District writing workshop encourages creativity





By Stephanie Bertholdo
bertholdo@theacorn.com

Teaching students how to write with flair, emotion and depth was the focus of a recent workshop for Las Virgenes Unified School District middle school teachers. Two teachers from Willow Elementary and Yerba Buena Elementary also participated in the workshop.


Fred Wolf, a former teacher-turned-trainer with Great Source Professional Development, a nationwide educational firm that develops lesson plans and other products, introduced the Write Traits program to teachers during a two-day workshop. The program helps students replace proficient, but "dry" writing with writing that engages the reader using words that "craft images."


The workshop focused on the six traits of effective writing—ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency and conventions.


Wolf suggested that certain words be "buried," including words like fun, good, and awesome. A fourth-grade student wrote:


"If you’re not from Sudan, you don’t know the mountains of Marra. You’ve never heard about it. You can’t imagine a mountain so big, that as it looks over us, it’s like a mother trying to keep all her children together…."


Wolf suggested that teachers "brainstorm emotion" with students. "Show me a person who is nervous, but don’t use the word nervous," he told teachers. He added that students need to investigate powerful, dynamic adjectives that pull the reader into their writing assignments.


Fluency and variety in sentence structure adds to the vitality of the piece, Wolf said. He added that the writing methods could be used in any subject matter.


A science teacher used one method to describe the earth’s mantle:


"If you’re not from the mantle, you don’t know convection. You can’t know my magma, you’ll never feel the searing heat, or the gasses hiss, or watch the layers fold or break above your head…."


Mary Sistrunk, principal of A.C. Stelle Middle School in Calabasas, said that the workshop would enhance the school’s current writing programs.



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