Week of January 9th. New Year and New Rubric.

Week of January 9^th.

This week we are continuing to review, remodel, and revisit.  I have remodeled routines, reviewed expectations, and revisited our Hopes and Dreams.  I shared my Hope and Dream with my students, which is: to help every student to learn to their full potential and to have every student enjoy coming to school every day.

This week during writing we are writing reviews.  We will focus on writing reviews of books, movies, and food.  For our rubric this week, I want the students to think about how they can write good reviews; remembering the criteria from the latest rubric and adding criteria that focuses on their thoughts, feelings, word choice, and audience.

For the start of our lesson on Monday, I created examples of a food review, reviewing tacos from our school lunch.  I put the reviews on the smartboard, I read them to the class, we read them together, and I had the students take time to think about the examples.  Before the discussion, I told the students to think about which example sounded the best and why?  The “best” example I wrote for the four had a beginning statement stating what I was reviewing and what I thought about the tacos overall.  Then, I wrote three sentences with “spicy” words explaining why I thought the tacos were great.  Next, I wrote a sentence making a suggestion on how the tacos could even be improved.   Finally, I wrote a sentence to a specific audience (the students) recommending the tacos at Carver Elementary School.  The poorest example didn’t say exactly what I was reviewing, there was only one sentence saying I like the food, there was no reasons given why I liked the food, there was no suggestion, and there was no recommendation.  In the other two examples, one was a No But, and one was a Yes But, based on the beginning statement, supporting sentences with spicy words, the suggestion, and the recommendation.  The students were easily able to pick out the 4=Yes and the 1=No but, we had to dig deeper into the 2=No But and the 1=No to determine the “what counts” in the writing.  Our discussion on day the first day was going a little long for the students so, I let them write about their favorite food.  I told them while they write to list reasons why they like the food.

The next day we dove back into our discussion.  We looked at the examples again and had time to make determinations as to why we scored each example.  We listed the criteria under what counts and the next day I presented the rubric to the students.  The students agreed on the criteria for the rubric and they were excited to start using it to help them write their reviews.

Trait and Criteria	1 = NO!	2 = No But!	3 = Yes But!	4 = YES!
Concept of Writing/craft: Students will: write reviews using their own thoughts, feelings, and “spicy” words to a specific audience	Has no opening statement. (I like tacos). Does not have sentences supporting what you thought. Does not have a recommendation.	Has no opening statement but, may tell only what you are reviewing. Has only one sentence supporting what you thought. May or may not have spicy words. Has a recommendation but is not written to an audience and is not telling why you should or should not.	Has an opening statement telling what you are reviewing and what you thought about it. Has two sentences supporting what you thought using spicy words. Has a recommendation but may be missing whom it is written for or why you should or should not.	Has an opening statement telling what you are reviewing and what you thought about it using spicy words. Has three or more sentences supporting what you thought using spicy words. Has a recommendation to a specific audience telling why you should or should not…using spicy words.

In this rubric, we decided to leave out the suggestion in the scoring of our writing, because the students thought they might not have a suggestion if they liked everything about the food, book, or movie.  I told the students that would be okay, but I would like them to try and write a suggestion if they could think of a way to make the book, movie, or food better.

The third day is when they were able to use the new rubric.  During their writing they were checking the examples and using the rubric to see if their writing had the same criteria as in the Yes column.  While I was conferring with the students, I noticed that students were getting hung up on word choices.  I stopped the writing and had a mid-workshop conference to discuss “spicy” words again.  We looked at our list of words we could and did change into spicy words that we had come up with earlier this year.  We reviewed these words and brainstormed a list of words students were thinking about.  Then we thought about what word we could use for that word that would spice it up.

The next days the students were able to finish at least one review, score it, change it, and share it with their CF. The students were really thinking critically about their writing and the word choices they were making.  It was fun to see them working so intently.