I loved the developmental framework!! That helps a lot with understanding the sequence of writing, and helps me make more sense of the writing of students I’ve worked with in the past. So many times the struggling students I had in student teaching were expected to do things that they were not yet developmentally ready for, and I think that really kept them from making any progress. I remember the teacher trying to make them elaborate and focus on word choice before they could even complete a sentence.
I really liked the examples of stories from different aged children, so that the differences can be seen. I also think the composition rubric on page 60 is very useful, and I’m glad they pointed out not to use the levels as grade-equivalents and instead to use it as a guide for planning appropriate instruction.
The specific teaching strategy and lesson outlines were also really useful. Block 1 is really important, I’ve seen so many studnets who cannot sequence events and if they can’t do that it would be very difficult for them to write a story that made sense. I liked the use of pictures and idea bubbles in initially developing a story and then adding text later. I think this would really help students, especially ones taht have trouble remembering their ideas long enough to be able to write them down. They had a lot of really good scaffolds to use too in this section
