MSE Competition Proposal

Literacy Challenge:

You are a 5th grade teacher preparing students to take a state-administered writing test. Your students will be required to plan and write a persuasive essay in response to a prompt provided to them. They will be required to compose their essay on the computer. Prepare a teaching sequence to help your students, focused on the genre of persuasive writing and the use of accurate mechanics.

Instructional Plan Proposal:

Catherine Lyon and I realize that students are going to need to learn basic computer skills as well as basic composition skills. Students should use the computer on many steps of the process to insure that they are comfortable with typing; teachers should recognize that while many children are better at computers than many adults, not all are and so the computer skills need to be taught.
The first skill students will need is an understanding of a persuasive essay. Sudents should be given a topic which they can argue for or against, and then make an online poster supporting their side of the argument using Glogster.
The next goal will be to help students organize their ideas into paragraphs. After using Glogster, this might be easier as students have seen where they position and relate things on their posters. However, it could be better if the technology used here is a machine to project the computer screen as teachers and students work at composition together.
Another idea is to let students play some typing games (or check to see if the school already owns suitable games) to help students become better at the computer.
Here is a free one. Before we use this in the classroom, it would be best to make sure that the website--and the school computers--can handle so many students playing the games at the same time.
One way to help students with ideas is to use mindmeister
We will also use the 6 writing traits in the classroom to discuss what all the important parts of an essay are.