2006-2007 Forest Grove High School Fall In-service

Group D Inservice Leaders:

Joan Cluff Danielle Thompson Dana Willms

Addressing Common Writing Errors in the Classroom

Activity

1. There is an index card in front of you. Write two sentences expressing how you would have spent your day had you not attended in-service today. Set the card aside.

2. Using the handout and highlighter provided, read through the handout and highlight all of the obvious punctuation and grammar errors you readily see. Check the clock before you begin. Just scan the document. If you miss an error, don’t worry about it. Do not worry about spelling at this time, since we will be covering spelling in the next in-service. Note the time when you finish and write the total time spent on the activity on the corner of your paper.

3. Now read through the index card you wrote on initially and highlight every grammatical and punctuation error you find.

4. Re-write the two sentences correctly.

Student writing has been declining in accuracy over the years. Online chat rooms and text messaging only compound the problem. More and more we are seeing student writing regressing. The purpose of this in-service is to address this challenge as a school.

Regardless of the subject you teach, every student should be writing something in every class every day, whether it is an entrance or exit slip for Family Science, an explanation of how to find “Y” in Math, a lab report for Biology or a research paper in Social Studies. Our focus this year is to learn to recognize and address basic writing errors in the classroom. It is our hope that by working together as a school in addressing these errors, we will be able to not only alert the students to be more careful, but we will also reinforce student accountability to edit their own work.

Note that the amount of time you spent editing and correcting both your handouts and the index assignment was minimal. You will also find that the more frequently you use this practice, the faster you are able to do it. If you tell students that you will not input their grades until they make the corrections, the responsibility of editing falls back on them. It is not necessary to explain what is wrong with the sentence, simply highlight the error. Most students will know immediately what they did. Others will check with their neighbors. Only when a student comes back and asks you what is wrong with the sentence do you need to explain your highlight edits. The entire school will try this practice for six weeks. You will report the effectiveness of this practice when you return for the next in-service.