Incorporating the Basics

   It sounds like I am not the only one who struggles with determining what skills to teach and how to incorporate it into a writing classroom. I really like the concept meaningful writing with a writer's workshop, and allowing the students to write for pleasure; then, taking time out to focus on different parts of writing like leads or transitions. Like the teacher in the book, I too have had my students work on DOL's, but noticed that the information did not transfer over to their writing. After practicing capitalization and punctuation, students continued to make these mistakes in their writing. This being said, I would like to try the "whole-part-whole" concept with my students for next year. Does that mean I get rid of DOL's entirely? I really like using them because the students have something to work on upon entering the room. Other altnernatives to this?

    The other issue I have with "part" teaching is that I never know where to start. For instance, when teaching commas (which I don't like since I don't always use them correctly) I am not sure where to start with the clauses. It bores me just thinking about it. Is there a way to make internal punctuation engaging for students?

   In the past, I have started my writer's workshop lessons by focusing on one of the six traits for a few weeks. We often started with the ideas trait since it essentially is the heart of the writing. When introducing it, I would pull out a student example of writing with a strong ideas trait, and an example of writing with poor ideas. Before the students read the two examples, we went over what the ideas traits is and it's importance to writing. Then the students read the two student examples. While they read, I had them write down two things the student did well, and two suggestions the student could improve. We then discussed the two papers. With seventh graders, there was often no holding back with their suggestions for improvement for the poorly written example. I often heard, "The kid needs to burn this paper and completely start over," or, "This kid is an idiot. Did he ever learn to write?" I would bite my tongue when this was said because often I had a handful of students who wrote as terrible as the poor example. Ironically, it has always been one of my poor writers who makes such a comment. Still, I would have several students who gave great suggestions for improvement, and tons of comments on what the student did that made his writing so much better than the other. This lead us then into discussing what made a piece interesting and easy to read. Although, I started by "focusing" on one of the traits (which the book says not to do) I have found that it is a good jumping off point when introducing writing, because in doing so my students often draw upon the other traits. I'd get students who said the writer put a good amount of emotion into the piece (voice), there was an obvious conclusion (organization), there were hardly any spelling errors (conventions), the sentences were not choppy (sentence fluency), and the writer did not start every sentence with "So then" (word choice). 

    The rest of the week I would do different writing activities that supported the ideas trait, and my students often seemed to enjoy the different, out of the box writing activities they got to do. Then, we would move on to the organization trait and do similar activities with it, but continue to include the ideas trait. We did this with every trait, just building onto the next. I liked this because I knew the direction I was headed with my planning. How else can I teach writing without planning units on one of the traits?  Are you constantly assessing all six traits? Suggestions are welcomed!