7/1/2014

Dear Ashley,

Thank you for inspiring us to write such fun stories! Dawn is especially thankful for your being
her writing partner and allowing her to write for her niece and nephew. Kristin found herself
missing teaching third grade and she was inspired by storytelling. We appreciated hearing the
lead up and background to the lesson so that we had a framework for where this piece fits in
your unit. Rachel appreciated that you tried something that you had not tried before, but want to
teach next year. It takes a lot of courage to experiment in front of peers! We appreciated all of
the modeling that you did with the morals list, the character traits list, and the conflict list; it was
not just a smart move for elementary students but could be helpful for everyone. Having so
much time to write also helped to solidify the teaching points that you had as targets for us
today. Excellent work!

AFFECT/MOTIVATION
Animals are interesting and appealing to students of all ages.
Collaborative writing encouraged us, it also allowed us to learn more about the animals
because of sharing ideas, and support in writing ideas and use of various techniques
such as strong diction
Publishing opportunities can be encouraging and allow us to refine our work. This is also
a promising practice.
Prewriting made this an enjoyable and manageable writing progress. We sometimes
forget we need these steps as writers too.
Social aspects of writing motivate production of a quality product potentially more than
the grade at the end
Readers Theatre worked well to motivate students interest in fables.
We appreciate your recognition that writers need to research and we need to embrace
that for students.

PROMISING PRACTICES

Encouraging students to learn facts with research and a focus on variety of of facts with
the different topics and categories is helpful
Pulling together various aspects of authors craft
Guided notes/graphic organizer for research that allowed for student choice were
promising because students who wanted to focus on certain aspects, like description,
could.
The student model offered us as writers the opportunity to recognize how research is
used in the writing process.
Readers Theatre was also a promising practice because it providing an excellent
mentor text that wove in some of the key aspects of fables including personification
through strong verbs and specific adjectives and the clear integration of the moral at the
end of the story.
Prewriting graphic organizer was an excellent scaffold and reinforced the writing process
while also emphasizing key elements of storytelling, specifically fables.
Emphasizing the role of research in the writing process, even in fiction writing, was
essential.

CCSS/POLICY/PR

Text Types and Purposes:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.A
Introduce a topic and group related information together; include illustrations when useful to aiding
comprehension.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.B
Develop the topic with facts, definitions, and details.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.C
Use linking words and phrases (e.g., also, another, and, more, but) to connect ideas within categories of
information.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.D
Provide a concluding statement or section.
Production and Distribution of Writing:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.4
With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are
appropriate to task and purpose.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.5
With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning,
revising, and editing.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.6
With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding
skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.7
Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.8
Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes
on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.


Range of Writing:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.10
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time
frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

While we recognize that you are an amazing elementary school teacher, we also recognized
that you do use many skills we recognize for older ages too.
Writing Next recommendations for writing instruction include skills you worked on with writing
strategies, prewriting, and collaborative writing.

In Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing there are several Habits of Mind that you
embraced in your teaching, including curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence,
responsibility and flexibility. We also appreciated the rhetorical knowledge addressed in the
models with mentor texts, and how you highlighted specific aspects of the writing models for us.
Additionally, the rhetorical knowledge was highlighted in the exploration of fiction and nonfiction.

EXTENSIONS/ADAPTATIONS

It would be interesting to pair students with different animals to learn about other
animals. Students could teach one another about their animals this way. We realize this
means that the students would need to be paired with people with animals from similar
habitats and ecosystems.
In the older grades, creative writing genre study of various children literature can focus
on fable
Exploration of intertextuality with exploration of rewriting that happens in terms of
perspective is an interesting move for older students
Use of google docs is an excellent opportunity to support students in the collaborative
writing process.
Include information/lesson about the power of 3 in writing (3 characters, 3 events,
repetitions, etc.) Such as 3 Little Pigs, etc.
Have students adapt their fable to a script for Readers Theater and perform their fables.
Modified graphic organizer for research to include a space for thinking about
personification and character traits; this might allow students to synthesize their learning
across distincts lessons in the unit that teach different skills, as well as making
connections between fact, fiction, and authors craft (the human traits that students will
incorporate).

QUESTIONS ARISEN

How do you group students together?
What do you do if a student wants to write by him/herself? Would there be a choice
opportunity to accommodate learning preferences?
What is the pacing of this lesson and timeframe for this during a unit? (We are aware
that you did multiple lessons to move us through the activities.)
Kristin reminds you that spending more time on personification will likely be needed
(Kristin did this through the course of reading a fable--make a list of human traits that
they hear when you read the fable. For example, after the Readers Theater, you can
make a list of the human traits on a poster. )

Thank you for inspiring us to write! We believe that each of the stories can be published as
childrens books, and we were overjoyed to hear each groups product. Were hoping everyone
will be willing to share in our anthology :) z!

Shalom,

Your writing group, Rachel, Kristin, and Dawn