Mrs. Amatulli’s Blogspot

Our first back-to-school writing across the curriculum workshop/ study session
was a great success. We looked at our school’s current writing program and
discussed the sunshine (or positives) and the blues (or areas we want help in).
On a large chart paper you make a T chart.
One side says SUNSHINE and the other BLUES. Yellow sticky notes are used for sunshine
and blue sticky notes for the blues.
If you are interested in the sunshine and blues here
are the results:

Sunshine

*Open to ideas and respond through sharing
*We plan hands-on, atmosphere rich activities to truly engage each learner
to ignite their desire to write about their learning
*Science leads itself to writing in the content area
*We understand the struggles of students and we desire to help them
*Our staff gets lots of good ideas to use in the classroom
*We value writing and we think it is important
*Teacher collaboration and sharing
*Our teachers are open to new ideas and willing to embrace different ways to help kids learn
*Dedicated staff to improving personal writing and student writing
*We are able to discover our students needs and abilities
*Teachers feel writing is important and are trying to incorporate more
*Students are doing a good deal of writing in most content areas
*Students are able to express themselves in different ways that allows for individuality -
Journals
Writer’s Workshop
Open Ended Assignments
*Kids have creative, wild ideas
*Writing in science is easier, used almost daily
*During our “Blue Ribbon” small writing samples were required across the curriculum
*Students (and teachers) have plenty of stories to write about
*We have a staff that works well together
*We work together as a school- highly motivated, and share ideas

Blues

-Teachers may think they need to grade everything (and may not assign much writing)
-Content area teachers need more ideas for incorporating writing
-Following through with strategies I teach the students
-More writing in the content areas (ie) essay questions, exit/ entrance writing)
-Write more often, in more classes, contexts
-Students need more opportunity to express selves in various written forms
-We need to show we value writing such as DEAW (Drop Everything and Write)
-Limits to how much writing can be done in a period, subject w/GLCEs, etc
-We do not do enough writing nor is it across the curriculum
-In my experience students need to do more formal and informal writing outside of school
-Content area teachers need ideas for incorporating writing
-Students do not spend enough time writing either in or outside of school
-Specific content writing examples (science, math) inservicing for teachers
-We need time to plan with colleagues so that our creativity and energies may ignite and burn brightly
-Limited time for responding to student writing
-Very little time writing in content areas, we must broaden our “writing horizons”
-Very little in content area- too time consuming with our overstuffed curriculum
-Currently not writing across entire content area
-Educators need to broaden horizons of acceptable topics
-I tend to “skip” written answer problems in math, I probably should model how to answer such questions
-Clarification of different types of writing
-We don’t provide enough opportunities for students to use writing in a creative way
-More opportunities to express in different forms, through different avenues
Open Ended Assignments