About VWC

The Vermont Writing Collaborative is a group of teachers in Vermont (and elsewhere!) whose mission is to help all students, K - 12, write thoughtfully and effectively.
The five founding members are: Jane Miller of Burlington, Karen Kurzman of Derby Line, Eloise Ginty of Thetford, Joey Hawkins of Strafford, and Diana Leddy of Strafford. Among us, we have over 130 years of public school teaching experience at all grade levels.
In the fall of 2008, we published a book through Authentic Education (with a foreword by Grant Wiggins) called Writing for Understanding:Using Backward Design to Help All Students Write Effectively.
Since then, we have offered courses and workshops in the principles of Writing for Understanding around Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and elsewhere.

Welcome, VWC members!

June, 2011 - what a grand Summer Institute! We held four different strands, and had the honor of working with both old friends and new ones. It was a joy!
Teachers are working on a whole new batch of Writing for Understanding sequences, and those will begin appearing here. If you're a course participant, thanks for posting and giving your thoughtful feedback.
If you're a VWC follower, your feedback is most welcome as well!


Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Annie and the Wild Animals

Teacher: Michele Fay
Class: Grade 2
Writing Genre: response to literary text
Text: Annie and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett


Content: (GE R2 13): Analyze and interpret elements of literary texts, citing evidence where appropriate by…identifying relevant personality traits of main characters and identifying possible motives of characters.

Writing: (GE W2 6): In response to literary or informational text, students make and support analytical judgments about text by… using references to text to support a given focus.

Focusing question: How does Annie show that she cares about animals?

Focus: Annie shows that she cares about animals when she …

Test Drive:

Do you have animals where you live? In the book Annie and the Wild Animals, Annie shows that she cares about animals. First, Annie shows that she cares about animals because she notices that her cat Taffy is acting strange. Also, she shows that she cares when she puts a corn cake by the woods so that a small animal might come. Finally, she shows caring for animals when Taffy returned with kittens and Annie wasn’t lonely anymore. Annie really cares about animals, and I do too.
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4 comments:

  1. Ileen GilbarJuly 14, 2011 at 1:46 PM

    Hi Michele,
    You did a nice job on your test drive. It is a great model to show students. The writing has all the components we would hope to get from students at this level, nice intro./hook, focus statement, evidence, wrap up with a personal connection, and transition words throughout. I haven't read this book by Jan Brett, and I thought I had read all of her work. I am looking forward to checking it out.

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  2. Terry MelanconJuly 20, 2011 at 5:17 PM

    Hi Michele,
    This sounds like a really cute lesson that the students will engage with personal understanding. You are doing a great job guiding students toward showing evidence from the text to support their answers. This will certainly help them with their future schooling and testing with constructed responses. I enjoyed the way you started your paragraph with a question. I've always found that an effective way to hook your readers. I also thought your reference to the text by title helps to ground the piece. You did an excellent job!

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  3. heatherboulangJuly 25, 2011 at 1:04 PM

    Hi Michele,

    I think your students will like this book and your test drive is a great example of a response to text. Will you have your students be telling you the evidence from the bok that shows that Annie cares about animals? Are you doing this lesson as a whole group?

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  4. Hannah BardenJuly 29, 2011 at 7:04 PM

    Hi Michele,
    Your three plans together seem like the start of something bigger to me! How interesting to play around with how questions and test drives look different from one grade-level to the next. I like to see the increasing complexity and sophistication of your test-drives from k to gr 2. It's a nice illustration of how giving students structure doesn't mean limiting them. In this plan, I especially like your focusing question; I'm sure it will appeal personally to many students.

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