General Information Project Overview Curriculum Connections Evaluation

  General Information

  Project Overview

This project has been used in the past as a STELLAR School Project. It is based at Holy Heart School in St. John's. Students post their writing on the Writers' Network and a team of teachers will choose some to be placed on a journal for young writers called Windows: Newfoundland and Labrador's Young Writers.

At Holy Cross School we plan to involve some students from Grade Three. A goal of our school improvement plan is to improve the writing skills of our students. This project seems to be an ideal one for us in that it is very motivational and appears to be an excellent means of getting children, not only to write but to enjoy writing.

Goals:

1. To develop in each child an understanding of self and others and an appreciation of the crucial role of language to that understanding.
2. To create a classroom and school environment which will motivate and encourage children to use and produce language.
3. To develop students' creative thinking skills.
4. To use writing as a tool that deepens and extends imagination, intellect and emotion.
5. To improve the students' overall writing performance based on the following areas:
   1. content
   2. organization
   3. sentence fluency
   4. conventions
   5. voice

Intended Participants:

All students at the Grade Three level will choose one piece of their writing to put on the Writers' Network. This will involve 38 students.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

The production of a variety of writing pieces representing a cross section of student proficiency, topic, style and genre.

The production of a quality student magazine online and in print biannually.

  Curriculum Connections

Through access to the World Wide Web students will:

1. Have their own articles posted to the newsgroups of the Writers' Network.
2. Use the Writers' Network Homepage to read and respond to articles that have been posted by other students from around the province.
3. Read responses to their own posted articles and re-post a final version based on criticisms received to the appropriate Writers' Network newsgroup.
4. Prepare graphic images to accompany articles that are selected for Windows: Newfoundland and Labrador's Young Writers.

  Evaluation

The main focus of this project is to improve children's writing skills. An area of observation to determine how successful our project is will be the interest and enthusiasm children show while writing their pieces.

Students will be evaluated based on the content, organization, correct use of conventions, sentence fluency and voice of the pieces they are writing. Students will be given instruction in the usage of this criteria and profiles will be kept on each student's writing to determine the level of progress each student is showing.