The GREAT Paragraph Experiment
Problems: Students have a ton of language, but they need help organizing language and levelling up their writing. Students don’t feel as though they are “learning” in class.
Solution: The GREAT Paragraph Project.
Paragraph not paragraphs
Last year, I did STAMP ADVANCE training and learned a lot about how to get students to level up their writing. I immediately started using what I learned to do some explicit instruction on writing during Write and Discuss/Group writing.
It was going really well! We worked together to see what sentences we could combine using a wide variety of transition phrases and conjunctions. I modified my rubrics to account for use of “complex” sentences, and started seeing some really cool improvement in student writing.
BUT, now that I have more knowledge and better language to talk about student work, it makes giving feedback MUCH more time consuming. Especially when students write multiple paragraphs. So I decided to use my rubric for each paragraph a student writes rather than the whole assignment. Then the wheels started turning in my head, what if we focus on JUST one paragraph?
I often asked students to write 3 short paragraphs so I could see if there was consistency from paragraph to paragraph. But my expectation for each paragraph was really high, and it wasn’t being met with the frequency I’d like because I never taught them how to actually build more complex sentences.
Since my students are already able to craft coherent writing from start to finish due to our extensive reading of lengthy texts and stories, and their English teachers have dedicated significant attention to this skill, I believed that if I could guide them in developing effective paragraphs, they would hopefully be able to expand their writing abilities by applying these acquired skills.
Then on X, I saw this post from Chanae Bond:
And it got me thinking even more about how to get students to write better paragraphs. I hope to one day make an example for Spanish, but what Chanae has shared is a great place to start. Additionally, if I do just have students write one paragraph, the time it takes me to give feedback should hopefully decrease because everyone is aiming for the same outcome: a strong paragraph demonstrating their ability to produce language. Furthermore, once students are consistently writing strong paragraphs, I can push them from writing an informational paragraph to more persuasive, longer writing, giving them individualized goals.
Pre-assessment and Visible Learning
This was a good starting point. At the end of the unit, students just needed to write one GREAT paragraph, rather than three kinda-ok paragraphs. Then an idea, that has surely been thought before, came to me:
Thankfully the idea came to me right before starting a new unit so I decided to take the leap and try it out. I gave students the prompt from the end of the unit before I even introduced the topic. The only instructions I really gave: Write for 10 minutes, if you don’t know a word write it in English and circle it, and turn it in.
I took a look at the words students still needed English for, and made sure that I included them in discussions, or if they came up in readings I made sure to draw attention to them.
A week or so later I handed the paragraphs back to students and had them edit without using notes or other resources. I just wanted them to see what they could add after spending some time with the content/language from the unit and I was impressed!
I know we’re not supposed to ask questions that we don’t want answers to, but I asked students: How many people are reviewing classwork outside of class? No response. How many people are going home and studying vocabulary? No response. How many people were able to include vocabulary that they weren’t able to include in the first draft? Almost all hands raised. How many people were able to include new content? Almost all hands raised.
I used the moment to praise how much learning had happened in the week or so that we had been discussing the unit theme, and how it had stemmed from what we had done in class. Those silly discussions and listening to “easy” podcasts led to language growth, AND they could see that from the edits they were able to make.
Organizing with AI
Now that students had an updated version of their writing, incorporating new vocabulary and content knowledge, I wanted to ensure they could receive individual feedback while also learning about the responsible use of AI. Filled with ideas from the #LangChat discussion on AI, I decided to use SchoolAI.com to instruct a chatbot to provide feedback without introducing new language to the students. SchoolAI features a fantastic tool called Sidekick that enables students
After they edited they copied the new paragraph onto paper so I could have their first and second draft. But we still had a little bit of work to do before I gave them one more opportunity to polish and submit their writing.
WEIRD Day
If you’re familiar with Spanish grammar you may know the acronym WEIRD/O for teaching subjunctive. In Spanish some phrases that always use subjunctive can be categorized as Wish/Want, Emotion, Impersonal Expressions, Request/Recommendation, Doubt/Denial, (and sometimes) Orders/Ojalá.
Including “advanced structures” is an additional way to level up writing. One way to do that is with the subjunctive and giving opinions. At this point in the unit, we had provided some opinions, but I wanted to ensure it was fresh in the students’ minds. So, I projected a list of “WEIRDO” phrases, ensured we understood their meanings, and played GimKit to introduce some irregular forms, and put up my WipeBook posters around the room, each featuring a unique heading based on the WEIRD acronym. I instructed students to select three of the five posters and write an opinion reflecting on the content of our unit. This activity encouraged critical thinking and allowed students to articulate their thoughts creatively while engaging with the material in a meaningful way.
I gave students their paragraphs back and instructed them to try to add an opinion statement to their paragraphs. Something to note here is that I’m not looking for perfect subjunctive conjugation, but I do hope students can get the sentence structure correct, because accuracy will come later, and mood selection is HARD even for L1 speakers of Spanish.
Students do indeed love writing on the Wipebook posters, and as my goal with students is to increase their writing I think this could be a good activity to add into every unit.
Let’s see how it goes!
I’m giving students their writings back for the last time tomorrow and giving them time to polish and submit. Though, since there is a possibility that students will memorize what they want to say, I’m going to throw some additional requirement to ensure that there is a little bit of spontaneity.
Let me know if you decide to try any of this out, and let me know how it goes for you!
