# Presentation: 353481

## Forest Avenue Academic Magnet Elementary SchoolMontgomery, Alabama

- Jan Hill, Principal
- Jennifer Rodopoulos, Teacher

- Writing Grows from Kindergarten Through Fifth Grade

## Forest Avenue Facts

- Elementary School
- 660 students:  Kindergarten – 5th grade
- Housed in a building half of which is 1920’s era, half-state of the art 2001, located near downtown Montgomery, Alabama
- 43 certified teachers, 17 classified staff members
- SAT-10, Alabama Reading and Math Test, Alabama Direct Assessment of Writing, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
- Academic Magnet Accelerated Curriculum

## Roots of Writing

- In All Grade Levels:
- *Baseline sample—1st week
- *Field trip writing
- *Writing across the curriculum
- *Journals, portfolios, folders
- *Revising and editing
- *Rubrics

## In Kindergarten...

- Copy sentences from board and illustrate
- Word family sentences and illustrate (The cat sat on a mat.)
- Field trip sentences and illustrate
- Progress from looking at pictures and writing words to writing sentences
- Finishing stories read aloud

- Sowing the Seeds of Writing

## In First Grade...

**Compare and contrast a story read in class to a play seen on a field trip**
**Participate in a regional  holiday writing contest**
**Recreate stories such as “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by substituting new characters and events**
**Write stories about Native American culture—the importance of bravery in the tribe**
**Field trip writing using various genres learned during the year**

- Adding Water

## In 2nd Grade...

- Paragraph formatting—indenting; five sentences with topic sentence and conclusion
- Descriptive writing using adjectives
- Transition words (first, next, then, finally)
- “About Me” narratives

- Adding Sunshine

## In Third Grade...

- Expose students to 3 modes of writing
- Writing prompts based on subject matter and current events
- Teach figurative language—similes, metaphors, adj/adv
- Book reports, poetry, imaginative writing

- Weeding Words

- *Family Ties project, Pet
- Rock report, moon and
- sky journal, math journal

## In Fourth Grade...

- Alabama portfolios-year long project
- Chapter summaries for novel chapters
- Narrative—Beginnings & endings, purpose, audience, characters, dialogue, transitions, vivid verbs
- Expository—Main idea, supplying details, sequencing
- Writing a report from outline

- Adding the
- Fertilizer

## In Fifth Grade...

- Alabama Direct Assessment of Writing—narrative, descriptive, expository
- 4th quarter-persuasive
- Math and science journals
- Poetry unit
- Lab and research reports

- Pray for a bumper
- crop!

## If at first you don’t succeed...

- REDO is a four letter word
- Sometimes a rough draft and final copy are not enough
- Redo means...re-grade 
- Reward better “redos” with better grades
- Student conferencing

- Try, try again...
- and again!

## Principal Gardener

- ADAW day—whole school writes
- “Graded” by principal
- Prompts developed by principal
- Contests—Holiday essay, Reflections, local and state, publications

- Jan Hill tends her garden
-  of writers with care.

## Summary Points

- Teaching writing is a learning process for students AND teachers.
- The “perfect” method of teaching writing does not exist.
- The more fun and interesting writing is for the teacher—the more fun and interesting it is for the student.
- Challenges:
- To make children enjoy writing
- To keep teachers enthusiastic about writing
- Keep test scores high