Informational Writing - Grade 3 - Pool

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Grade 3 Informational Writing
Pool

Feedback for Improvement

Topic: Pool Fun
Main Idea #1: Swimming
Main Idea #2: Races
Main Idea #3: Marco Polo Game

What worked:

• Organization: This piece includes an introduction, three main ideas and a conclusion.
• Main Ideas: The writer was able to include different details in the first two main ideas, swimming and races. There’s a chance that these main ideas could overlap, however for this writer they did not.

Feedback with Prescriptive Lesson:

CHOOSE a Focus Skill: What skill will make the biggest impact for this writer?

Main Ideas Sentences:  The student needs to understand the value of rich language and varied sentence structure and with teacher direction, start to bring both to their main idea/reason sentences. In addition, using the Pick, List, Choose strategy for uncovering broad yet distinct main ideas would be useful when writing about this topic so the main ideas do not overlap in any way. 

• Section 2 Lesson 3: Pick List Choose A Process for Thinking, Writing and Planning
• Section 2 Lesson 10: Alternatives to Boring, Redundant Main Idea/Reason Sentences
• Section 2 Lesson 11: Revising Boring, Redundant Main Idea Sentences

Elaboration:  Student needs to use productive questions to elaborate details:  What does it look like?  Why is it important? 

• Section 3 Lesson 1:  Just Okay...or Much Better? (recognition and awareness)
• Section 3 Lesson 2:  General vs Specific
• Section 3 Lesson 5:  What Does It Look Like Why Is It Important (Grab Bag)

Introductions:  This piece needs a strong lead and an effective topic sentence that names the specific main ideas in the author’s prewriting plan.

• Section 5 Lesson 1: Identifying Different Types of Leads and Recognizing Topic Sentences
• Section 5 Lesson 2: Recognizing Main Ideas/Main Reasons in Topic Sentences
• Section 5 Lesson 3: Writing an Effective Lead Using a Question
• Section 5 Lesson 4: Writing an Effective Lead Using Three Techniques

Conclusions:  This student needs to write a strong conclusion paragraph that includes a restatement of the topic and main ideas using word variety to remind the reader what they learned in this informative piece.

• Section 5 Lesson 8: Recognizing Definitive Language for Strong Conclusions
• Section 5 Lesson 9: Writing Conclusions

This student obviously understands the structure of informational writing but needs direct instruction in main idea sentences, elaboration using detail generating questions, and introductions, conclusions. Whole class instruction where modeling is taking place will build rich vocabulary and provide this student with the confidence to take the skills learned to application. 

Recommended Resources

• Empowering Writer's Methodology
• Informational & Opinion Writing Guide for Grade 3