Hate to sound snarky but shouldn't the administration be able to describe what they mean by appropriate persuasive and analytical for these age levels? And also tell you why? Just bugs the heck out of me when people throw out ideas which they often don't know anything about.
That said, I would think about the kinds of things kids would be interested in persuading people about and go from there. Find mentor texts. An example that we used at our school: every year kids have the opportunity to vote for the California Young Readers Medal. They are given 3 books at primary, intermediate etc. to choose from. They have to have read (individually or as class) each book to vote. We had our students write persuasive essays (we actually used letters) to convince others of their choice. It was great.(My kids read samples of persuasive texts and came up with a rubric. I taught 5/6. Isn't there a great picture book where a child tries to persuad his mother to get a certain kind of pet? (I forget the title but it was a good one!) I would check James Moffett's classic work on genres and writing - the kinds of authentic writing we do in the world and connected to developmental levels. I know we spent many years on the state language arts assessment committee in California exploring the kinds of writing that it was appropriate to assess and how to formulate authentic type tasks and so on. Moffet's work informed some of the decisions about the types of writing to assess at various levels. We found for example that when we tried to assess information type writing, most of what we got was pretty bad writing - stiff and boring. And kids who didn't have background on whatever the topic (which happens in testing situations often) were especially disadvantaged. I am disgusted by much of what goes for writing assessment currently. We've lost sooooo much ground in writing over the last more than decade. In short, I am not against persuasive or analytic as long as the writing experience is authentic and meaningful to children's lives. Be careful. Calkins work (along with the great teachers who helped her) is probably most meaningful to developing students as writers for the long run. Just IMOl!!! Sally On 1/9/12 8:50 AM, "Beth OConnor" <ocon...@norfolk.k12.ma.us> wrote: > > Hello, > I am looking for suggestions on writing programs that could complement > Lucy Calkins in grades K-5. Because of the Common Core, our > administration would like us to focus more on persuasive and > analytical writing and less on personal narratives. Does anyone use > anything for this type of writing that they would recommend? > Thank you, > Beth > > _______________________________________________ > Mosaic mailing list > Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org > To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to > http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org > > Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive
