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!


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Terry Melancon 3rd Grade 7-20-11 Writing Genre: Informational

Central Ideas

Content: Science: Water Cycle
Reading: Discover & analyze text features - captions, pictures, bold print, headings - from a variety of texts
Writing: Evidence can be drawn from a text to support a thesis

Focusing Question

What makes water vapor change?

Focus (answer to focusing question)

Water vapor changes with warming and cooling.

TEST DRIVE
Water Cycle

Water vapor is all around us but cannot be seen. Water vapor changes with warming and cooling.

Water vapor changes when it warms. Water vapor comes from lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, oceans, and plants. When it warms, it rises up into the atmosphere. This is called evaporation.

When water vapor cools it's called condensation. If it is a little cool, water vapor would fall as rain. If it is much colder, water vapor would fall as snow, sleet, or freezing rain. This is called precipitation.

Warming and cooling water vapor changes it. I really like seeing the changes with the seasons.
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2 comments:

  1. heatherboulangJuly 25, 2011 at 12:22 PM

    Hi Terry,

    I liked how you focused on how water vapor changes. The water cycle is a great unit to use informational texts. It is also fun to do a science demonstration to show how water vapor changes. Are you going to do this writing lesson as a whole group or individually?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joey HawkinsJuly 29, 2011 at 10:58 AM

    Posted by Joey, for Nicki Connolly

    Terry I would like to use this if I’m ever in 3rd grade. It’s hard to
    understand something you can’t see yet this writing assignment of having
    to prove it’s there because we can see it when it changes should help.
    Sometimes kids (or some kids) are fine accepting something without really
    understanding, but if they can make a connection to it in their world
    they’ll have a deeper understanding.

    ReplyDelete

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