Step Up To Writing

Hmmm…. sounds liek the program is expecting students to have taken some of those steps already.
I can’t answer for how to use what you’ve got, but if you can get a hold of “When They Can’t Write,” it starts at “noun and verb” and what they are and builds simple sentences from that, then teaches adding phrases and modifiiers to the sentences. It’s totally structured :-) (Charlotte MOrgan is the author; pro-ed carries it www.proedinc.com .)

Sue,

Thank you for your reply. I just checked out the information on the book that you recommended. I have two questions: 1. Do you need the practice books? 2. Can they be used with upper elementary students? I see that there are supposedly targeted toward secondary level students.

Thanks so much,
Caron

[quote=”caron”]

I just received my Step Up to Writing order yesterday and I’m not sure where to even start. I have never used the program before. It seems like they start out the students with paragraphs. Most of my students need to start writing sentences. Any tips, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

[/quote]

Step Up to Writing DOES start with sentences. The manual has a whole section on sentence writing, and there are overhead transparencies and other reproducibles to support the suggested activities. My stuff is at school so I can’t reply in detail here. Perhaps you are just looking at the “Handy Pages” which ARE about paragraph writing. There’s a goldmine of stuff in the manual itself.

Susan S.
Ontario, Canada

One thing you might think about is having them *recognize* parts of the sentence in sentences that are already written. My students are NOT able to do this. (I don’t really work that much on writing but try to put a little of this in under the generally area of improvement in fluency.) You take a simple sentence and find the “who” (noun phrase), “did what” (verb phrase) and where (prepositional phrase). I was surprised at just how difficult this is for them. I got out sentence strips (4 who phrases, 4 did what phrases, and 4 where phrases) and have them create their own sentences this way, which makes it a little easier. The kids liked this as they came up with some funny sentences that way. I’ll go from there to having them chose between phrases, and then writing or perhaps just copying some phrases out of a selection. I might think of going back to just a noun and verb phrase. You wouldn’t believe how many of these HS kids thought that as long as it had a capital it was a sentence.

—des

[quote=”palisadesk”][quote=”caron”]

I just received my Step Up to Writing order yesterday and I’m not sure where to even start. I have never used the program before. It seems like they start out the students with paragraphs. Most of my students need to start writing sentences. Any tips, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

[/quote]

Step Up to Writing DOES start with sentences. The manual has a whole section on sentence writing, and there are overhead transparencies and other reproducibles to support the suggested activities. My stuff is at school so I can’t reply in detail here. Perhaps you are just looking at the “Handy Pages” which ARE about paragraph writing. There’s a goldmine of stuff in the manual itself.

Susan S.
Ontario, Canada[/quote]

Susan,

Thank you so much for responding!! I was looking at the manuel and I don’t see the section on sentence writing. It seems to start out with paragraphs. Also, I don’t see any overhead transparencies. Maybe they are with the posters. I didn’t open them yet, because I was thinking of returning them if possible. I’ll be going to school to look things over again. How does one learn to use this program?

THANK YOU!!
Caron

Caron,

There are training videos for the program that I sure would help you a lot if you are unable to attend a training. I met Charlotte Morgan at our last IDA conference, but I also had the impression that her materials were for high school.

Janis