Week of December 19th Adding Criteria to the Rubric

The week of December 19^th.

This week I wanted to focus more on the craft of their writing and I wanted them to look at their writing in terms of their thoughts and feelings.  I wanted to help them be more aware of their punctuation.  On Monday I showed the students four more examples I created.  In the examples I had written pieces using periods, question marks, ellipses, and exclamations.  I had the students look at and read the pieces first, then I read the pieces to them, and finally, I had them read the pieces with me.  When we read the pieces aloud it was easy for the students to determine that the piece without the punctuation ran together and it was boring and the piece with the punctuation sounded better and it was more exciting.  We went through the process again using the model as before.  The process was easier this time through and we were able to have our added criteria to our rubric the next day.  Our rubric now looks like this:

Trait and Criteria	1 = NO!	2 = No But!	3 = Yes But!	4 = YES!
Concept of Writing/craft: Students will: use letter sounds/phonics to spell words, words will have proper spacing, letters will have consistent sizing, capital letters will be used properly, sentences will have proper punctuation.	No words are spelled correct. No words are spaced properly. None of the letters are consistently sized. Capital letters are not used in the correct places. None of the sentences have punctuation.	Some words are spelled correct. Some words are spaced properly. Some letters are consistently sized. Some capital letters are used in the correct places. Some sentences have the proper punctuation.	Most words are spelled correct. Most words are spaced properly. Most letters are consistently sized. Most capital letters are used in the correct places. Most sentences have the proper punctuation.	All words are spelled correct. All words are spaced properly. All letters are consistently sized. Capital letters are used in the correct places. All sentences have the proper punctuation.

For Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week I had the students follow the process of write, reread, edit/revise, and peer review with the new criteria on their rubric. 

On Thursday December 22^nd we ended another writing unit and will begin the next unit.  The next unit will be Persuasive Writing:  Reviews and letters.  In the next unit I will have the students add the trait of Meaning/Significance to our rubric.  With the next  piece we will focus more on meaning, sense of audience, feelings, and excitement.