Burning The Worksheets!
Written by Rachel Wild, Instructional Coach I recently had the opportunity to attend Ruth Culham’s creatively named session “Burning the Worksheets” at the Summit 15 literacy conference in Calgary. Culham is best known for her work with the 6+1 Traits of Writing and her session demonstrated a method for working on writing conventions, called Writing Wallets. Writing Wallets take the place of traditional worksheet practice for writing conventions. They provide a place for students to work at their own level, practicing and integrating the rules and conventions of writing into their own pieces. It requires little to no management or grading by the teacher and nudges students’ writing skills forward in a non-threatening and independent way. Writing Wallets begin with a plain letter size folder for each student. The wallets could be personalized and decorated by students or left as they are. Each wallet should contain 2-4 of the students’ own writing pieces. The writing examples may ...