Writers' Wall
Displaying Children's Work to Motivate and Assess Writing (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 1: Beginning LiteracyStage 2: Consolidation / Fluency
Ages:
4-9
Grade Range:
PreK K 1st 2nd 3rdFood Groups:
Primary: Motivation for Literacy, Assessment Secondary: Writing Conventions, Writing Processes & Strategies
Transcript
This is our Writers' Wall. Every student has a clipboard of their own on the Writers' Wall. Clipboards were purchased at the dollar store. After Writers' Workshop, I'll ask a student whether they would like to celebrate their work by putting it on the Writers' Wall or if they would prefer to put it in their Writer's Folder. Students who would like to put their writing on the Writers' Wall are asked to read their work and celebrate it with the rest of the class and I also ask them the question, why did you decide to celebrate this piece of work in particular? It makes them meta-cognizant of what they're doing as a great writer when they decide on the reasons for celebrating it. Students love to see their development as writers, which is quite apparent when you start to see the accumulation of writing pieces that students add to their clipboards and students like to actually use this wall as a resource when they're writing to learn new writing strategies from their friends. I'll often see children come up and say oh, you did a great job using spaces or I noticed you put a period at the end of your sentence. Often I'll utilize stickies as a reminder of what it is that the children wrote, both for them, because sometimes at this age they don't remember what they wrote, but also for me when it comes to assessment. On the back of the sticky I actually write the strategies that the students are using while they are writing, so that I can keep that in mind when I am doing my assessment. It's also a great discussion piece when I'm sitting down with parents and I need to give them a quick overview of how they're doing in terms of their writing. It's really easy to know a student's progress or whether they've actually utilized a lot of those strategies that you've given them within a Writers' Workshop. For example, if I take a look at this student's work here, I could see that in the first Writers' Workshop that she had great ideation and she loved getting her words down on the page but that her picture lacked some detail. But after a Writers' Workshop where we actually discussed adding detail to the pictures and telling a story through the pictures in her second piece she actually did start to utilize a lot more detail in her drawings. She started to add clothes to her characters, so she was really getting into using the details.
Activity Objective
The goal of Writers' Wall: Displaying Children's Work to Motivate and Assess Writing (Virtual Tour) is to assess students' writing progress throughout the year and promote an awareness of and appreciation for written expression.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- Clipboards are a great tool to use to collect and display students' writing throughout the year. - Keep track of students' progress by taking notes during conferences and writing activities.
Other Recipes by this Teacher
Dial-a-Story!: Using Classroom Telephones to Support Reading Aloud (Virtual Tour)
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Reading Buddy Props: Motivating Reading with a Partner to Practice Early Literacy Skills (Virtual Tour)
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Not Just for Baking!: Organizing Groups and Classroom Activities using Cookie Sheets (Virtual Tour)
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Letter-Sound Bins: Sorting Objects to Build Phonemic Awareness (Virtual Tour)
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