples of questions that students could answer in the form of a self-evaluation...

There were a few ideas for the last week of school which many of you may want to consider trying with your classes before the holiday. Get a Christmas coloring book at the dollar store and let the kids choose an image that they can write a story about. They can color the image when they have completed the story. If you mount the image on the right and the story on the left the students can partner with another class and read the story to a buddy who can look at the image while the story is being read aloud to them. The students seem to enjoy this activity. Just in case you have students who do not celebrate Christmas it is possible to do this with a winter scene or with a page of toys... They do not have to make the story center around Christmas but I feel certain that you will be able to find some images in the coloring book that could have a story that was not focused on Christmas at all. They really enjoy getting to read the story to a buddy. Try to coordinate with a lower grade to share the stories or with another class on your own grade level.

Another fun thing to do is have the kids bring in a Christmas card or check out the boxes of cards at the dollar stores in the area. Sometimes the boxes have an assortment and sometimes they are all alike. Students (or you) will cut off the front off of the card where there is an image. This image is glued onto a white piece of paper in the 12 x 18 size. They then draw the rest of the background to complete the bigger picture. So for instance if the image is of Santa in his sleigh they can add the rooftops below and chimneys and stars in the sky around the card image. The real challenge is to color the background to match the colors used on the Christmas card in an attempt to hide the card image in the bigger picture. When done well it is difficult to discern where the card was placed on the finished product. Kids learn about mixing colors and about foreground and background. It is just a fun project to work on over the course of the week. Hope that some of these ideas will work for you this week as we approach the holiday break.


 * Note: You could ask students to bring in the Christmas cards that their family gets after we return to school so that you have a pile of possibilities for next year when you plan to do this activity again. Hey, maybe you will receive a plethora of cards this year at your own address that you will want to file away for next year's project. Some cards are better than others. You may have to cut off borders... to make the edges lend themselves to blending in with the background... Be creative!

Have a great vacation! See you all in January. CLC**

= = = = = = = = =Writing Committee Meeting- Friday, October 31, 2008= Our meeting will be on Friday morning and we will be meeting in Lisa Honeycutt's room in the fourth grade area. We will look at the due date and the writing sample topics for November 18th. Our focus this time is on Organization. You can access information from the inside.cfisd.net website under Elementary Language Arts. Our cover sheets are located on the staff drive in the Writing Folder. You should complete one page for your class if both of your groups are doing the same activity. Let's look at each others samples this time to see what the rest of the grade level is doing and compare notes with each other on how we are getting great results...

We will also talk about Writing Night scheduled for Thursday, February 20, 2009. Student samples are to be saved in the portfolio folders that Mr. Halligan is having the students create in his art classes on Fridays. I know that he will have those ready for you soon. By the time the parents come for writing night we should have a collection of 12 samples to show parents so that they can see the progress as we move through this year. Please be sure to keep the samples and file them each six weeks so that they will be ready to pull for the parent visitation event in February.

Fourth grade will be running a Writing Camp in class over the next two weeks. We will discuss the topics and all are welcome to try some of the activities that come from the Jon Pearson publication of Drawing on the Inventive Mind. You will like his ideas! He is all about incorporating drawing and writing to get great results. If you can see **it, you can** say **it. If you can** say **it, you can** write **it and if you can** write **it, you can** read** it!

I will share some of his ideas with you later this week. Cindy C. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Writing Committee Meeting on Friday, September 22, 2008 Due to the cancellation of our Writing Meeting on September 16 at the Berry Center caused by IKE we were not able to discuss the information from the district regarding expectations for writing across the district. Next meeting is scheduled for November 5 so we will have to get an update then regarding district guidelines for this school year. At this time, primary teachers should be working in the Lucy Culkins kit on Launching the Writer's Workshop and with the Nuts and Bolts book. Second and Third Grades are also "Launching" and some teachers have been given the Schoolwide Fundamentals of Writing Kits which link read-alouds with student writing. Fourth Grade should be using the Fletcher and Portaloupi kits called Teaching the Qualities of Writing and Jeff Anderson's book of Daily Edits for Read 180 students. Fifth grade is writing in the content areas as well as covering the LA objectives/guidelines from the district curriculum. We are currently working on getting some Writer's Toolkits ready for our fourth grade classes. These will consist of table copies of HF Words, Adjectives, Adverbs, Leads, Endings, sentence stems for writing Reader's Responses in journals, feeling words, and any other quick reference materials that would make writing easier for our TAKS tested students. Upon completion of the fourth grade table sets we will work on third and fifth grade sets to go on tables to support our Lieder expectations for writing skills. Thanks to everyone who works hard to support our TAKS tested students in fourth grade. They will be successful because of the work you did to prepare them before they got to fourth grade and the dynamic work of our fourth grade team. We looked at the schedule for the Writing Samples and the topics which are district mandated. We are postponing the first overview due to Ike's interruption of our calendar. We will move it back one week and writing will be due on October 7 rather than this Tuesday. Cindy C. will come to your area during planning rather than having you turn in the students' work to the yellow box as we did in the past. We are looking at a few of the samples to determine in which direction we are headed as we get into the second six weeks and embark upon the Personal Narratives Study. We want to look for strengths that we see in our students' writing but also assess what they need to be working on and then design our mini lessons to meet those needs= = ** Writing Committee Minutes from 5/5/09 Meeting **= ==The next round of writing samples will be due on May 26, 2009. We will review the samples at our Tuesday Think Tank meeting on that morning. All members of the Language Arts team need to come to the meeting with their samples graded and with the rubric they used to determine the grade if it was something other than the TAKS rubric in 3-5. There have been many creative ideas shared in the TTT writing overviews. We plan to continue to review writing samples at Tuesday Think Tank meetings next school year, also. Additionally, a helpful rubric workshop will be offered in August. A Parent Writing Night is planned again during the 4th-Six Weeks of school next year to share our writing samples with parents.==

Sixth Six Weeks Writing Samples

Kindergarten = Personal Narrative, Reading Response, and EOY benchmark writing sample

First = Nonfiction, Reading Response, and Trait-focused piece

Second Grade = Reading Response, Poetry, and EOY benchmark writing sample

Third Grade = Reading Response, Poetry, and EOY benchmark writing sample

Fourth Grade = Reading Response, Poetry, and EOY benchmark writing sample Fifth Grade = Author study, Reading Response, and EOY benchmark writing sample