A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing - PROGRAM SAMPLER

8 Lesson Plans and Activities W rITIng WITh a nchor c harTs As students become increasingly diverse (Colby & Ortman, 2015) and standards more rigorous (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.), teachers need to find the most effective materials and ap- proaches to engage and honor all of the students in their care. Anchor charts are highly effective tools that teachers can use to accomplish this goal. They can support various instructional tasks, from classroom management strategies to writing instruction. Anchor charts are powerful visual resources that effectively help students navigate the demands of learning various skills and concepts. In the A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing Kits lesson plans, each genre is introduced by an anchor chart that supports guided practice and independent work and that teachers and students can revisit as necessary throughout the writing process. It is important to remember that the goal is for the students to internalize the knowledge and information presented. Using anchor charts, students begin to make new connections between the various aspects of their learning as they organize these aspects in a visually comprehensible manner. Anchor charts are a great way for students to identify, access, and deepen key concepts and strategies. In the case of the genre anchor charts, students use them for planning their writing, as well as for self- assessment. The use of these anchor charts helps increase students’ engagement and confidence, as the visual prompts provide a scaffolding to support students during guided practice and independent work. An anchor chart supports instruction and moves the student toward achieving success with lessons taught in class. Anchor charts keep current and relevant learning and thinking visible by recording content, strategies, cues, processes, and/or guidelines during the learning process. Anchor charts are posted to allow students to refer to in order to build upon and expand those tools to further their learning and understandings. (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 2015) W rITIng I nsTrucTIon In The s Tandards We are living in an age of increasingly high standards and rigorous account- ability measures. Schools are expected to design intellectually challenging, standards-based instruction for every student, regardless of his or her academic or linguistic background, and to measure outcomes through rigorous standardized assessments (Hamilton, Stecher & Yuan, 2008). By internalizing the standards through study and reflection and demonstrating to students what they are asking them to do, teachers get better at transforming goals into powerful classroom teaching. As a result, writing becomes an incredibly unique and controlled system of expressing ideas in an organized and pedagogical fashion. The combination of two mainstream sets of standards is the driving force behind the Spanish writing process followed in the lesson plans within the A+ Spanish Mentor Texts for Writing Kits . This ensures that teachers address the skills necessary for students to meet those standards at each grade level. The first set of standards is the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts. The CCSS have been adopted by many states and represent the strongest iteration of the standards movement, outlining the knowledge and skills students need at each grade level to meet the expectations for college and careers. The California Department of Education and the San Diego County Office of Education collaborated to translate into Spanish and linguistically augment the CCSS through the Common Core Translation Project (San Diego County Office of Education, n.d.). The other set of standards, which owes part of its name to Texas’s long history of rigorous academic standards, is the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), which includes both English and Spanish Language Arts standards (Texas Education Agency, 2013a). “El leer hace completo al hombre, el hablar lo hace expeditivo, el escribir lo hace exacto”. —Sir Francis Bacon “Para escribir solo hay que tener algo que decir”. —Camilo José Cela 10