English SOL Institute Secondary Writing Strand Carrie Honaker

English SOL Institute Secondary Writing Strand Carrie Honaker “Community Excavation Locally to Globally: Asking, Searching, Finding, Sharing, and Reflecting” 1

Time to Write !!!!! You as an educator… 2

Secondary Writing Key Points in Secondary Writing • Writing revolves around mode, purpose, audience, and process • Provide students opportunities to practice writing on demand, for shorter time frames, and over extended periods of time • Each grade level has a composing/revision standard an editing/grammar standard 3

Secondary Writing Key Points in Secondary Writing • Teaching writing is an expectation of every grade, not only “tested” grades • Provide students with opportunities to compose using computers • Self- and peer-editing opportunities for students are essential 4

Secondary Writing Key Points in Secondary Writing • 6 -8 writing emphasis is expository and persuasive writing • 9 -12 writing emphasis is argumentative, persuasive, and analytical writing • 9 -12 writing should produce a sound argument, address counterclaims, provide sound reasoning, and come to a just conclusion

The Dilemma: We have classrooms that fill each year with students who belong to many diverse communities; school for them is often a place outside their “real” world that does not value their “truths”. They must still be assessed by state-mandated tests, achieve certain documentable skills, and write in certain valued forms. How do we bring these students to appropriate learning levels while also cultivating literate citizens that will critically read and write in the world beyond school? 6

Kelly Gallagher’s Questions to Educators: Do you believe our students are graduating adequately prepared to read the world at a deeper level? What will happen to students who leave school unprepared for the literacy challenges that lie outside our curriculum? What is more important ten years from now: our students’ remembering of the key literary elements in The Great Gatsby, or our students’ being able to make sense of a ballot initiative? (Deeper Reading 196) 7

Time to Write…again !!!! What have you always wondered about where you live or the people in your life? What problem do you see in your community that you would like to investigate? 8

Write to Learn Pedagogy Tenets: -Language is central to learning- It is how we organize our concept of the world -“Expressive” writing helps students explore and assimilate new ideas, explain concepts to themselves before explaining to others -“Transactional” writing uses formal language of a particular discourse community ie. scientific, literary, historical etc. , to communicate information (Mc. Leod 151 -59) 9

Write to Learn Pedagogy Tenets: -Incorporate assignments that have audiences other than the teacher -Incorporate purposes other than testing student knowledge and comprehension -Value classrooms as social systems and encourage interaction among students that models the modes of debate and intellectual exchange found in the world outside of school -Student-centered -Reflective and reflexive (Mc. Leod 151 -59) 10

Time to Write…one last time !!! Reflect on what you saw today and write about how any of the activities or principles we talked about today could be taken back to your schools. 11

Many of the new Virginia SOLs are applicable across grade level, too many to list. Though this is a workshop on the Writing Strands for Secondary English, the content of the try-out assignment covers numerous other strands including Research and Media Literacy. Below is a link to the new standards K-12: http: //www. doe. virginia. gov/testing/sol/standards_ docs/english/review. shtml 12

My Contact Information: Carrie Honaker chonaker@rcs. k 12. va. us Blue Ridge Writing Project website: https: //sites. google. com/site/the blueridgewritingproject/home My Education Blog: http: //titanscribe. blogspot. com/ 13

Disclaimer Reference within this presentation to any specific commercial or non-commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer or otherwise does not constitute or imply an endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the Virginia Department of Education. 14