Return to MenuWriting and Advocacy in Liz McCormack’s 2nd-3rd Grade ClassStudying the Salish Sea and its endangered cetacean population, Liz McCormack’s second and third graders have been exercising their civic duty, writing letters to Senators Murray and Cantwell, Representative Jim McDermott and Navy Secretary Gordon England asking that they help curb the use of sonar in these waters. “Dear Patty Murray,” began a politic second grader, “I think we should have a bit of sonar but not as much as right now.”Others felt no inclination to accept even a bit of sonar: “Dear Gordon R. England: I would like the U.S. Navy to stop using sonar. I support whichever side does not hurt animals at all. We are animals and killing animals is like killing us, and people don’t want to die.” It was a persuasive argument, which was exactly the point of the exercise – to help students develop the art of persuasive writing. It was one of five major writing projects relating to their expedition.This year students have used their expedition to explore sound, rocks, and minerals, marine life, and folk tales, each subject the centerpiece of a writing project designed to teach students about narrative, expository, creative, and persuasive styles of expression. In a narrative exercise last fall, students described their three day trip to Camp Coronet Bay and to the Whale Museum on San Juan Island. The expository project that followed had students researching a type of whale, the most popular choice being the Orca. Students are now at work on a creative project. Having studied the folklore of the Pacific Northwest, they are composing their own folktale. The project, still in the rough draft stage, works on plot and character development, using native folklore as a model. One student, for instance, invented the character of Mole (He-Who-Digs) to explain why moles can’t see and how the Paria Canyon formed along the Utah-Arizona border. It is easy to see how expeditionary learning enhances the work of young writers. Authority or voice comes from knowing a subject well. And there is certainly no shortage of authority among these second and third graders. If, for example, Senator Cantwell read her mail carefully, she would have learned from this knowledgeable third-grader one of many ways in which sonar harms marine life:“When sonar is used around whales they come to the surface and they panic and they swim so fast that they get the bends. Bends are air bubbles that get in their system and it kills them.” The second/third grade program focuses on what Liz calls the writing process. In Room 8, that usually begins with a group brainstorming session to provide kids with ideas and models. From there, students make their first draft, remembering that any piece of writing has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. But, as any writer knows, the real work comes during revisions. And here, students must learn the six traits of good writing: ideas, organization, sentence fluency, word choice, conventions, and voice. To make this real for her class, Liz likes to tell her own stories: “I told them about the time I ran into a bear while hiking with my parents. After telling the story, I wrote it in several ways, each time leaving out one of the six traits. For example, sentence fluency or organization. When we read the story again, they immediately saw that something was missing. The story wasn’t as interesting.”But is there one trait above the others she would want this year to be about? “I guess that would be idea development. Or maybe organization. Certainly we don’t spend much time on voice,” Liz explained. “It comes naturally for these students. It’s not something we have to work on.” Whether they bring that voice with them to AE II or it is something they develop because of the expeditionary curriculum is hard to say. What we can say, laughed their teacher, is that there’s plenty of voice around here. And maybe even a few senators who haven’t yet heard from AE II.
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