November+10+-+Organization

= Please read the chapter on Organization. =

We will meet on Wednesday November 10 at RES room 22.
Attending: Lee, Ann L, Robin, Marcia, Michelle, Marian,Aimee, Janette, Deb B

Resource: Using Mentor Texts To Teach Writing With the Traits (middle school version and elementary school version)

We wish the sample pieces in the book weren't in order of scoring so we had to think more! How do we switch from the 6 point rubric to a 4 point? Do you score for organization when you give a graphic organizer? Why do they have a GO - true writing disability or haven't learned organization skills yet? How much hand holding do we do? What is the fine line between helping and enabling?

Graphic Organizers are providing formulas for students to follow At some point (early grades) don't students need to learn the structure before they can mess around with it

The expanded rubric is being used at CHMS - should this be on the website? As a resource or should the rubric be revised? The CESU rubric for organization makes getting a 3 fairly easy. Pacing seems to be missing Let's use Ruth Culham's pieces and rescore using our rubric -create benchmarks so we can have some consistency across the middle schools.

Questioning the author using mentor texts - pick a trait and have students score the writing - look at purpose behind author's decisions -also look at craft YOu don't want an ending you want a denouement (Michelle) the unraveling of the plot- ties up the loose ends