Grade 8 and 9: Writer's Notebook

Writer's Note Book

One possible brainstorm for our wrtier's note books.

Students used SEE - THINK - WONDER strategy to make careful observations of a writer's note book.  Here are a few ideas from students:

We are beginning our writer's note books with a quote on writing that we can relate to.

See Mrs. Anderson's choice of quote below and focus question:

Next, we went through the process of understanding how to represent our thoughts and feelings for the powerful words in the quote.  See the image below:

The Process:

• We started with identifying the words that convey a feeling; LOVE, and we played with colour, font and images to represent LOVE.

• We identified words that stand out as powerful; SWING, SWIRL, TANGLE, and we repeated the representing process.

• We related to feelings and the meaning in the quote by using past life experiences; see the messy writing around the quote.  (example: I love writing because I've been doing it before I knew how to hand write.  I thought it looked cool at 5 years old.)

The next steps include free writing on one of the ideas and mining, aka. exploring, for a story.

I'm SUPER excited to see the quotes you all pick!!

If you're having trouble remembering the process for exploring a quote, use the guide above or the back side of your SEE - THINK - WONDER sheet.

Students have been working on classifying their representations of their quotes using the rubric and exemplars.

We've examined what the difference between powerful, effective, and evident symbolism is by discussing work from previous students.

Here's an example of a POWERFUL use of symbolism.

Students found:

•  the friendly fonts rounded (fantasy) and negative fonts sharper and pointier (REALITY)
• font styles changed on powerful words (REALITY, fantasy)
• font colours had meaning.  fantasy in rainbow colours = utopia perfect life.
• images improved our understanding of a feeling or meaning of the quote (REALITY behind bars = trapped)

Students gave oral feedback using 2 stars and a wish today and then made improvements to their own illustrated quotes.

Writing Criteria Grade 9

Students have been working on relating to a quote by explaining its meaning and relating it to a life experience.  We have been trying to show our readers what it was like to be us in that moment.  

We observed the writer's use of sensory details and vivid verbs in the POWERFUL example below:

Then we attempted to beautify our own writing by adding vivid verbs and sensory details.

We also noted that powerful words from the quote may be weaved into our own writing to make our connections smoother for our reader.  Instead of saying "the word 'swirl' reminds me of my little pencil scratching on the page.  We can simply describe and say, "the immature 'swirl' had no meaning".

Sep 30:  Today we are self-assessing and making improvements to our writing.  First students identified which level they are at according to the rubric and the sample work discussed in class.

We showed our reasoning for our self assessment by discussing and highlighting evidence in the work.  

See images below to better understand how to show our reasoning: 

All items are due tomorrow, October 1, for Grade 9's:

• Representation - bumper sticker
• Writing with evidence highlighted
• Rubric filled out with reasoning in our self-assessment