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Goal

To increase the amount of time students at Lely Elementary School, grades Pre-k through 5, spend writing across the curriculum. According to research, writing is positively correlated to increased learning ability, improvement in writing skills, and increased in retention of knowledge. 

What will be done with my students

All students, grades Pre-k through 5, will be provided with their own "Think Pad" (composition notebook). Naming the composition notebook "Think Pad" rather than "Writing Notebook" is important, because the word "writing" often causes anxiety and reluctance to write in some students. Each student's "Think Pad" will contain an incentive chart on the inside cover where teachers can reward students in areas like: participation, effort, thoughtful entries, improvement in writing technique, correct use of grammar, etc. At the beginning of each student's "Think Pad," there will also be a variety of writing/thinking options for students to choose from when interacting with knowledge. The options will include critical-thinking question stems, graphic organizers to represent different text structures, poem templates, and writing prompts. Teachers will also be provided with a reference sheet of research-based writing strategies to be used with students before, during, and after learning. These writing strategies will foster higher-order thinking skills and help cement the learning across all content areas. 

Benefits to my students

If students are writing, students are thinking. Educators have known this all along. But in 2010, the world was shown this fact with absolute certainty when brain scans taken by neuroscience Dr. Karin Harmen James made the news. Her brain scans showed that handwriting (the actual formation of letters with the hand, not keyboarding) increased activity in the brain. The positive correlation between writing and brain activity explains the reasons that writing has been shown to increase memory, learning and learning ability. Learning to write by hand has also been credited for helping children learn to read more quickly. Also, writing by hand allows students to generated more ideas than students who tried generating ideas on a keyboard.

If you take a moment to think about it, the power that writing can have makes sense. First off, the mere act of writing takes a certain amount of focus which helps students stay more engaged. Additionally, you can't write without thinking. In order to write and take notes, the writer must summarize, clarify and process the information, all of which are critical-thinking skills. Teachers all along have known that if students can write it, clearly they know it. And, like playing the piano, the more you write, the better you get.

It is important for teachers to remember the benefits of writing and make every effort to balance it with technology, not abandon it in the digital age. The benefits of writing are the reasons teachers and staff at Lely Elementary want to focus on increasing the amount of writing the students do across all content areas throughout the school day.
 

Budget Narrative

Teachers will need the items listed in order to create the contents for the "Think Pads" and to implement the positive incentive/reward system. The creation of the items for the inside of the "Think Pad" (incentive chart & writing /thinking options) and the reference materials for the teachers will be compiled by the Reading Coach. 

Items