Teaching Yes Ma'am

I've recently had the opportunity to model Yes Ma'am in a few classrooms in our building.  It's been really nice to teach to an entire class once again.  Writing always seems to be the hardest subject to teach.  I've always had trouble with it because I write naturally, so it's hard for me to be able to explain to students.  However, the more I model and take things step by step, the better the students do. 

 
I think the biggest thing I learned is to put my writing into steps for the kids.  Step 1 is to Read.  Step 2 is to Think.  Step 3 is to Write.  Step 4 is to Reread.  They are starting to memorize these and use these steps in their writing.  As long as they are taking their time to think and reread their work, they are usually able to come up with correct sentences.  Coming up with correct answers, though, takes explicit instruction with making sure the students are using "Keywords" from the question (Jonah, learns, events, story) to put them back into their answer AND to use those Keywords to help find text evidence.  Teaching writing is an art and a science!