VIP COWS

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VIP COWS

• How to Ace the 8th Grade Writing Test

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What I Have to Deal With

• Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin
  were singers of the Declaration of Independence.
  Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing cats
  backwards and declared, A horse divided against
  itself cannot stand alone. Franklin died and is
  still dead.

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What about these gems?

• Miguel Cervantes wrote Donkey Hote. The next
  great author was John Milton. Milton wrote
  Paradise Lost. Then his wife died. And he wrote
  Paradise Regained.
• Voltaire invented electricity. Gravity was
  invented by him. It is chiefly noticeable in the
  autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
• Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis.
• Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the
  Organ of Species.
• Madman Curie discovered radio.
• Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.

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The Dreaded Writing Assessment.

• What are the Keys to Higher Writing Scores?

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What are the 61 Traits?

• Voice
• Ideas
• Presentation
• Conventions
• Organization
• Word Choice
• Sentence Fluency

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A Closer Look at

• Use powerful words that paint a mental picture
  for the reader.
• Add descriptive adjectives to enhance nouns.
• The lumpy brown toad hopped quickly through the
  squishy gooey mud.
• Verbs should be strong action words.
• The cows stampeded through the field.
• The cows sauntered through the field.

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• Try to use specific, rather than general nouns.
• The car zoomed down the street. The 1957 Chevy
  zoomed down the street.
• Avoid slang and clichés.
• He was fixin to finish his homework.

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Lets Give it a Try!

• The toad ______through the mud..
• The ______ toad ________through the _________mud.
• The _______ ________ toad __________ ________
  through the _________ _________ mud.

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And Theres More

• Avoid repetition.
• She liked to dance and she liked to skate and she
  liked to sing.
• Make sure to use words correctly.
• There driving to theyre house and will arrive
  their by noon.

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Using our common senses.

• The old man grumbled a bit as he wiped his teary
  eye with the back of his gnarled hand. He could
  taste the salt as he rubbed his parched lips. He
  glanced at his silent wife standing a short
  distance away. She too was old, but he still saw
  in her wrinkled face the pretty young girl he had
  married. She still smelled like freshly mowed
  spring grass.

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Using our common senses.

• The old man grumbled a bit as he wiped his teary
  eye with the back of his gnarled hand. He could
  taste the salt as he rubbed his parched lips. He
  glanced at his silent wife standing a short
  distance away. She too was old, but he still saw
  in her wrinkled face the pretty young girl he had
  married. She still smelled like freshly mowed
  spring grass.

Imagery sound touch taste sight smell
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Word Choice

• Plague Words

• Words That POP!

nice good so a lot said
terrifying ear-splitting squishy scrumptious copio
us
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Now Lets Examine

• Let your writing develop an easy flow or rhythm.
• Aim to make your writing ache to be read aloud.
• He moved like a slow-motion instant replay.
  (Christopher Myers)
• Use complete sentences.
• Slept soundly in the crib.
• The baby slept soundly in the crib.

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What else should a good writer do?

• Vary sentence lengths.
• He wore a red shirt. He had on brown slacks. His
  jacket was wrinkled.
• He wore a wrinkled jacket over a red shirt with
  brown slacks.
• Vary sentence beginnings.
• I like to sing. I like to play
• the piano.
• I like to sing. Playing the piano
• is my favorite pastime.

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How about a little Faulkner?

• Frenchman's Bend was a section of rich
  river-bottom country lying twenty miles southeast
  of Jefferson. Hill-cradled and remote, definite
  yet without boundaries, straddling into two
  counties and owning allegiance to neither, it had
  been the original grant and site of a tremendous
  pre-Civil War plantation, the ruins of which the
  gutted shell of an enormous house with its fallen
  stables and slave quarters and overgrown gardens
  and brick terraces and promenadeswere still
  known as the Old Frenchman's place, although the
  original boundaries now existed only on old faded
  records in the Chancery Clerk's office in the
  county courthouse in Jefferson, and even some of
  the once-fertile fields had long since reverted
  to the cane-and-cypress jungle from which their
  first master had hewn them.

The Hamlet, William Faulkner
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Moving on to

• Always write from your heart and share your
  feelings with the reader.
• Avoid using the word you.
• Try not to sound like an encyclopedia.
• Avoid contractions.

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• Invest yourself in what you write. Proudly take
  ownership.
• Connect with your audience.
• Give the reader a glimpse at the person behind
  the pen.

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Teacher Read Alouds for Voice

• Bridge to Terabithia, Paterson
• Tuck Everlasting, Babbitt
• Ramona Forever, Cleary

• Charlottes Web, White
• Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, Blume
• Treasure Island, Stevenson

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Strategies to Teach Voice

• Rewrite a popular story from a different
  characters point of view. (The Real Story of the
  Three Little Pigs).
• Read stories with vivid images. Have students
  close their eyes and draw what they see.
• Read segments of dialogue and have students guess
  who is speaking. (Charlottes Web)
• Do some Author Studies to compare voice. What is
  the voice behind Stephen King?
• http//www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/langarts/pdf/6tra
  its/voice.pdf

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Bringing new voices into the classroom..

• Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred
  porcupines.
• Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went
  around giving people advice. They killed him.
  Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After
  that his career suffered a dramatic decline.
• Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they
  all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah
  Dessert. The climate of Sarah is such that
  inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

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Teacher Read Alouds for Teaching Word Choice

• Maniac Magee, Spinelli
• The BFG, Dahl
• A Wrinkle in Time. LEngle
• Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery

• Lizards for Lunch, Storad
• Half a Moon and One Whole Star, Dragonwagon
• Toad, Ruth Brown

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Teacher Read Alouds to Model Sentence Fluency

• Sarah, Plain and Tall, MacLachlan
• The Van Gogh Café, Rylant
• Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis

• Stealing Freedom, Carbone

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For more information

• Kims Korner for Teacher Talk
• http//www.angelfire.com/ks/teachme/ideasdescripto
  rs.
• html
• 6 Traits Homepage
• http//6traits.cyberspaces.net/
• 6 1 Trait Writing
• http//www.nwrel.org/assessment/
• 6 Trait Lesson Plans
• http//www.kent.k12.wa.us/staff/LindaJancola/6Trai
  t/lessons.htmWord20Choice

• A GREAT Site!!
• http//www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/langarts/sixtrtcr
  smtrl.htm