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Martial Artist - Informational/Opinion Writing
Grade 2
Feedback for Improvement
Broad Topic/Assignment: Learning something new can be exciting. Write to explain a time when you learned something new.
What worked:
- Assignment: The student attempted to write to the task, however it is unclear as to what genre of writing this student produced.
Areas of instructional focus:
- The piece reads a little bit like a personal experience and a little bit like an informational piece. There are no clear main ideas, no paragraphs, and it’s difficult to summarize. In reality, this is just a list or a random collection of thoughts.
- The focus skill for this student has to be to revisit genre and organization as that is the necessary foundation for every other skill area.
Feedback with Prescriptive Lesson:
Recognizing Genre and Organization: The student needs to recognize and identify how an informational/opinion piece is structured. By using these lessons, the student will build an awareness of the structure.
- Section 1: Genre and Organization - all lessons
Once the foundation has been established, then move into the next set of skills.
Broad Yet Distinct Main Ideas/Reasons: The student needs to expand on main ideas using sentence variety and create main idea sentences that are clear to the reader. Creating separate paragraphs for each main idea would help the reader to understand the topic and clearly show the organizational structure.
- Section 2 Lesson 6: Alternatives to Boring
- Section 2 Lesson 6: Alternatives to Boring, Redundant Main Idea/Main Reason Sentences
- Section 2 Lesson 7: Revising Boring, Redundant Main Idea/Reason Sentences Section 2 Lesson 8: Sentence Variety and Word Referents
- Section 2 Lesson 9: Main Idea/Reason Blurbs into Sentences
Elaboration: Student needs direct instruction in how to elaborate on the simple list-like details through the use of the productive questions: What does it look like? Why is it important? Most of the details were simply stated.
- Section 3 Lesson 1: Just Okay...or Much Better? (recognition and awareness) Section 3 Lesson 2: General vs Specific
- Section 3 Lesson 3: Recognizing Overly General Words and Phrases
- Section 3 Lesson 4: Break Up That Grocery List
- Section 3 Lesson 5: What Does It Look Like? Why is it Important? Grab Bag Section 3 Lesson 6: Describing Objects What Does It Look Like? Why is it Important?
- Section 3 Lesson 9: Writing Sentences Using Detail-What Does It Look Like? Why is it Important?
Another important lesson for this student will be to identify the givens and variables in the task in order to create a workable pre-writing plan. In Section 6: Authentic Writing Tasks, Lesson 1 Identifying Givens and Variables, this student can practice planning so that the plan for this piece look like this:
Topic: Martial Artist
Main Idea #1: Kung Fu (Chinese)Trials/Ranks
Main Idea #2: Moves
Main Idea #3: Dojo (Training Facility)
Recommended Resources
Downloads
"Martial Arts" Informational Writing Grade 2 Sample