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!
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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:
Serravallo says that writing can fell very lonely. You work by yourself: thinking, getting the words down on the page, problem solving, checking, and rechecking.
But... she says it doesn't have to be that way.
Writing partners and clubs can offer students: motivation and accountability, feedback, chances to get "unstuck", additional ideas, and an expert to compensate for their weak spots.
Serravallo says that she hopes that teachers offer all students opportunities to meet together in partnerships of small groups at various points throughout the writing process.
Group work can be challenging for many students, so luckily this chapter provides strategies to support them.
Focus Strategy 1: Talk Around the Idea, Then Write
This strategy can be used during the brainstorming or planning phase. Writers tell their partners ideas they have for a writing project. Students should spend some time having a conversation about the idea. Some sample prompts could be:
* I'm thinking I might want to write a [genre] because...
* The details I plan to include are...
* One question I have is... Do you have questions?
* I was thinking it could go like this...
To keep the sentence strips handy for when I am teaching this strategy, I wrote the title of the strategy on the back, and then hooked them together on a command hook.
Focus Strategy 2: Partner Inquisition (To Get Your Thinking Going)
One partner reads their piece aloud to the other (or the partners can read them silently). Partners can ask each other questions to push their writing.
There is an example of an anchor chart you can share with your students to help them generate questions.
Focus Strategy 3: Help Wanted/Help Offered
In this strategy, students think about their strengths as a writer. They can post an offer to help others under a "help offered" section of a board. Likewise, students who need help can write a "help wanted" sign.
If you would like to purchase the book mentioned above, you can find it here.
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!
