Skills - Conventions
Brief Explanation
- A strong emphasis on mechanics by teachers leads students to believe that text appearance is paramount. (Effective Writing Instruction Across the Grades: What Every Educational Consultant Should Know, Troia, Gary A. Graham, Steve (2002)
- Writing conventions include spelling, punctuation and grammar.
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Clearly Identified Key Outcomes
Use your programs of study for curriculum outcomes related to print awareness. Please refer to the CESD’s Essential Outcomes work.
Here is a K-9 Scope & Sequence of Reading Outcomes from the English Language Arts curriculum.
Purposeful Instructional Strategies
- Explicitly teaching and modelling the use of conventions, rules and tools in their writing to to ensure that students know and understand the following:
- punctuation
- capitalization
- grammar
- spelling
- how to edit, focus on one area at a time
- how to use a dictionary and/or spell checker
- paragraphing while drafting
- keeping a consistent verb tense
- keeping a consistent point of view – I, we…
- treatment of titles and headings – when to quote, capitalize, italicize
- numbers – when to use the numeral versus when to write out the number
- verb confusions
- ‘an’ vs ‘a’
- subject and object case pronouns and how to test for which case is correct
- Abbreviations
- Writing left to right across a page for younger students
- (N. Atwell, In the Middle, 2015)
- Build editing checklist as you teach writing
- Build spelling skills by engaging in word study activities
- Teach the meanings of commonly used prefixes, suffixes
- Teach spelling rules related to word endings – plurals, possessives, etc.
Video about Conventions in Writing
Personalization of Learning
- Assistive technology ie. spelling and grammar checkers enabled, speech to text
- Individual teaching and support based on need
- Reduced length of editing checklist – only editing for a few components at a time