From the Back Cover
This practical resource gives secondary English teachers a new, student-based approach to writing instruction that integrates writing, grammar, and literature assignments and involves students in building and assessing their own individual writing portfolios.
More than 350 pages of writing activities, teacher and student writing models, and writing rubrics or guidelines at each step help students learn at their own pace. These are accompanied by hand "teacher pages" with suggestions ranging from grading assignments to involving students in the evaluation process to creating minilessons for specific units.
For easy use, all materials are printed in a big-spiral-bound format that folds flat for photocopying of any page as many times as needed and are organized into four parts:
Getting Started. Part One gives detailed directions for creating portfolios that not only serve as a record of student growth in writing but also document master of grammar and literature/reading skills. It shows how to interest students in keeping a portfolio assessment. Included are tips on the purpose, use, and grading of student-interactive rubrics and a variety of reproducible checklists, response sheets and more.
Writing. Part Two covers all the steps of the writing process and provides easy-to-follow teacher pages and more than 150 reproducible writing worksheets and models for developing students' skills in six different modes. Here are just a few examples for each mode:
Persuasive: Structure Rubric...Welfare Reform: A Time for Change (student sample)...No Pass, No Play (student essay)...Persuasive Writing Strategies (samples)
Comparison/Contrast: Comparison/Contrast Chart...Hershey vs. Skittles Game...The Advantages of Being a Woman (student essay)
Narrative: Student-Written Story Starters...Rubric for Narrative Vignette...Morning Ritual (teacher model)...Fishing: The Family Ritual (student essay)
Descriptive: My Favorite Place (teacher model)...Rubric for Descriptive Essay...The Boy Warrior (student essay)...My Grandma's House (student essay)
How-To: A Pre-Writing Game for How-To Writing...How to Imagine (student essay)...How to Make a Dragon Cry Diamonds (student essay)...Rubric for How-To Essay
Literary Analysis: Literary Analysis Web with Quoted Support...Excerpt Containing Common Errors...Literary Analysis Rubric..."Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" Analysis
Grammar. Part Three provides an individualized approach to language usage and includes more than 40 reproducibles, such as an easy-to-grade corrections sheet that can be a personalized follow-up to all teacher-graded written assignments, assignment sheets integrating literature and grammar, and portfolio assessment sheets that give students an opportunity to review their own writing progress.
Literature. Part Four presents more than 30 unique reproducibles to spark and guide writing about literature, including generic application tests that can be given for any short story or novel, individual student-interaction reading sheets that allow students to respond to a work as it is being read, and independent assignments such as "Creating a Journal Project for Novels."
In short, Writing Portfolio Activities Kit gives you an individualized, wholistic writing curriculum that involves students in working with real-life models, creating and evaluating their own writing portfolios, and learning to see writing, grammar and literature as inseparable pieces of the language arts!
Mary Ellen Ledbetter (B.A. English, Speech, Western Michigan University; M.A. English, Michigan State University) has taught in public schools in Michigan and Texas and at San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas. She received Goose Creek CISD'S Board of Trustees' Bell Award for Outstanding Teacher in 1995 and 1997 and is currently a presenter/consultant for the Bureau of Education and Research in Bellevue, Washington.
