PD: Dr. Jannie van Hees "Crafting Writing. Crafting Writers."

Today, we had our second session with Dr Jannie van Hees.  We spent the afternoon discussing our student writers and crafting effective paragraphs.

My notes from the session are below:

What is a paragraph?  How can we get kids more “crafted” in their paragraph writing?

Don’t forget to keep students in a “Goldilocks Zone” not too...fast, slow, hard, easy-especially with vocabulary choices.

This allows students to have powerful learning at all times.  This is highly powered by gifted words, and bringing definitions alive with a classroom discussion (not jumping to the dictionary).  

What is your ultimate goal with writing for your children? Dynamic, delicious writers, or able to pass an e-asttle format test.  Do not let go of frequent oral language and crafting “dynamic and delicious” sentences together.

It is so important that our student writers understand that editing is an ongoing job, and the writer must always be wearing the shoes of the reader.  

Do your students begin their writing with a sentence?  This is ok some of the time, but it is important that your students do not overuse this form of a writer’s hook.  It is very important to demonstrate varied ways to craft a hook.  

Make sure learners identify and write their topic, purpose(s) and audience prior to starting a piece of writing.  Purposes...move away from using “describe,” “explain,” “construct.”  Instead, use a reason:  “Your parents/aunties/uncles will be able to fully understand what happened during our assembly today.