Welcome to our book study of The Writing Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Writers by Jennifer Serravallo! I am joining forces with some other fabulous teacher bloggers to discuss the writing strategies we come across in this AMAZING professional text!
Because this book isn't your typical professional development book filled with individual "chapters" of narrative, each teacher blogger will be giving you a glimpse into the 10 goals that are represented in the text. Each goal area is filled with many valuable strategies that will help you to support and guide your students as they become better writers. Keep in mind, we are only highlighting a FEW strategies in each section. There are over 300 strategies in the whole book!
You can find my posts for previous sections below:
Goal 4: Focus/Meaning
Goal 5: Organization and Structure
Goal 6: Elaboration
Goal 7: Word Choice
Goal 8: Conventions: Spelling and Letter Formation
Goal 5: Organization and Structure
Goal 6: Elaboration
Goal 7: Word Choice
Goal 8: Conventions: Spelling and Letter Formation
Serravallo says that choosing to teach the strategies in this chapter means that you're choosing to teach how authors make decisions around grammar and punctuation, not just assigning students to do it correctly.
According to Serravallo, all students will benefit from paying some attention to their grammar and punctuation choices.
When choosing this as a goal for your students to work on, you may want to consider students who:
* can use support making their writing more readable.
* are ready to challenge conventions and play with language.
Focus Strategy 1: Repeated Reading to Check a Checklist
In this strategy, you ask the student to read the first item on their editing checklist. They then read through their draft making any changes they notice having to do with that first item. When they finish, they repeat these steps going through each item in the checklist.
Serravallo suggests that the best checklists are reminders of things that the students have already been taught and have learned how to do.
I agree with this, and I think it is even more powerful when the students generate their own checklists.
Focus Strategy 2: To And or Not to And?
I have to first say, I LOVE the name of this strategy. Now with that our of the way, this strategy is for kids who LOVE to use the word "and". Can we say run-on sentences?
You might see sentences from your writers that look like this:
I went to the water park and went on the water slides and ate ice-cream and then I went in the wave pool and the lazy river.
This strategy asks the child to find a place in their writing where they've used the word "and" several times in one sentence. They should re-read the sentence and think, "Which of these ideas/details need to stay connected"? They should keep the "and" where the ideas and details are related and delete it where they aren't.
Focus Strategy 3: Don't Over-do It
Sometimes when students learn new skills or strategies they get so excited that they go into over-use mode.
This strategy helps the student to remember the purpose behind the technique and to exercise restraint.
You have the student scan their draft to find a place where they've used the same technique over and over. They should consider the purpose and decide what to keep and what to change.
As you can see from the student sample above, this student is excited about using dialogue and exclamation points. She would be a great candidate for this strategy!
If you would like to purchase the book mentioned above, you can find it here.
This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog. All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.
Make sure to visit Sarah over at Kovescense of the Mind She is our official hostess for this week, and she has some more strategies and great ideas for you!
If you would like to link up your own blog posts about this book, feel free to do so in the linky below! Don't forget to check out the other bloggers' posts as well as they write them for even more ideas!
