Participants learn how to systematically teach informative writing, as well as gain extensive practice in the use of rubric scoring. Students are exposed to a wide variety of multicultural literature and learn to write from a prompt.
Participants meet in the summer for one week of initial training.
First year participants meet monthly during the school year and attend the McRAT Institute in July. Year II participants meet for four full days during the school year. It is designed for teachers in grades 2-4. However, second grade teachers have the option of participating in the ELLA training, which focuses on emergent and early readers. Some teachers feel that this is more appropriate for their students.