Where We Are & Why We're Moving to Informational Text
As we move ahead in the school year, our curriculum moves ahead as well. Seeing as my students had clearly met, exceeded, and become independent in the narrative writing skills that I had aimed for, we will now be moving into writing based off of informational text. This shift will give my students the opportunity to fully achieve Stage 6 as they transfer the 5 W's to a new style of text and writing. The chart below will walk you through our progression through the 6 Stages of SRSD, showing when we developed each stage and concluding by showing where we need improvement for Phase 2 - Stage 6. Click here to open a tab with a higher resolution PDF of the chart below, as it may appear distorted on some platforms.
Every year, the second graders do an animal project, where they pick one zoo animal, make a papier mâché version of it, and complete an informational report on the topic. As this is a first/second grade split class, the first graders will be doing the same assignment as to not feel left out, but I will be catering their assignment and scaffolding their writing for it to be grade-appropriate and to maintain below a frustrational level.
Informational Text
For this, we will begin with the introduction of close reading, which will expose them to tactics for drawing information out of text, a key skill for their upcoming year in second grade. I am keeping the annotations minimal, only underlining important information, circling a word you don’t know, and putting a question mark next to a part you have a question about. We will focus on informational text annotation and comprehension first, annotating passages and answering comprehension questions together and through heavy modeling and lots of oral discussions to preface writing. This writing will morph from comprehension questions, to notes on our animals, and then to the final compilation of these animal notes to make a paragraph about the animal. For this final writing piece, which will be on display at the school’s annual show of student work, where parents come and walk through classrooms to see each class’ final project, we will approach it from their familiar writing structure – the 5 W’s.
Since reading, comprehending, annotating, and discussing informational text is completely new for them, I have assessed during Stage 1: Develop Background Knowledge that this is a requisite skill for writing their animal research projects. Since it is new for everyone, I will be using the SRSD model on a smaller time scale to introduce informational text reading, annotating, and comprehension, before returning to completing Step 6: Independent Performance of the 5 W’s. This thorough teaching of informational text will ensure that students will all begin their animal research projects with the requisite knowledge to succeed. I recognize that this is not a seamless progression for the 5 W’s, but this is the clearest and most effective way to get students to a point of successful understanding of informational text to be able to write their animal project clearly. Optimally, the units would have been more spaced out so that the 5 W’s could be more cohesive – we will continue to use and reference the 5 W’s while learning about informational text, and then fully return to the 5 W’s: Stage 6: Independent Practice in Week 4.
The table below will walk you through how I will use the 6 Stages of SRSD to deliver the content of Informational Text reading, annotation, and comprehension, an essential prerequisite skill for their animal research projects. Here, you will see how SRSD guides my instruction as I prepare students for this end of the year project. Click here to open a tab of a higher resolution PDF of the chart below.
Since reading, comprehending, annotating, and discussing informational text is completely new for them, I have assessed during Stage 1: Develop Background Knowledge that this is a requisite skill for writing their animal research projects. Since it is new for everyone, I will be using the SRSD model on a smaller time scale to introduce informational text reading, annotating, and comprehension, before returning to completing Step 6: Independent Performance of the 5 W’s. This thorough teaching of informational text will ensure that students will all begin their animal research projects with the requisite knowledge to succeed. I recognize that this is not a seamless progression for the 5 W’s, but this is the clearest and most effective way to get students to a point of successful understanding of informational text to be able to write their animal project clearly. Optimally, the units would have been more spaced out so that the 5 W’s could be more cohesive – we will continue to use and reference the 5 W’s while learning about informational text, and then fully return to the 5 W’s: Stage 6: Independent Practice in Week 4.
The table below will walk you through how I will use the 6 Stages of SRSD to deliver the content of Informational Text reading, annotation, and comprehension, an essential prerequisite skill for their animal research projects. Here, you will see how SRSD guides my instruction as I prepare students for this end of the year project. Click here to open a tab of a higher resolution PDF of the chart below.
Return to Writing: 5 W's
After we complete our study of informational text, preparing students and giving them the tools they need to successfully complete their animal research project, we will move back to writing using the 5 W’s. The end of our informational text study is their own personal study of their animal research project animal, which feeds directly into this final writing piece. We will shift, in Week 4, from informational text reading, annotation, and comprehension, to using our notes and the familiar 5 W’s framework to craft thorough, high quality writing pieces while increasing the generalization and transfer that was incomplete in Phase 6: Independent Performance during Phase 1.
We will be writing a sentence for each of the five areas of their project – Appearance, Families, Habitat, Diet, and Fun Fact. For these areas, we will outline an example sentence, picking and choosing the sentence elements that are necessary out of the 5 W’s. For example, when describing an animal’s habitat, it is not necessary to list the time, unless you are describing their current location in comparison to a previous one or the location of an extinct series, neither of which we will be doing. An example would be:
We will be writing a sentence for each of the five areas of their project – Appearance, Families, Habitat, Diet, and Fun Fact. For these areas, we will outline an example sentence, picking and choosing the sentence elements that are necessary out of the 5 W’s. For example, when describing an animal’s habitat, it is not necessary to list the time, unless you are describing their current location in comparison to a previous one or the location of an extinct series, neither of which we will be doing. An example would be:
Habitat (higher level): The African elephant lives in the grasslands of Africa because they need water and mud to stay cool and protect themselves from the sun.
Habitat (lower level): The African elephant lives in the grasslands of Africa. They need to live near lots of water so that they can squirt it on themselves to stay cool.
In the above sentences, students are following a 5 W’s format centered specifically around habitat:
By organizing these complex sentences in terms of the 5 W’s that are appropriate for each content area, and providing them with the pronouns, articles, and connecting words they need to generate high level sentences, I am confident that we can produce, unique, independent, awe-inspiring creations for our showcase.
How does this shift change the research question?
Let's take a look at my original research question at the beginning of Phase 1 to begin.
Question:
In what ways does the employment of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) in Writer's Workshop affect the writing process for students?
While the use of SRSD to teach the writing strategy of the 5 W’s will remain the overarching theme of the project, narrative writing is no longer the sole aim. Due to this, additional sub-questions should be added to ensure that the full scope of Phase 2 is incorporated into the research question. More specific questions for Phase 2 are:
Question:
In what ways does the employment of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) in Writer's Workshop affect the writing process for students?
- How does explicit teaching of the basic structure of the 5 W's (Who, What, When, Where, Why) impact students' narrative writing?
- Do explicit mini-lessons affect students' writing quality over time?
- What are the effects of the introduction of self-regulation during independent writing time?
While the use of SRSD to teach the writing strategy of the 5 W’s will remain the overarching theme of the project, narrative writing is no longer the sole aim. Due to this, additional sub-questions should be added to ensure that the full scope of Phase 2 is incorporated into the research question. More specific questions for Phase 2 are:
- How does annotation of informational text, taught through SRSD impact students’ comprehension of the text?
- How does the use of text-specific strategies, taught through SRSD, impact students’ informational writing pieces?
- What effects does switching genres while using SRSD and writing strategies have on students, particularly in regards to transfer and independence?