What is Quality to my Second Grade Writers? 4=YES!

The next day, the students were eager to see their ideas under the examples on the smartboard.  I showed them the examples and the list of criteria we came up with under the examples.  I also had the examples ranked in-order from 4 to 1.  Under the best piece of writing (the 4), I listed in bullets: All words are spelled correct, All words have a consistent space (about one finger), All letters are consistently sized, Capital letters are used in the proper locations.  Under the poorest piece of writing (the 1), I listed: The words are not spelled correctly, The words do not have spaces between them, The letters are not consistently sized, Capital letters are mixed with lower case letters.  Under the 3 ranked piece I used the same criteria and used the word most of in front of the criteria.  Under the 2 ranked piece I used the word some of in front of the criteria. 

I started the lesson by having them look over what we did yesterday and do a turn and talk about the criteria and the numbers 4 to 1 by the examples.  Then, we had a discussion about the criteria and the numbers.  We discussed the words most of and some of in terms of giving one piece of writing a 3 and another a 2.  The students were a bit confused in this gray area of scoring until we talked more about what the quality of the writing meant in terms of the scoring 4-1.  I used the example from the student-created rubric model to further teach this gray area: Example: 4= YES! 3= YES BUT!  2= NO BUT!  1= NO!  Ask students to tell you about some of the mistakes they may have made in the past. When I used this example and talked about why the 3 was a yes but and the 2 was a no but, the students were able to grasp the concept. 

After the lesson, I told them on Monday I would have a rubric ready for them to look at and we would learn how we could use it to review our own writing to help make our writing better…for today, I want you to look at the criteria “what counts in our writing” and see how you can use these lists to make your writing better today and everyday.