Use Your Writing VOICES!

Before I get on with the real topic of this post, let me thank all of you who were able to commiserate with me on the substitute situation.  It seems like many of you have been there too!  I think I finally have my friends back on track. It's amazing how long it takes to recover from one wacky day!  Now, on to writing. . .

At the start of the school year, I was looking for a new way to focus my friends on the six traits of writing and the reading strategies we use.  I came across the idea of using "VOICES" to emphasize writing traits while searching the web.  It seemed a perfect fit for what I was hoping to do in writing.  Here is a picture of my VOICES board that I took a little earlier in the year.  We have more cards under each category at this point in the year.

You can see that the six traits are listed at the top, forming "VOICES."  Under each one, we put a reminder of the writing skill or strategy we have worked on.  Here are a few up-close pictures of the different categories.

As we do a mini-lesson on a certain trait, I write a card that summarized the idea.  I then have a friend place it under the correct trait category. I find the best time to do this is at the end of the period, during sharing time. It's a great close to the lesson after my friends have shared how they used the skill in writing that day.

Ideally, it would be better if a different student wrote the actual card each day.  More participation and ownership for them.  However, my writing period is so short for all I have to do, I just don't have time.  I usually just prewrite them before the lesson or quickly between a conference. 

Here's why this bulletin board works so well.  It is right above my meeting table.  It's super easy to refer to during conferencing.  It's also pretty big which makes it easily visible from anywhere in the room.  If I'm meeting with a student at their desk, we can still both easily refer to it.  Also, having the strategies and skills we have been working on posted like that allows me to quickly draw a friends attention to a strategy that they may need.  For example, I can meet with a friend and say, "I notice in your paper that in this paragraph many of your sentences begin with I.  Look at our sentence fluency chart.  Which idea up there do you think will help with this?" As I noted earlier, there are more ideas/skills up there than the one in the picture at this point in the year. 

This works the brain of my friend in a couple of ways.  It forces them to evaluate the ideas/skills in that category to determine which one addresses their need.  It also gives my friend a starting point.  In this example, once my friend identifies varying sentence beginnings as the skill they need to work on, we can then brainstorm some ways do that.   It's higher level thinking for my friend than if I just said, "Oh, we need to vary how these sentences start."

I've also seen other teachers use this chart for goal setting.  If there is a specific trait goal you want your friend to work on until your next conference, you set that as their weekly writing goal.  On the board, you would leave the area under the trait title empty.  This is where, once your friend has set a writing goal with you, they put their name on a sticky and put it on the chart.  I kind of like this idea, but just haven't gotten around to doing it.  I think it would work well if only because it's quick reminder to you as to what trait each friend should be working on.  However, something about posting their names under areas of need for all to see doesn't sit right.  I'll have to think more on that use of it.

Obviously, all the different ideas/skills for each trait won't fit on the board, but that's okay.  I only want the ones that are relevant to what we are currently learning up. It also allows me to put up again the ones I notice we need to revisit.  Either way, it's always current and applicable to what my friends are working on.

So, that's how I've been using my VOICES board.  It's my first year using it, but I think it's a keeper for me!  Tomorrow, I will post the board I have for reading strategies.  It's fairly similar, but is all about FACES, not VOICES!

UPDATE:  I got a lot of requests for the headings I made.  I'm glad you like them.  There is a link for the "VOICES" headings in this blog post.   They will download in a PDF.  Enjoy!