SLAMS - Student Tested, Teacher Approved Writing Strategy

Ok, if you are ANYTHING like me, you bang your head up against the wall each week when you're grading your students' assessments and week after week their answers to open ended questions are - well, just BLAH!  Where's the meat?  Where's the evidence?  If I had a dollar for how many times I had to say you need to PROVE your answer - I'd have more money than Deanna Jump ;)  Well, at the beginning of this year a teacher friend of mine introduced me to a life saving writing strategy called SLAMS.  SLAMS is an acronym that will guide your students to writing an outstanding response to any open ended question.  We have been using it this year and our writing has improved 3 fold!  Here's what SLAMS stands for.  

Sentence

Lines

Answer

Mechanics

Support

Ok, I know - that poster is blah, but I'm not good at creating things where I have to draw.  I'm NOT a good artist.  However, I can make things cuter on the computer!!  How's this?

Much better, yes?  You can download this poster free on TPT.  Just click on the photo above.  Make sure while you're there to follow me on TPT for many more freebies, deals, and sales to come!!

I hope you like this writing strategy and I hope it makes the difference in your students' writing.  It's hard to see, but I did snap a picture of one of my student's journals.  This is just an average academic student but you can see that their answers are nice and lengthy.  :)  We call that a SLAMS dunk!  Haha

Have a great weekend everyone.  You stay Class*y blogging world!  

-Ciera