Strategy: Choosing the Right Word

Online: As the revision process begins, it is a great opportunity for students not only to revise what they have said, but also how they have said it. When students click on “Reference” from the student composition page, one of their options is the Word Bank.

Strategy: Domain/Trait Specific Instruction

Online: Select a specific domain/trait of writing upon which to focus your instruction. As students write, allow them only to see My Tutor feedback from that one domain/trait. When they revise, they should revise to bring up the score in that one area only. Using the teacher reports, you can monitor if students have mastered the domain/trait and are ready to move on.

Offline: As students are writing, select a specific domain/trait to emphasize.

Strategy: Focused Revision

Online: Rather than having your students resubmit their essay after every word or punctuation mark they change, consider requiring a specific number of submissions and articulating the kinds of changes that should take place in each submission. For example, you require your students to submit their essay three times. The first submission would be their rough draft. The second submission would focus on specific domains/traits and students would be given a list of things to work on and change in their paper.

Strategy: Graphic Organizers (Venn Diagram, Cluster Web, KWL Chart)

Online: These interactive graphic organizers can be enabled or disabled when you create an assignment. If they are enabled (which is the default) your students will be able to see them when they click on the “Prewriting” heading found just above the student composition window.

Strategy: Introducing Students to MY Access!

Online: Make copies and distribute the Student Quick Reference Guide (found in the teacher resources) prior to logging on and inform students of their usernames and passwords. If an LCD projector is available, model the procedures while the students work at their own computers.

Strategy: Model Papers

Online: Before your students have submitted their essay for a score, have them open up the Writer’s Model found through the “References” tab in the composition window. Then have them compare their essay to the model essays and select the model paper that their paper most closely resembles.

Strategy: Musical Chairs

Online: The musical chairs strategy is a different take on peer reviewing. Each student will stand up and move to another computer where they will be able to look at another student’s essay. This should be an essay that has recently been submitted for scoring. Instruct the students to read the essay in front of them and then instruct them to delete and re-write on section/paragraph of the paper. After this has been done, students should go back to their original computers and resubmit their papers.

Strategy: My Tutor

Online: While students are composing their essays, allow them to use My Tutor to receive instructional feedback prior to or after submitting their essay for a score. This feedback is broken down by domain/trait and provides a variety of instructional suggestions to improve the essay. Start small, one domain/trait at a time and have students follow My Tutor suggestions.

Strategy: Radical Revisions

Online: With every submitted version of your students’ writing saved in the portfolio, MY Access! is the perfect tool for trying something new in your writing. It is comforting to students to know they can always get back to an earlier version of their paper. Therefore instruct your students to radically revise the paper. Have them change the organizational pattern (start at the end), voice (change your paper excited to frightened), introduction (select a new lead sentence to grip the reader),etc.

Strategy: Research Using Iseek

Online: Iseek is the embedded internet research tool in MY Access! that allows students to gather information from credible sites that is specific and categorized by topic, place, people, etc. Before students actually begin to respond to a prompt in MY Access!, have them search in Iseek for information that could help them to formulate strong arguments and supporting details.