Literacy Coaching Corner

Literacy Leaders from across the county continue to meet and dive into the work on Essential 6, Research and Standards-Aligned Writing Instruction. Our last meeting focused on implementing writing strategies within the classroom as outlined in the K-3 Literacy Essentials. The focus of this month's newsletter will be sharing the strategies from this meeting.

We value the work, time and dedication of our county-wide literacy leaders. Be sure to reach out to your school leader for any questions you might have about best writing practices.

According to Reading Rockets, as with reading skills, writing grows through explicit instruction. Writing is a skill with rules and structures. Across multiple grade levels, good writers are created through systematic, explicit instruction, combined with many opportunities to write and receive feedback. Systematic instruction can come in the form of a variety of writing strategies that support your students within their writing. Explicit instruction, coupled with support (in the form of coaching, small group instruction or large group instruction) will help your students gain the confidence and knowledge needed to become writers. Below are a few strategies for your toolbox as you create a classroom of writers.

Four recommendations taken from The What Works Clearinghouse. All of these practices are aimed at achieving a single goal: enabling students to use writing flexibly and effectively to help them learn and communicate their ideas.

Recommendation 1: Provide daily time for students to write.

Recommendation 2: Teach students to use the writing process for a variety of purposes.

Recommendation 3: Teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing and word processing.

Recommendation 4: Create an engaged community of writers.

These four recommendations will set to foundation for creating effective writers. These four recommendations were taken from Teaching Elementary Students How to Be Effective Writers. The article describes how to implement each of these recommendations in further detail.

A writing strategy is a series of actions (mental, physical, or both) that writers undertake to achieve their goals. Strategies help students generate content and carry out components of the writing process. Students should acquire specific strategies for each component of the writing process. Many strategies can be used to assist students with more than one component.

Why use a paragraph hamburger?

• It helps students organize their ideas into a cohesive paragraph.
• It helps show the organization or structure of concepts/idea.
• It demonstrates in a concrete way how information is related

Check out Reading Rockets to learn more about using this strategy in your classroom.

Watch this teacher use a writing strategy with his classroom to help his students become more effective writers.

• Check out Jennifer Serravallo's The Writing Strategies Book. This book is a one stop for all things writing strategies. Listen to the author talk about her book by clicking the link.

Writing Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo

• The Michigan Learning Channel is offering a Literacy Essentials Professional Learning Series, titled Read, Write, Roar! This PD is convient way to earn SCECHs! Clink the link for more information!

As a reminder, these are the Literacy Leaders by building:

• Anna Hungerford and Cadi Drayton from Ovid-Elsie
• Sharon Brown from Pewamo-Westphalia
• Amy Verhougstraete and Erin Larson from DeWitt
• Michelle Clark from Bath
• Tammy Wilson and Elissa Rowland from St.Johns
• Brenda Epkey and LeAnn Schafer from Fowler

We are excited to work with these teachers again this year and hope that you will use your building leader as another resource on your literacy journey.

The early literacy coaching team has created the Clinton County RESA Literacy Website to provide general literacy and Early Instructional Practices resources for teachers professional learning. You will also find past issues of the Literacy Coaching Corner housed there.

If you'd like to earn 5 SCECHs and learn more about Essential 6, click here to sign up for a free MI Virtual course.

Gail Cook

gcook@ccresa.org

Supporting Bath and Pewamo-Westphalia School Districts

Cecilia Stajos

cstajos@ccresa.org

Supporting Fowler and Ovid-Elsie School Districts

Ashley Windnagle

awindnagle@ccresa.org

Supporting DeWitt and Ovid-Elsie School Districts