Gabe Bruce

EDRE 4860
November 11, 2015
MPG Annotations
McNamara, D., Crossley, S., & McCarthy, P. (2009). Linguistic Features of Writing Quality.
Written Communication, 27(1), 57-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0741088309351547
ftp://129.219.222.66/pdf/Linguistic%20Features%20of%20Writing%20Quality_OLD.pdf

This first article is comparing students essays from a standardized test. They are
comparing what distinguishes essays that were rated high and ones rated low. What they used to
measure the differences between the rated essays are cohesion, syntactic complexity, the
diversity of words used by the writer, and characteristics of words. After the research was done,
the study concluded with the results being independent of features that assist reading
comprehension. On the other hand, essays that were rated higher had a better chance of having
linguistic features associated with text difficulty and high-level language.

Cali, K., & Bowen, K. (2015). The five features of effective writing. Learnnc.org. Retrieved 14
October 2015, from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/few/cover
I found this is a great resource to help someone better understand the features of effective
writing. Along with understanding the features, this will help future or current teachers create
writing instruction to help implement the features in the classroom. It is not focused on one grade
level or genre so it will help for any teacher of any grade.

(2015). Retrieved 20 October 2015, from

http://faculty.berea.edu/pearcej/CSC126/bottasks/EffectiveWriting.pdf
This small article talks gives the five features of effective writing and it goes into detail
talking about each one. It states what the writer should do concerning each feature. For instance,
it talks about the focus feature of writing and how the writer should establish and maintain a
clear focus that is identifiable by the reader.

Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Booth Olson, C., DAoust, C., MacARthur, C., McCuthchen, D., &
Olinghouse, N. (2012). Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers: A
practice guide (NCEE 2012- 4058). Washington, DC: National Center for Education
Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Insti- tute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department
of Education. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/sites/default/files/TeachingElementary-Students-to-Be-Effective-Writers.pdf
What I am particularly looking at with this article is pages 27-33. They discuss how to
teach teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing,
and word process. It goes over a multitude of grammatical recommendations for teachers to
teach to students. This also touches on teaching students to create fluent sentences as well as
ones that have meaning and style. A few scenarios of issues that may arise with teaching this
feature along with solutions that a teacher could use to avoid or solve these potential issues.

Growing Book by Book,. (2012). Mentor Texts To Use For Modeled Writing. Retrieved 29
October 2015, from http://growingbookbybook.com/2012/08/10/10-for-10-ten-metortexts-to-use-for-modeling-writing/

This is a site that shows ten different texts to use for modeling writing. The books shown
listed on this website are not centered around one feature of writing. Instead, they give multiple
texts that model different features of writing. For instance, it gives a book called Roller Coaster
that models text structure and another book called Thunder Cake models multiple text features
such as style, conventions, as well as support and elaboration. This site offers great resources that
a teacher could use for the younger grades when teaching the text features.

Behymer, A. (2003). Kindergarten Writing Workshop. The Reading Teacher, 57(1), 8588. Retrieved from
http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2087/docview/203277363/fulltextPDF/98A7DF79B3A6479APQ/1
?accountid=7113
One of my questions was about teaching the writing text features to kindergarteners and
how I would go about doing so. Do I teach an entire lesson over it? When do I introduce it? Just
overall, I wanted to know how to do this with emergent writers. This article is written by a
teacher who talks about how he handled introducing and implemented writing lessons in his
class. He talks about the steps of his writing workshop and what is involved in each step. The
third step is when teaching conventions comes into play.

Graham, S., & Harris, K. (2004). Writing Better: Effective Strategies for Teaching Students with
Learning Disabilities.
This is an article that helps elementary teachers give effective writing instruction to
students with learning difficulties. It gives activities for phases of the writing process, which

include instruction on text features, as well as guidelines on how to teach these strategies and to
use them.

Dennis-Shaw, S. (2015). Fishing for Readers: Identifying and Writing Effective Opening
"Hooks" - ReadWriteThink. readwritethink.org. Retrieved 30 October 2015, from
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/fishing-readers-identifyingwriting-969.html?tab=4#tabs
This is a lesson plan from Sarah Dennis. It is completely dedicated to developing the
students ability to create a good hook at the beginning of their story. This falls under the
organizational text feature of my project. This is not a minilesson, it is a full lesson that is
composed of how to find good hooks as well as creating their own hooks. It covers everything
from what a hook is to collaborating with peers as well as developing their own hooks.

Bestcollegesonline.com. (20120 Troubling signs theres a writing crisis in America. Retrieved 28

November 2015, from http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/bloc/2012/11/04/12-troublingsigns-theres-a-writing-crisis-in-america/
This website gives statistics of students in America. It talks about how many have
struggles with writing, and it shows test scores throughout certain periods of time.