MESD Early Literacy Network

CREATING STRONG WRITERS STARTS AT THE SENTENCE LEVEL

The goal of this network is to help you stay up to date on the Science of Reading without needing to add another meeting to your calendar. All newsletter contents are shared to generate awareness of resources, local opportunities, and provide professional learning aligned with reading science. Archived newsletters are available on the MESD Early Literacy Webpage.

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I have been receiving lots of questions about writing instruction. Writing can put an incredible strain on working memory, so it is helpful to provide students with explicit frameworks (check out Joan Sedita's Writing Rope below!) and structures to know how to write. Start with content/texts you are already using. Make sure they contain enough knowledge for students to have something to think and write about. Across multiple content areas, model how to find the components of a simple sentence within those texts. Provide several opportunities for students to practice orally and then transfer the simple sentence work to reading and writing tasks.

SUBJECT (who or what) + VERB/PREDICATE (did what) = SIMPLE SENTENCE (a complete thought)

Coming up next month...learning more complex sentence structures with a focus on writing as thinking!

Fritsch, K., McGuire, A., & Trejos, E. (2021) We Move Together. AK Press.

Spilsbury, L. & Splisbury, R. (2018)Tundra Biome. Crabtree Publishing Company

DiCamillo, K. (2006)The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Candlewick Press

Creech, S. (1994) Walk Two Moons. HarperCollins Publishers

Sentence Basics quick reference sheet made available by Keys to Literacy's Free Resources

How Does Writing Fit Into the Science of Reading By Stephen Sawchuk - January 17, 2023 Education Week (7 min. read)

WIth an acknowledged nod to Scarborough's Reading Rope, Joan Sedita's work offers a framework for explicit writing instruction across content.

Visit Keys to Literacy's Free Downloads to go along with The Writing Rope.

The image of the Writing Rope is available free for your educational use at Keys to Literacy's Free Downloads. It can also be found with permissions on the International Dyslexia Association website and within ORTIi's generous resource packet Joan Sedita provided. A colored image of the Writing Rope is an available download with the purchase of The Writing Rope book.

Brooke's Publishing offers a sneak peak inside CH.1 The Introduction to the Writing Rope (7 pages)

Listen to ED360 podcast: The Writing Rope by Joan Sedita (38 minutes)

Keys to Literacy offers free writing webinars, including one on The Writing Rope: A Framework for Evidence-Based Writing Instruction . (1 hour webinar)

ORTIi hosted Joan Sedita at their Annual 2022 Conference. View her session on Instructional Suggestions for Writing About Reading and utilize the generous resource packet Joan Sedita provided to go along with her session.

➡️ ➡️ Sign up on the waitlist now! Waitlist will close on April 7th, 2023. ⬅️ ⬅️

To qualify, you must be a certified educator in a MESD Component School District.

Be sure to check out the latest edition of American Educator Spring 2023 containing two new articles about LETRS.

OPB interview with David Douglas SD's Gilbert Heights Elementary 4th grade teacher, Amanda Francois, about her LETRS training and the district's new SoR aligned HMH curriculum.

Questions? skendall@mesd.k12.or.us

Email: skendall@mesd.k12.or.us
Website: https://www.multnomahesd.org/school-improvement.html
Location: 11611 Northeast Ainsworth Circle, Portland, OR, USA