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PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAM REPORT

2011-2012

PLT Title

|Can We Persuade You? - 3rd Grade Persuasive Writing Unit |

Blurb for PLT Conference Brochure

|You should come and see a persuasive writing unit we have developed based on the new Common Core Standards for writing in third grade. |

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Contact Information (Write * next to facilitator’s name.)

|Name |School |Grade Level or Subject |

|Suzie Pomponio * |Winn Brook |3 |

|Kate Calhoun |Winn Brook |3 |

|Jaynene Dellitt-Young |District Wide |ELA Curriculum Specialist |

|Bob McCorkle |Winn Brook |3 |

|Danielle Pandolfo |Winn Brook |3 |

Guiding Theme

|Differentiated Instruction/RTI |

|X Integrated, Real-Life Experiences |

|X Acquisition of 21st Century Skills |

|X Deepening Teacher Content Knowledge |

|Improving School Climate/Culture |

|Teaching the “Whole Student” |

|Other (explain) _______________________________________________________ |

Inquiry Question

|“How do we use the Common Core State standards for writing to improve instruction in order to improve the students’ Persuasive writing |

|skills?” |

Process

|We originally wanted to use the content from the social studies curriculum to teach persuasive writing. We began our inquiry by giving the |

|students a pre-assessment to collect baseline data on their ability to write persuasive writing pieces. We found that the students did not |

|have any background knowledge about the parts of a persuasive writing piece. We also learned that it was difficult for the students to write |

|about the facts from the social studies curriculum and write a strong persuasive piece. From here, we decided to solely focus on creating a |

|persuasive writing unit. |

|We used backwards design to create our unit. We looked at the Common Core standards and found the goals for writing a persuasive piece and |

|determined that 2 subcategories existed: opinion and argumentative. |

|We created a rubric based on the benchmarks. |

|We analyzed samples of persuasive writing pieces and scored them using our rubric. These samples could be used as exemplars during |

|instruction. We created our own pieces to use as exemplars as well. We distinguished the difference between opinion and argumentative pieces|

|of persuasive writing. |

|We created a graphic organizer to provide a visual to organize the parts of a persuasive writing piece. |

|We have gathered common prompts that could be used to assess each benchmark. |

|We have begun to create lessons to teach the components of a persuasive writing piece. |

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Findings

|From our inquiry, we learned that our students had little to no instruction on persuasive writing before coming to third grade. In addition, |

|we found that we did not have a unit to teach persuasive writing. We found that there was a real need for a unit that correlated to the |

|expectations outlined in the Common Core standards for third grade writing. |

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|We used the benchmarks to find the components of persuasive writing pieces. We also used the benchmarks to distinguish opinion writing from |

|argumentative writing. We created lessons and materials to teach the components of persuasive writing pieces. In addition, we created a |

|rubric that could be used to assess writing samples. |

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Recommendations / Next Steps

|We hope that next year we will be able to implement our unit. Our hope is that the students will be able to write persuasive pieces about a |

|topic that is engaging to them and they will be able to complete this writing piece without any research. Once they are able to write a |

|persuasive piece, then they may be able to use the social studies curriculum to inspire a persuasive piece about something that happened in |

|history. We hope that the district writing team will find our work useful in creating a common Persuasive writing unit. |

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