St. Benedict Middle School Reading Website by Mr. Konieczny

St. Benedict Middle School Reading Website
by Mr. Konieczny

Writing Classroom

Reading Classroom

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St. Benedict Middle School Reading Website
Writing

How Will Writing Instruction Fit into the School Year?

What Will the Students Be Expected To Write?

What Should the Students Write in Their Journal?

What Is a Reading Record?

Will There Be Reading in the Writing Classroom?

Will There Be Book Reports?

How Will Writing Instruction Fit into the School Year?

Mrs. Portser and I have been leading the reading instruction for the St. Benedict Middle School for several years now. Towards the end of the 2004-2005 school year, we began to discuss how we could more fully integrate writing into the reading curriculum since it was now an assessed section of the unit tests.

We decided that I, Mr. Konieczny, would lead the writing instruction while Mrs. Portser will continue to instruct the middle school literature. As Mrs. Portser has half of one of the 4-6 reading groups for literature, I will have the other half for writing. After a five day schedule, the half that had been with Mrs. Portser will come to me and receive writing opportunities, and the half that had been with me writing will then go to Mrs. Portser for the literature from the textbook.

Both rooms together are creating a fuller reading instruction for the students. The reading and writing grades will be combined at the end of each marking period and appear as the "reading" grade on the report card.

What Will the Students Be Expected to Write?

Writing lessons will follow the five step writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Each student will produce six pieces of a specific type and eight pieces focusing on a specific literary element or devise. The six writing types will also be assessed through each unit test taken from the textbook. Where each grade is expected to explore the same styles, elements, and devices, the sequence of these pieces will be different based on the order they appear in the textbook.

The Six Writing Types

Explanatory Writing

	informs how to complete a specific task
	presents step-by-step instructions
	uses time-order words to help set a logical sequence

Expository Writing

	presents factual inform on a specific topic
	expands the main idea with factual elaboration and detailed description
	may draw a thoughtful conclusion based on facts

Personal Narrative

	tells a story from personal experience
	has a beginning, middle, and end
	unfolds events in sequence and brings closure to the story
	expresses the writer's feelings in a distinct personal voice

Persuasive Writing

	clearly states a position on a specific topic
	offers convincing reasons and facts to persuade an audience
	organizes reasons in a logical order
	may use appropriate anecdotes to elaborate the position
	often saves the strongest argument for last
	draws a concrete, practical conclusion

	is written to entertain an audience
	unfolds a sequence of original narrative events
	has progression of events with a beginning, middle, and end
	has imaginative elements
	features creative, as opposed to factual, writing
	can explore character, plot, dialogue, and setting

Writing That Compares

	presents the most important similarities and differences, or advantages and disadvantages of two topic items
	clearly introduces the main idea, and elaborates on it with facts
	organizes facts and ideas in a logical pattern of comparison, using transition words to connect ideas
	may have a conclusion based on factual comparative information

The Eight Literary Elements and Devices
1	Character	a person or other figure that is part of a story
2	Figurative Language	an language that uses images or language that makes different kinds of comparisons
3	Flashback	a moment in the story when the author tells about an event that happened before the time of the story
3	Foreshadowing	a moment in the story when the author suggests beforehand what is going to happen later in the story
4	Mood	the general feeling in a story
4	Tone	the attitude or style of expression used to write
5	Plot	the series of related events that make up a story
6	Point of View	the vantage point from which a story is told
7	Setting	the time and place in which story events occur
8	Theme	the major idea or lesson that a story conveys about life

What Should the Students Write in Their Journal?

The purpose of a journal is to become a treasure box of ideas that the student may use in his or her writing one day. Quality is not so much the goal of journaling as quantity is. The students' journals do not need to include great pieces of writing, but should instead include words that they find to be interesting, descriptions of events or objects that they have seen, a joke that they heard, or anything else that they might like to remember. A journal does not even necessarily need to have great grammar; the students may simply make lists or even small sketches with a written description of the picture.

Each student is required to keep a writing journal throughout the school year. Each entry in their journal needs to be labeled with the date.

The journal will be collected without warning throughout each marking period. The students will be graded only on quantity. The students should be writing at least one page in their journal each week. Each week the journal will be worth three points; the minimum that a student can write to earn the three points is one page. Extra pages will not earn extra points, but can carry over to future weeks.

The content will not necessarily affect the grade. As long as the effort to write one page in the journal is made each week, the student will earn his or her three points.

What Is a Reading Record?

The Academic Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening released by the Pennsylvania Department of Education recommend that each student read twenty-five books each year. To meet this goal, students should be reading about two books each month.

Starting in September and ending in April, the students will need to log on their Reading Record sheet the books that they have read during the 2005-2006 school year. They will need to include the title, author, number of pages, genre, and date they finish the book. The teacher and student will review the record towards the end of each nine weeks, with a final grade being assigned in May as a percentage of completion.

The students will have until April to finish reading all sixteen books. No extra points will be rewarded for reading more than sixteen books, but any student that does should be extremely proud of themselves.

Books Read	Score	Percent
16	50/50	100%
15	47/50	94%
14	44/50	88%
13	40.5/50	81%
12	37.5/50	75%
11	34.5/50	69%
10	31.5/50	63%
9	28/50	56%
8	25/50	50%
7	22/50	44%
6	19/50	38%
5	15.5/50	31%
4	12.5/50	25%
3	9.5/50	19%
2	6.5/50	13%
1	3/50	6%
0	0/50	0%

Will There Be Reading in the Writing Classroom?

Yes. We will be exploring a number of selections of children's literature in the writing classroom. The students will even be assigned a copy of some of the books that we read in class.

These books will be used to explore how the author is able to create, use, and manipulate different types of writing, literary elements, and literary devices. We will better be able to write ourselves if we study how authors are writing their stories.

Journaling opportunities will arise through these books throughout the year, and short comprehension tests may be given after reading chapters from each book.

Will There Be Book Reports?

I am not going to assign book reports in the writing half of the reading classroom. With this being the first year of implementation of the writing instruction module, we feel that we are exploring enough of new concepts (journals and the reading record) to stimulate the study of reading. The use of book reports will be assessed at the end of this year after seeing how the writing instruction evolves.

Last Update: July 30, 2005