February 2005 — Features
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
The Impact of the AACTE-Microsoft Grant on Elementary Reading & Writing
Workshop Implementation
Five 90-minute sessions for 12 elementary teachers were conducted from January to April 2003. Each session targeted one of the Illinois writing assessment areas, while instructional writing components and techniques were distributed in handouts and strategically modeled on a SMART Board interactive whiteboard. Computer application time was also provided for developing participant writing activities. The CPE online database was developed with teachers from grades 2-5 who worked within a two- to three-week time frame between workshops to create two activities - totaling 24 activities for each month.
Two employees of the WIU Center for the Application of Information Technologies (CAIT) conducted a presentation on the software available in the grant during the first workshop. The second workshop session related to focus, which is the first target area of the Illinois writing assessment. Since the state writing test stresses three areas of writing (narrative, expository and persuasive), practical student activities of these types of writing were emphasized. Ideas for story starters were also shared with teachers (Lenski and Johns 2000), and suggestions for effective introductory paragraphs and ways to start writing using hook sentences were discussed (Morretta and Ambrosini 2000). A PowerPoint presentation titled “Hooking a Good Sentence” demonstrated action buttons that let fourth- and fifth-grade students practice selecting good hook sentences. Students read and reread the sentences to determine the best response; they then select the purpose of the writers’ messages.
The Illinois state assessment (ISBE 2002) stressed that excellent focus included a strong theme and use of appropriate supporting details. The related activities used in the grant workshops involved matching sentences with main ideas and story webs (Kirk 2001; Hatton and Ladd 2002). Participants were then given time to work on their own activities dealing with focus. Teachers developed 20 activities that were put on the Web database of writing activities (see sidebar on Page 14 for an example).
The third workshop session was presented on elaboration (support). The major emphasis of the session was the prompting of students to include details supporting the main idea in their writing, as well as expanding events by using descriptive words, better verb choices, prepositional phrases and appositives. Actual models of word choices, descriptions, phrases and appositives were distributed to participants for their selection and use according to the learning needs of their students. Sentence combination for complexity of thought development was discussed, and picture prompts were provided as resources for teachers in assisting students with detail recall for composition (Lenski and Johns 2000). The participants were given independent work time during the session, and the database was expanded with two activities on elaboration (support) - totaling 18 activities.
A third-grade elaboration activity,
“The Octopus,” included information about octopi from the Yahooligans! Animals site. Students searched for eight facts and elaborated with interesting and descriptive details on an octopus graphic organizer.
