The Noyce Foundation's Every Child a Reader and Writer Initiative (ECRW) seeks to improve literacy achievement for students in K-5 utilizing the key strategies of system-wide professional development, classroom coaching and assessment of student work. ECRW began in 2000 and focuses primarily on the teaching of writing through a writing workshop approach.
Teach grammar. It provides a metalanguage - a language to describe, use and craft our language. For many of our students Standard Australian English is a foreign dialect. Students need to hear and see correct models of language in use. Provide real reasons for students to speak and write formally. Provide daily opportunties to express complexity of thought, in all subject areas. Insist that the 'click and go' generation ask and respond to both oral and written questions in whole sentences.
Shared Documents
This page allows you to download documents for teaching reading and writing that members of the our list have agreed to share. File size for each document will be provided in download dialogue box.
"Using Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers are excellent tools for helping students connect ideas and see relationships between different pieces of information. The goal is for students to expand their knowledge by understanding the material in their own way. Graphic organizers can be used for a variety of purposes, such as eliciting prior knowledge, demonstrating a sequence of events, and comparing and contrasting. "
Classroom Strategies
Explicit strategy instruction is at the core of good comprehension instruction. "Before" strategies activate students' prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. "During" strategies help students make connections, monitor their understanding, generate questions, and stay focused. "After" strategies provide students an opportunity to summarize, question, reflect, discuss, and respond to text.
Teachers should help students to understand why a strategy is useful, how it is used, and when it is appropriate. Teacher demonstration and modeling are critical factors for success, and student discussion following strategy instruction is also helpful.
The most frequently researched strategies can be applied across content areas; other content-area specific strategies are emerging, and we will include them here in the future.
The National Writing Project's 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing offers successful strategies contributed by experienced writing project teachers. Since NWP does not promote a single approach to teaching writing, readers will benefit from a variety of eclectic, classroom-tested techniques.
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Teachers, with the help of Karon Reese (TOSA support), have compiled a list of books leveled by grade and Reading Recovery level. These are books that can be found in most school and public libraries.
lements toward building a good persuasive essay include
* establishing facts
to support an argument
* clarifying relevant values
for your audience (perspective)
* prioritizing, editing, and/or sequencing
the facts and values in importance to build the argument
* forming and stating conclusions
* "persuading" your audience that your conclusions
are based upon the agreed-upon facts and shared values
* having the confidence
to communicate your "persuasion" in writing