The Best Way to Build Writers: Modeling, Planning Style!

As I travel through this journey of giving up the boxed writing program, there is one thing I will never give up-MODELING!  Teachers frequently ask me what makes my students become the writers that they are, and that's what I tell them-MODELING!  You have heard it over and over from others I'm sure, but I'm here to tell you, modeling is golden!  It is the very key to successful student writers, with one other thing!

Modeling!  

Where does this process start-at the very beginning.  I model how to make a plan first.  This is so incredibly important!  Students need a plan to guide their writing, but it is the first thing that teachers drop.  WHY?!  I have heard everything- students don't know what to do, they don't use their plan, it takes too much time, it's too hard!  UGH!  This is NOT about us, the teacher!  It is about students making their way in writing, with a view of where they are going in their sight!  Give them the opportunity to have success through planning.

So, how do you model this?  Super simple!  The first thing you need to do is decide on what form of planner you want to use.  I am a Hamburger Planner girl myself!

I have used this planner for years with every grade from first through fourth!  I find the idea to be very appealing to students and it is easy to make the parts valuable to students.  The buns go together-this is a MUST!  Students must understand that the top bun and the bottom bun are THE SAME THING!  The focus of the writing goes in each bun.  Where do you get the focus-from the prompt, the assigned topic, or their own personal choice of topic.  That's the joy of the hamburger planner!  You can use it for all styles of writing and for any topic!  Just a little tweaking to make it work across all the platforms and you're good to go!

Next, students will move into the hamburger layers.  This is where you can talk about all kinds of organizational issues.  This is where organization starts after all!  That's one of the very reasons to plan!!  Instead of students jumping all over as the write,  this can be fixed before they write!  Take the time to talk about this during the planning stage.  Then, MODEL it!  Get a copy for yourself and fill it out.  You are going to be using this to guide your way, so fill it out before the students, not before class!  Modeling only works well live.  Give up your idea that it has to be fancy and beautiful because that isn't going to work.  Talk through your thoughts and the why behind what you are writing on the page.  The more you verbalize, the more students will see that you believe in what you are doing-and that means it WORKS!

You see, that's half the problem right there.  When we offer students criteria and then don't support it with evidence, we are doing the same thing they are when they don't use text evidence.  "It was in my brain." doesn't work when we want them to provide text evidence,  so why would we want that for writing!  Model this step and it will pay off BIG TIME!

An now, for the next best thing to Build Writers-Have honest conversations about what is on the planner.  Yes, that's right.  Ask kids to share and then have an honest conversation about what is on their page.  The key is to wrap it in that general rule of  one positive comment, one suggestion, and one positive comment so that kids are seeing your suggestions as a positive.  Here's a brief example of how this might work:

Conversations

Student: My bun is Winter Break.  My reason one is Isle Maurada, my reason number two is Disney Cruise, my reason number three is running a race.  My final bun is Winter Break.
Teacher:  I love that you are focusing on your favorite thing on your break, which is your Disney Cruise.  Do you think that your order of these reasons makes sense in the order they are in?  Think like a story from a book.  You're ideas are strong.  What can you do to make it make better sense?
Student:  I could put the Cruise first!!

Yep-that was a real conversation.  By simply allow students to take a minute to think about their planner fixed a major writing problem-organization-BEFORE their draft was written.

This is the product we were working on all week!  

I hope this helps you to build confidence in planning and using this as a modeling tool.  Take the time to try it, and stick to that planner for writing.   I'll be back to discuss this very thing, so you can see the sequence of how to model with the planner during the writing process.  Until then, let me know what you think, what your favorite planner is, or any ideas that you might have for modeling writing with students.  I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

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