CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4

Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Strategy: Learning the appropriate type of writing  (Ramsey)

Detailed Description: Students will learn different types of writing as well as show they can use each type well.

Practical Application: Students must write a letter, poem, narrative, argumentative essay, and informative essay to learn the difference between these types of writings as well as to show they know the difference and can use each type well.

TRAP: The source was featured on a website called Shmoop. The website is geared for both teachers and students and this particular part was dedicated to unpacking the standards and giving clear examples of them applied.

“College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing: Writing CCRA.W.4” in schmoop.com. Retrieved from http://www.shmoop.com/common-core-standards/ccss-ela-literacy-ccra-w-4.html.

Strategy: R.A.F.T. (Chiles)

Detailed Description:  R.A.F.T is a strategy that challenges the student to write creatively, from different viewpoints, and to be aware of the organization of a paper. The R is for Role, the A is for Audience, the F is for Format, and the T is for Topic. The goal of this strategy is for the students to follow these guidelines to strengthen their writing skills for any prompt. For any prompt that a student is given, they are encouraged to think about the role they play as the write, the audience that the paper is intended for, the format of the writing (speech, poem, narrative, etc.), and the topic of the paper or what is the purpose of writing it. This is a great strategy for strong initial writing and for revision writing as students will see their writing in a new light.

Practical Application: Initial Writing: As a whole group, the teacher could go over the components of the RAFT method and model what the students are expected to do. They can then assign a prompt for all students to write about and have them follow these steps. After giving time to write the prompt, students can share their work with the class to see the differences/similarities between their work and the work of their classmates. You could also assign the students their RAFT and see what samples they can produce with what they’re given. They could trade papers and compare and contrast that way as well.

Revised Writing: Students can take a writing sample that they’ve already done and use this method to revise/rewrite it on another sheet of paper. After they re-write/revise their paper, they can compare their two samples and determine which one is stronger. This way, they can see the rewards of this method and how much their writing has improved. You could even have students re-write as a different role or to a different audience to show them how writing can differ because of viewpoint and audiences.

TRAP: This method was first cited in 1988 by Carol Minnick Santa and others in a book describing Project CRISS. Project CRISS was designed to teach students how to read and to teach writing strategies that could be incorporated into content instruction. Teachers have been using this strategy across all disciplines to get students to better understand content, vocabulary, and how to incorporate writing in all subject areas. This particular article was written by Cathy Allen Simon and it was published by the NCTE on readwritethink.org.

Simon, Cathy Allen. "Using the RAFT Writing Strategy - ReadWriteThink."Readwritethink.org. NCTE, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.