SPAM It!

In 5th grade, we SPAM…on the daily. As a writing team, we only teach On
Demand. In our district, 5th graders do not write ‘pieces’ (memoirs,
personal narratives, poems, etc); rather, we focus  on On-Demand writing or ‘real-world’ opportunities
to write. We teach under the idea that by the end of the year, students should
be able to sit down, be given real-world writing prompt, and thoughtfully
respond in 30 or 90 minutes. Right or wrong? I am not sure…but it’s what
we do.

What I do know is that the writing part of 5th grade state
testing consists of 2 On-Demand pieces. One 30 minute stand-alone piece (that
means it does not have an article with it), and one 90 minute text prompt (that
has at least one text with it, usually 2).

So, the first part of our On-Demand time is spent SPAMing. When we SPAM,
we analyze and pick our prompt apart. When broken down, SPAM looks like this –

 

Situation – What is going on? What background information do you have?

Purpose – Why are you writing? Are you writing to inform/explain, to
give your opinion, or to narrate.

Audience – To whom are you writing – the school council, the public, the
principal, a new student?

Mode – What are you writing – letter, article, email?

This week has been SPAM week, so we started out learning and chanting
SPAM. We took notes, make anchor charts, and practiced raps.

Then, the past two days have been spent practicing and analyzing sample
prompts (you can grab our prompts here). Students used the Kagan structure, Rally Coach, to team up with a
friend and analyze different prompts I found through our Department of
Education. After students had time to analyze the prompts, we projected them on
our SMART Board and annotated the texts.  Finally, students were ready to analyze the prompts
by themselves.

Although I was surprised to see that it took us 3 days to SPAM,
I really love seeing my kids take a prompt and instantly know how to break it
apart. As we transition to writing whole On Demand pieces (rather than a paragraph at a time), the SPAM road-map will be really helpful.

So, I’m curious – do you teach On Demand, writing pieces, or a
combination of both? Do you use SPAM or another organizer? I would love to
know! 🙂