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WRITING NOTEBOOK

ANNIE BANTON

READ 440

NOVEMBER 30, 2017


Table of Contents

Contents
Table of
IN THIS NOTEBOOK:

SOL Standard

Comprehensive Non-Fiction Text

Rationale

1st Assignment

2nd Assignment

3rd Assignment

Annotated Bibliography
SOL Standard

USI.6

Standard
The student will apply social science skills to understand the causes and results of

SOL
the American Revolution by
a) explaining the issues of dissatisfaction that led to the American Revolution;
b) describing how political ideas shaped the revolutionary movement in America
and led to the Declaration of Independence;
c) describing key events and the roles of key individuals in the American
Revolution, with emphasis on George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and the Marquis de Lafayette; and
d) explaining reasons why the colonies were able to defeat Great Britain
Comprehensive
Non-Fiction Text
America: Pathways to the Present Modern American
History

Link to Textbook PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4M9D52kvp6aZTBK
ZVJFVVFyamc/view

This text provides a comprehensive look at the

Fiction
Non-
Text
American Revolution and the events leading up to it.
The text has good primary source images and
references to primary source documents. This book
goes above and beyond the standard, which gives the
teacher the ability to expand the standard for students
who want to learn even more.

Diana Hart. (2012). United states history (2nd ed.).


New York: Prentice Hall.
Rationale
My current practicum placement is in a sixth grade classroom, so I chose a standard from U.S. History
to 1865, the standard for sixth grade social studies. The standard I chose details the events and
leaders of the American Revolution. I chose this standard because students have usually learned
some of the information about the American Revolution, but this is the first time students dive deeper
into the causes of the revolution and the ideals behind their motivations. I feel that this is a good set
of standards for students to write about because writing allows them to organize their thoughts and
possibly better understand the complex information they are being presented with. While students
may understand the basic events of the Revolution, such as the Boston Tea Party or the Stamp Act,
they are now being asked to explain things like the deeper causes of these events and the
enlightenment ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and other acts of patriotism. This
requires students to use critical thinking skills that they may not have practiced before, which can be
a challenge. This is why I think that incorporating writing into this unit is so important, so that
students can be better supported with the development of critical thinking skills. One of the most
positive aspects of incorporating writing assignments into this unit is that rubrics can be used to
assess student knowledge. By using a rubric and being able to rate student understanding, this can be
used by the teacher to understand what gaps exist in student knowledge and where students are
mastering the information.

The three writing genres that I will have students use is persuasive writing, RAFT, and an exit ticket.
The persuasive writing assignment will be the Declaration of Independence assignment. For this
assignment, I want students to understand the process that the colonists would have taken to
brainstorm ideas for the Declaration of Independence and the fact that the colonists would have

Rationale
needed a plan for the country after they decided to declare independence. By simulating the writing
of the Declaration of Independence students are able to consider the types of decisions the Founding
Fathers had to make. Also a component of the rubric is that students must give concrete reasons why
they are declaring independence. This aids their understanding in that the colonists had to have
legitimate reasons for declaring independence from the king. Overall, this assignment is meant for
students to understand the process of writing the declaration and that it took cooperation by the
Founding Fathers to create a persuasive document. I feel that this writing assignment allows me to
expand upon the standard, which is vague. An assignment like this keeps student interest while
teaching a broader concept. For the second assignment I will be doing a RAFT assignment. For the
RAFT assignment students must respond to the role, audience, format, and topic. For this RAFT
students must take on the role of an important individual from the American Revolution and the
format and topic will be a Facebook page to describe the life and contributions of their individual.
Their audience will be the other members of their Facebook feed, which will be their fellow students.
This assignment applies directly to the standard by asking students to be able to write about the
contributions of these leaders, but relates directly to students lives by using social media as the
platform. My last genre is an exit ticket, which is a quick way to test student understanding and wrap
up that days lesson. This exit ticket will ask students to ask a question about the issues of
dissatisfaction that led to the American Revolution, then write two sentences about what they
thought was interesting, and three bullet points about the issues. This allows students to ask for
clarification or go deeper with the information, and asks their opinion to bring in relevance. Lastly, it
tests their knowledge in a quick and efficient way. This can allow the teacher to tailor the next lesson
to include the necessary information that students were unsure of.
1st Assignment: Write your Own Declaration of Independence

Prompt: Today, you will write your own Declaration of Independence. In 1776, a group of American
colonists wrote a declaration for the King of England to describe their grievances against the royal
government. You must decide who or what you want to declare independence from and provide
descriptive reasons why you want to declare independence. After you have declared independence,
you must compose a well-written solution for the next step in your plan. For example, if you declare
independence from school, you must provide a response for what you are going to do during the
week instead.

Questions you must answer:

1. Who or what are you declaring independence from?


2. What are your reasons (grievances) for declaring independence?
3. What is your next step after declaring independence?

Student Exemplar:

I am declaring independence from doing my homework. My first reason for declaring


independence from doing my homework is that it takes up a lot of my time at night. Instead of being
able to go over my friends houses or watch TV after school I have to do more work. My family and I
are unable to do fun things after school because I have to spend almost two hours doing my
homework. The only time I get to spend with my family is during dinner. But, during the spring and
winter I play tennis and basketball, so I have two hours of practice before I can even start on my
homework. Because of this, I do not want to do my homework anymore because it takes away from
spending time with family and friends. My second reason for declaring independence from my
homework is that we already do enough work at school. School is about seven hours long, from 8:30
to 3:30 in the afternoon. So, during that time we should be able to do all the work that we need to in
order to understand what we are learning. Since we spend 35 hours in school a week, I shouldnt be
doing extra work after school. Since I am declaring independence from homework, if I didnt have to
do my homework I think we should do all of the work we need to during the seven hours of school
each day. If our math teachers want us to do practice problems, we should do them during class. If
our social studies teachers want us to read the textbook, we should do it during class. This way, I will
have more time to spend with my friends and family after school and school can stay within the seven
hours that we already have it.

Rubric:

____ Student must declare independence from something appropriate.

____ Student must provide two to three well composed reasons for declaring independence.

____ Student must provide a solution for the reason why they declared independence.
2nd Assignment: RAFT

Role: Choose between George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick
Henry or Marquis de Lafayette

Audience: Their Facebook Feed (other students leaders)

Format: A Facebook page detailing the role of your individual during the American
Revolution.

Topic: You will create a Facebook page about the role of your individual in the American
Revolution. The biographical information should be correct including: name, birthday,
occupation, hometown/country, profile photo and the About Me section. You should create
two Facebook statuses that illuminate the point of view of your individual.

Student Exemplar:

Name: Thomas Jefferson

Birthday: April 13, 1743

Occupation: Farmer, Writer of the Declaration of Independence,


Future Governor and President of the U.S.

Hometown/Country: Virginia, United States

About Me: I am one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Along with writing the
Declaration of the Independence, I believed that the American Revolution was just because I
believe in the power of democracy and the individual rights of the American colonists.

Status 1: Sitting here writing the Declaration of Independence. My friend John Adams really
wants me to include a paragraph about the fact that all men are created equal, but Im not
sure. Comment here if you think I should include that all people are equal since the King of
England is not treating us equally

Status 2: It is so important that the American colonists understand that democracy should
be our chosen form of government. I am tired of our interests not being represented in
Parliament and we deserve to begin making our decisions. I will make sure to include all of
these points in the Declaration of Independence. DM me if you have other ideas.

Rubric:

___Biographical information should be correct

___About Me should give a good synopsis of this persons contribution to the American
Revolution.
___Two statuses should show that students understand this persons point of view during the
American Revolution
3rd Assignment: Exit Ticket (1-2-3)

Before leaving class today you will need to write on your index card:

- 1 question you still have about the issues of dissatisfaction that led to the American
Revolution.
- 2 sentences about the most interesting thing you learned today.
- 3 bullet points that describe the issues of dissatisfaction that led to the American
Revolution

Student Exemplar:

- Why were the colonists so mad about the Proclamation of 1763, since there were
Native Americans in the West that wanted to fight with them?
- I thought it was very interesting that the colonists were willing to risk arrest by not
paying taxes and going against British rule because they were so unhappy with the
lack of representation in Parliament. I would have thought that the colonists would
have been scared of the British.
- 1. The lack of representation in Parliament
- 2. The British wanted to tax the colonists heavily.
- 3. The colonial governors ruled the colonists harshly and the British appointed them.

Rubric:

___ Students must write one question about the issues of dissatisfaction that led to the
American Revolution.

___ Students must write two complete sentences about something that they found interesting
in that days lesson.

___ Students must write three bullet points that list three accurate issues of dissatisfaction
that led to the American Revolution.
Annotated Bibliography

Boyle, K. (2015). Writing your own declaration of independence. Retrieved

from https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/writing-your-own-declaration-of-

independence-7169063

This lesson example shows a successful plan for students to write their own Declaration of

Independence. It gives other teachers the ability to modify this lesson for different grade

levels and abilities. This example allows students to declare independence from

anything, like my example.

Crandall, A. (2013). Assess and plan with exit tickets. Retrieved

from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teacher-assessment-strategy

This text and video details how to accurately use exit tickets in the classroom. The video

shows a real classroom that uses exit tickets, and how the teacher uses them to

formatively assess his students. It also discusses ways that exit tickets can be done

digitally.

Hampton High School. (2015). Exit tickets: Checking for understanding. Retrieved

from https://www.edutopia.org/practice/exit-tickets-checking-understanding

This article describes how exit tickets are an effective tool for seeing where your students are

at the end of a class period or after a section of your lesson. It also provides resources for

technology that can be used to create exit tickets. Suggestions are given for the types and

levels of questions that should be asked on an exit ticket.

McCarthy, J. (2014). RAFTs- engaging to different writer's voices. Retrieved

from http://openingpaths.org/blog/2014/10/rafts-packed/
This blog post describes how RAFTs are a great tool for allowing students to think in a voice

other than their own. It gives many examples of different roles, audiences, formats, and

topics that one could use for creating this type of assignment. It also describes how

RAFTs can be cross-disciplinary.

Read, S., Landon-Hays, M., & Martin-Rivas, A. (2014). Gradually releasing responsibility to

students writing persuasive text. Reading Teacher, 67(6), 469-477. Retrieved

from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,cpid,

uid&custid=s8863137&db=eric&AN=EJ1025604&site=eds-

live&scope=site&authtype=ip,uid; http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1239

This journal article describes how persuasive writing allows teachers to release

responsibility to students through writing assignments. This is useful when considering

an activity such as having students write their own Declaration of Independence.

Persuasive writing asks students to think on a deeper level about issues and problems

they are presented with.

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