Modeling!! This one is huge! In middle school this is absolutely essential in teaching writing.
Process is a product. This is one thing that I do consistently and emphasize to the students, but at the end of the unit I always feel like I took too much time on the process and included too many steps. I suppose there is a way to become skilled and efficient at this, but I haven't mastered it yet.
Starting with paragraph instruction seems great and an be used with writer's workshop.
Editing is one thing that I do not spend enough time teaching. Students think that this is a check for spelling and punctuation errors. Perhaps some of the suggestions for sharper writing could be used for editing too.
6 traits seem great. And the rubric is also very useful.
For journals: the liability is something very very real. I had a student share some extremely personal information with me in an assignment. This was something I was unprepared for and is really important to consider.
Using news events for writing is an excellent idea. It gets students involved in their communities and the world and gets them reading a different genre. It also does a great job of prompting students to think about deep and relevant ideas.
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I agree with the editing part. Sometimes I want to stay away from it because I see students get discouraged when they see that they have to change something they created. There's a difference between editing and revision. The Trick is to get the student to recognize that difference and apply it. . .In the writer's workshop, it seemed to do editing as a whole which made it better for students. It gives the students a notion on what to look for and how to change it.
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