Writing: The Fourth Grade Challenge

Kande Bahlman

Curriculum and Methodology

Dr. Eisenwine

July 28, 2003

Writing: The Fourth Grade Challenge

How many of you really want to teach Fourth Grade? Be honest now! Given a choice of grade levels, how many of us would actually jump at the chance of becoming a Fourth Grade teacher? Hmmm...that's what I thought. Could it be that we are reluctant to bear the heavy responsibility of the writing portion of the TAKS test? Many of us write well and even enjoy the challenge of expressing ourselves creatively through the written word, but teaching children how to write expressively is scary. Even the most confidently loquacious students often become shy and silent when faced with the challenge of expressing themselves on paper. Teaching children to write confidently, creatively, and coherently is a daunting task.

The state of Texas breaks the writing TEKS into seven overall objectives:

(4.15) Writing/purpose

(4.16) Writing/penmanship/capitalization/punctuation

(4.17) Writing/spelling

(4.18) Writing/grammar/usage

(4/19) Writing processes

(4.20) Writing/evaluation

(4.21) Writing/inquiry/research

(4.22) Writing/connections

Objectives 4.16, 4.17, and 4.18 are often challenging skills for children to master, but they are not skills that are difficult to teach. Resources for teaching the conventions of written language, spelling, and good grammar are abundant and easy to access. The resources for teaching children that they have voices and how to use those voices in different ways to communicate with different audiences are not so abundant, available, or easy to apply to children. The following web sites are cited to help you teach objectives 4.15, 4.19, 4.20, 4.21, and 4.22. The sites have been grouped into four categories; information on how to teach writing skills, graphic organizers, actual lesson plans, and publishers of children's writing.

Teaching Writing Skills

(4.15) Writing/purposes. The student writes for a variety of audiences and

Purposes, and in a variety of forms.

Lane, Barry. Discover Writing with Barry Lane. Retrieved from

http://discoverwriting.com

Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. Improving Classroom Assessment:

A Toolkit for Professional Developers: Six-Trait Assessment for Beginning

Writers. Retrieved from Regional Educational Laboratory at AEL web site:

http://www.ael.org/rel/quest/stories/rubric2.htm#voice

Hoover, Ginny. Teacher Timesavers. Ginny's Educational WebPages. Retrieved

from http://www.geocities.com/ginnyks/inservice.html

Vandergrift, Kay E. (1993). Help Your Child Learn To Write Well. Retrieved from

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improve-

Ment. http://scils.rutgers.edu/~kvander/childrenwritingwell.html

AbiSamra, Nada. (2001). Teaching Writing: Approaches & Activities. Retrieved

July 23, 2003 from the American University of Beirut, Education 325: "The

Problems of Teaching Writing": http://nadabs.tripod.com/writing/

Meeks, Christopher. (n.d.) Finding Your Voice: Making Your Writing Sound

Like You .Retrieved from http://www.efuse.com/Design/wa-vaocie.html

(4.19) Writing/writing processes. The student selects and uses writing processes for self-initiated and assigned writing.

Dykstra, Pamela. The Patterns of Language: Perspective on Teaching Writing.

Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/pdfs/members-only/tetc/

(4.20) Writing/evaluation. The student evaluates his/her own writing and the writing of others.

Purdue University Online Writing Lab. (n.d.) General Writing Concerns. Retrieved

from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/index

(4.21) Writing/inquiry/research. The student uses writing as a tool for learning and research.

Guilford, Chuck. Paradigm Online Writing Assistant. Boisse State University.

Retrieved from http://www.powa.org/about/index/html

Kiefer, Kay. An Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum. Retrieved from

Colorado State University web site: http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/

Graphic Organizers

(4.19) Writing/writing processes

http://www.graphic.org/home.html

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr2grap.htm

Actual Lesson Plans

http://www.discoverwriting.com/lessons/html

http://members.aol.com.vangarnews/scriptito.html

http://www.pacificnet.net/~mandel/

http://www.teachers.net/

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8854/

http://nieonline.com/

Publishers of Children's Writing

Young Writer Magazine

http://www.mystworld.com/youngwriter/index/html

Scriptito's Place

http://members.aol.com/vangarnews/scriptito.html

Kid's Cornfield Kidworld Magazine

http://www.bconnex.net/~kidworld/CORN.html

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