Dear Colleagues,

In our staff development work on rubrics and writing assessment, I rediscovered a solution to one of our biggest challenges: how we can enable students to differentiate linguistic registers (the levels of informality to hyper formality) and to choose the most appropriate for their work in school (usually the correct choice is formal, formal-academic unless they are writing journals or informal letters).

Long ago, in a district far, far away, I found a simple way to start student thinking about and practice with linguistic registers.

For any given assignment for which I wanted them to demonstrate mastery use of formal or formal academic writing, I would use as a brainstorming activity based on a register staircase.

1. After "mini" or macro lessons on the content (maybe a poem or novel) and on the writing assignment, I asked students to write a note to a friend using the same slang, spellings, abbreviations, and informal or intimate language they would normally use in a note that they'd write and secretly pass to a friend during class (girls, who generally had more practice with this art, did substantially better than boys). 

2. I'd then let them exchange and read their work - they really enjoyed this activity. 

3. We'd discuss the nature of the language and how its level of informality was appropriate for the purpose and audience. We'd list characteristics of this register with examples.

4. Next, I'd do a lesson on informal letters and the characteristics of language used in letters from young people to adults.

5. Next, I would ask them to revise the note, adding detail and notching up the level of formality, as a letter to a parent or other adult whom they knew well.

6. We'd repeat 2 and 3 with these letters.

7. Repeat 4 focused on formal/formal-academic writing

8. Repeat 5 taking the next step up the register staircase to a revision that brought the language, detail and development up to the formal/formal-academic register

I did this cycle 2 or 3 times in the fall.  Most got it he first time.  Even my most academically challenged students in my (dare I say it) remedial classes got it by the end of the semester, with notable exceptions (students, after all, are not Pokemon - you can't catch them all).

I did it at least once again in the middle of the spring semester.  They got it.

Please accept my sharing above, not as another "well, in my class..." type spew.  It is not a mandate to force you to change your instruction just because it comes from your Peer Coach.  It is a solution to a problem that underlies much of the pain and suffering students suffer in their efforts to write well at school and much of our frustration with the work they produce.  I use "I" and an informal register because I wish to communicate with you as colleagues and friends.  Too, because I don't have students of my own, I'm digging through my memory and experience for moments when I got excited about kids' successes in my classes. 

"mea culpa" if it seems like showing off

semper fi,

gene