The Writing Rope

The Writing Rope - created by Joan Sedita

Let's look a the basics of each strand and what it means with an example and simple ideas. All 5 strands need to be taught for the students to become efficient writers.

1. First Strand - Critical Thinking

• Generating ideas and gathering information
• and teaching about the writing process like organising, drafting, editing and revising

- Very important in junior years to teach our children to brainstorm ideas and to let them know they have a bunch of ideas to write about and plenty of ideas to share with others

- Important to instil that they are writers and that they can do this
  Joan Sedita has broken down the writing process into 4 categories where the writing and revising parts are usually the hardest parts 

- We can also put it in 5 different categories which may be more applicable to juniors and New Entrants: 

•    THINK - I can think of an idea to share
  
  
  
•    PLAN & SAY - I can take my idea and plan what I want to share. This is because in junior classes and                     especially ESOL students, the Oral Language is so important. We know that all of our students have all these       ideas in their brain but the writing, transcribing part is going to be the hardest part for them. They are             learning how to use all the skills, e.g. writing a sentence, use punctuation, grammar and also how to physically     write down the words. Before they attempt the writing, make sure they are able to use their language orally.
  
  
  
•    DRAW & WRITE - I can draw and write my ideas on paper. Drawing is a very important part of the writing             process
  
  
   
•    EDIT & REVISE - I can re-read my story to add and fix things. At this level we have to focus on                             punctuation,  capitalisation and going back to my story and add more.
  
  
  
•    SHARE - I can share my story with all of you. We have to understand that we are not always just writing for         ourselves but also for an audience. That way we can praise and celebrate.
  
  
  

Now, during the writing process we have to focus on each step and explicitly teach each step. Let's look what it can look like:

Day 1 and Day 2 is very similar. 

Day 1- you are introducing the genre you will focus on and introduce some key points e.g. For HOW TO informative writing genre. This is a simple model you can use to introduce and the students can always refer back to it. Also look at a piece of writing to model with.

Day 2 - brainstorming day. this is our thinking step. A brainstorming sheet is useful to get all their ideas written down. Using the sheet and model how to use it as a tool to brainstorm their ideas. Ask for student feedback and making sure they understand how to use it before they go off and write. You can also fill it in together and the students can copy the ideas.

Next is the planning step. This is where you will give the students the different plan to use for different genres e.g. narrative will have a beginning, middle and end, a informative text, you will have a main idea and then jot down some details and explaining the procedural steps they need to take.

Very easy step to write - they use their planning to write their story. Here they can cross check with you if they are still following the plan for the specific genre.

For revising and editing it is easy to use a checklist to follow. Here is an example of the checklist for the HOW TO genre. Making sure that you follow all of the things. 

General editing checklist: 

2. Second strand - Syntax

• Grammar and syntactic awareness
• Sentence elaboration
• Punctuation

Grammar and syntactic awareness and sentence structure are very different in each level the students are at. This will grow and expand as they become more confident. 

In the junior levels this is what students need to focus on:

• understand what a sentence is
• write an complete sentence
• the different sentence types
• expand sentences into super sentences - this is where students can focus and explore using different punctuation and edit their sentences.

After the whole group modelling the students can go into writing centres or groups to practice as well as go over the writing and discuss.

1. Teach them about conjunction sentences - using the word and but 2 words together. It is good to model this first with the whole group because they can hear what it should sound like before they write independently.
   

   
   

   
   
   
   
2. Sentence scrambles is also good practice to look at syntax and grammar. they have to put the words in order to make sense. Decodable sentence scrambles are great because students can do these independently.
   
   
   

3. Third strand - Test Structure

• 3 different types of writing - narrative, informational and opinion writing
• paragraph structure
• organisation 
• linking and transition words

At junior level the patterns and organisation is not really applicable yet, but you can teach about the 3 different types of writing and how they are different from each other and also a few transition words. 

Explicitly teach what each genre is e.g. modelling, brainstorm ideas together and have that available when they do writing independently. Looking at features what makes a narrative and an informative text. Teach them why transition words are important and how the story will make sense if you use them correctly.

4. Fourth strand - Writing craft

• word choice
• awareness of task, audience and purpose
• literary devices

There are a couple of things we can do in the junior level. We want to make the students aware what type of writing they will be creating, Teaching each genre specifically and what it looks like through modelling and the purpose. We can expect 1-2 sentences and expanding as they grow more confident.

As literary device you can introduce direct speech - like speech bubbles during a shared reading or reading to. Explaining why they are there and why did the author do it like that.

Also using sensory details - modelling a text and pointing out the sensory details - e.g. what did we see, hear, smell, taste or felt at the beach.

We can introduce our students to some of the features they will be using later on.

5. Fifth strand - Transcription

• this is the most important part for students
• spelling 
• handwriting

As we said before the physical act of writing is the most difficult part of writing  because it is a developmental skill that many students may or may not have learned yet. 

We have to make sure while we are teaching writing they say all the wonderful ideas they have and what a sentence may look like that we also focus on spelling and handwriting. 

Through handwriting we teach automaticity  - they have so many things that is going on all at once - think about the word they want to write and breaking down the sounds, make sure they know the grapheme phoneme correspondents, then take the pencil and hold it correctly and thinking how to form the letter correctly.  

There are 2 different types of spelling: 

Inventive Spelling - during writing we have to rely on inventive spelling to get the ideas out. They are not going to be able to proficiently spell the words correctly yet because we haven't taught it to them yet. That's why our students need explicit spelling instruction during phonics. Want to teach in a systematic and sequential way - through phoneme and matching it to the corresponding graphemes. 

Resources: Sussan Jones

The Writing Rope - Joan Sedita - Session 1

The Writing Rope - Joan Sedita - Session 2

The Writing Rope - Joan Sedita - Session 3

The Writing Rope - Joan Sedita - Session 4

The Writing Rope - Joan Sedita - Session 5