May the Fours be with You Expository & Editing Detailed Lesson Plans (Digital Copy Only)
NOTE: This purchase is a digital copy only. Purchase it here using a debit, credit, or paypal card, and you will receive a digital copy within 24 hours by email. Payment by checks or purchase orders will receive the digital files as soon as we receive the check by mail or a pdf copy of the purchase order.
This file is over 18 megabytes in size and will be sent as as email link that you can you view and download.
Here is a creative approach to writng with these detailed STAAR (registered trademark) expository and editing lesson plans you have been looking for! I've spent hundreds of hours putting these 14 weeks of plans together for teachers who need a little more step by step guidance in terms of merging Editing and Expository, which is 75% of the possible points in 4th, (24 out of 32 points, and 72% of the points students can earn in 7th grade, (33 out of 46 points). For 9th grade expository and editing accounts for 74% of the points in the writing portion of the EOC Test (25 out of 34 points).
I will go into some detail describing this product, and have including over 50 pages in the sample product that you can download for free, but let me share a point of view and perspective from a teacher who used the lesson plans faithfully last year. I will leave the name of the teacher, school, and district anonymous in order to comply with privacy issues.
Here is a testimonial that this teacher sent me during the spring:
"Bill MacDonald - I'm sure you can already tell based on the sheer number of posts I make based on your curriculum, but my team ABSOLUTELY loves your writing curriculum. It's the best we've come across in 50+ years of combined teaching. I was terrified when I found out I was getting moved to 4th grade and that I was going to be "THE WRITING TEACHER" in a departmentalized team. You see, my mom was a very accomplished writer and editor so I felt like nothing I did was ever good enough/ up to expectations. Although my team has not been lucky enough to see you in person, we all follow this page and have purchased your full binder and many additional lessons. I could list a million different reasons as to why we feel your curriculum is the best, however, the lesson that stands out like an angelfish in a sea of blobfish is the WOW/HOOK + WHAT/CIS week. Our team really digs into the lessons along with dressing up. My students went from writing mundane introductions (like we were taught back in the days) to writing the most astonishing attention grabbing HOOKS I've ever seen! They've gone from writing barely a paragraph to BEGGING for extra writing time. Our most reluctant writers now don't stop writing. They also really grasped the thought of how your conclusion should be a "little bit sweeter like a dessert" instead of leftovers."
Her own words might be enough on their own to convince you, but here are the actual results that the hard work of their incredible expository, editing, and revising team produced.
Writing Results 89% Approaches 79% Meets 47% Masters
67% of students getting fives or higher
Many of the struggling students across the grade level were able to get 4s and 5s.
She mentioned that in using my lesson plans as a guide, they focused on only about 4 or 5 complete expository essays this past year.
That is a huge emphasis of these plans: modeling and teaching students how to write a handful of essays well instead of dozens of compositions poorly. My philosophy of teaching the process of expository is that there should be an emphasis of quality over quantity. Too many campuses and/or districts require students to write an essay every week and sometimes every single day. That approach is more like assigning writing instead of actually teaching it. There is never enough time to give students feedback in terms of development, voice, organization, and/or conventions, so the quality of each essay never really improves. Think of a completed student essay like an X-ray. If the essay has problems, the doctor, (the teacher), has little or no time to model skills that will target student weakness. Many students in Texas only write expository compositions in the testing grades, creating writers who need more surgery than just Band-Aids.
This product gives you and your students lots of time and creative ways to address the entire expository purpose and process from understanding the purpose and prompt, brainstorming and planning, introductions, body paragraphs, conclusions, and transitions. One very important difference between this product and others out there is that there is a heavy emphasis on teaching students how to explain and explode ONE reason very well, not two, three or more reasons with little or no development. This approach gets your kids to do what I often call GPS, Get Pretty Specific with only one or two examples instead of having essays that look like EXAMPLEtory instead of Expository! (That would be an essay that has multiple examples for a reason with very minimal actual explanation.)
Most of the lesson incorporate how to apply expository with both elementary and secondary campuses.
There is also a dedicated amount of time each week to model and practice editing in the areas of capitalization, usage, punctuation, spelling, run-ons, and fragments within the context of whatever expository skill that is being learned that week as much as possible.
Feel free to click on this link below if you are a member of Teachers pay Teachers so that you can download about 50 pages of the sample product. If you don't have teachers pay teachers but would like to take a look at the preview product before purchasing, email me at writing_doctor@yahoo.com, and I will send it to you.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/STAAR-Detailed-Expository-Editing-Lesson-Plans-4816098
Also for your convenience, I have attached a link to week one and two of the lesson plans which are available separately for only $5 each below at teachers pay teachers. Feel free to purchase those first to see how well they fit your teaching style but more importantly your students' learning style.
Week One:
Week Two:
STAAR is a federally registered trademark and service mark of the Texas Education Agency The Writing Doctor/The WRITE Prescription/May the Fours be with You is not sponsored by, associated or affiliated with the Texas Education Agency, which has not endorsed the product and services of any company, including the products and services that I make available to schools.
