Notes for the November 12, 2015 Writing Committee Meeting at Vinalhaven School

The writing committee met on November 12, 2015.  Prior to the meeting, teachers collected narrative writing samples K-12.  As a committee, they reviewed writing samples using Calkins’ rubrics.  The following areas of focus were identified,  based on student samples, K-1.

Students need to:

•  be able to write a complete sentence early on.
• be able to create a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.
• be able to write for sustained periods of time.
•  be able to revise their work.
•  be able to use upper case and lower case letters correctly.
• be able to use transition words.

Teachers need to:

• consider administering the assessment to small groups so they can scribe as the students write, as well as observe writing behaviors included in the rubrics.
• consider using three pieces of paper for writing stories – one for the beginning, middle and end of a story.  This might help students understand the concept.

Next Steps:

The writing committee will:

·     Create a glossary for terms to be used by teachers when teaching writing. 

o  Entries to include:

§  Sentence

§  Story

§  Beginning, Middle, End

·     For the next meeting read chapters 5/7 in Calkins' Writing Pathways.

·     Bring copies of a high, middle, and low student narrative samples for your grade level (2-12).  We will score them when we get together and continue to look for trends.

·     Bring copies of scoring guide from Calkins’  text.

·     Write response on Vinalhaven blog on Darlene’s post on Chapters 5/7.  Comment on two of your colleague’s posts.

·     Our next meeting will be held on December 14.  The entire committee will meet that day to continue to look and score narrative samples.

Thank you all for your hard work.