Dirksen Staff focused upon Writing Improvement on September 19th School Improvement Day

Dirksen School has three school-wide goals based upon ISAT Test Scores, overall student achievement and needs, and staff and parent input. These three school-wide goals are

• Implementing the School-Wide "I Care" Process
• Increasing Student "Joy and Interest in Reading" through Accelerated Reading Program
• Improving Student Expository Writing (writing that explains)

On the ½ day School Improvement Day on September 19th, Dirksen staff focused upon writing. The staff read and scored student writing through the use of Dirksen Writing Rubrics. All students, Kindergarten through Third Grade, first writing example was on the topic of explaining what they did over summer break. The staff read student's writing samples, scored them with a grade level rubric and then focused upon what they could do as a teaching team to improve students next writing efforts. The Dirksen staff was impressed with our Dirksen students first writing papers! We are off to a great start in writing

Activities that parents can do at home to help children improve writing are:

• For everyone: Write lists about anything…what you like to do together as a family, a grocery list, a family to-do list etc. For younger writers, you write the list and they draw the pictures that go with the lists or co-write where you write the harder words and they write the words that they know.
• For 2nd/3rd Graders: Write a question to your child. Have your child write back the answer. Switch and let your child write a question and you write back an answer.
• For First Graders: Play the "I'm thinking of…" Game. Give your child a piece of paper. Have them draw a "secret picture" that they do not show you, and write down three clues 1) color of the thing, 2) shape of the thing, 3) what it does. They read the 3 clues and you guess. Switch roles.
• For Kindergartners: Draw a picture together and then co-write a sentence about it. When they ask how to spell a word, say the word slowly with them and ask them what they hear first, next and at the end. Do not be frustrated. Saying words slowly and hearing/writing the sounds is a Kindergarten skill that we will work on all year long.