Toolbox Ssd Strategies

“Writing should function to communicate or to foster the writers’ own learning, understanding, or appreciation” (Graves, M. F., Juel, C., Graves, B. B., & Dewitz, P., 2010, p.374). Teachers should have a classroom environment where students can use written words and are encouraged to take risks in their writing while the teacher supports all of their attempts. In addition, “writing strategies should be taught explicitly and directly through a gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student” (Graham, S., 2015). Many students have the same struggles as Kaynia when writing a persuasive paper such as, putting their thoughts onto paper. By providing different strategies to help each student gain an understanding of how to put their
own thoughts onto paper will be beneficial in their writing. Some strategies to implement are; POW+TREE, STOP and DARE, planning and organizing and choose descriptive words to help Kaynia and her classmates to write better stories.
POW+TREE Strategy
“POW+TREE is a strategy that helps students to convey their opinions in their essays” (ICS). This is a great strategy to help struggling students such as, Kaynia with their writing. Through this strategy students are taught how to use self-regulation procedures, self-monitoring, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement to help them manage the writing process. The POW stands for: Pick an idea, Organize notes, Write and say more which is something you should do every time you write because it gives you POWer and TREE stands for: Topic sentence, Reasons (3 or more), Explain reasons, say more about each reason, Ending; wrap it up tight (Harris, K., Graham, S., & Mason, L., 2002). This strategy could help Kaynia meet her goal by helping her develop some goal-setting skills, help her in organizing her writing, and develop a more positive attitude about herself and her writing. In having Kaynia and her classmates use the POW+TREE graphic organizer it will help them in simplifying the first three elements; planning, organizing, and writing. The organizer will also help students structure any kind of writing as well as, organize their ideas. Students are going to use the POW+TREE to answer questions so they can learn how to use it to answer question on high school tests or college.
STOP and DARE Strategy
“STOP and DARE is another strategy students can use to plan and organize persuasive essays.
This strategy has two mnemonics components, which are designed to emphasize reflection and planning” (ICS). In this strategy students, will take the following steps: Suspend judgement, Take a side, Organize your ideas, Plan more as you write, Develop a topic sentence, Add supporting ideas, Reject the other side, and End with conclusion (Teacher Toolbox SRSD Strategies, n.d.). For this strategy teachers, should remind their students that these types of strategies are guides to help them to improve upon their writing. The teacher can check for understanding with this strategy by monitoring her progress, behaviors, pre-during, and post-strategy instruction. This strategy can help Kaynia meet her goal by planning and organizing her thoughts as she writes in using a planning think sheet while writing her essay and making additions and modifications as needed prior to her final draft. In addition, the teacher should model collaborative practice and instruction throughout the writing process. Providing students with feedback, prompting and guidance, use cue cards (listing the steps for STOP and DARE) and so forth to help them achieve their goals (De Le Paz, S.,
1997).
Planning and Organizing Strategy
“Planning and organizing is a necessary pre-writing exercise that includes knowing the components of the writing assignment, selecting a topic, and brainstorming ideas to include in the composition” (ICS).
Planning and organizing is a great strategy. This strategy teachers can provide students with a topic and have them research it by planning and organizing how they want it to be written. The planning and organizing strategy can be combined with the POW+TREE strategy to better help struggling
students.
Choose Descriptive Words Strategy “Teaching descriptive writing can help students make their writing more precise, incorporate new vocabulary and deepen their understanding of new material” (Lewis, J, 2016). The teacher should provide students with a word wall to help them with using different words for writing; highlighting the descriptive words. Teachers can also help students with descriptive words by sharing good examples of them in writing from literature and by pointing out techniques that make it effective for writing. In a persuasive writing lesson, the teacher should have students choose a topic together as a whole class and them model the organization and word choice so that all of the students can become comfortable with the strategies. By using the choose descriptive word strategy can also help students with increasing their vocabulary. In conclusion, providing students with several different strategies can help them in achieving their individual goals for writing and reading. As students develop their initial plans, they decide how to incorporate different viewpoints in the text of their paper. Each of the strategies; POW+TREE, STOP and DARE, planning and organizing and choose descriptive words will be helpful to Kaynia and her classmates in writing better stories and meeting their individual goals.