Using Target Skills™ in Marcia Freeman's

CraftPlus® School-Wide Writing Program

Marcia Freeman's CraftPlus® School-wide Writing Program and Staff-Development Resource is centered on a progressive K-8 curriculum of writing-craft Target Skills™. In the workshop and classroom-demonstration videos she explicitly demonstrates her practical and proven methodology for delivering these Target Skills in the classroom.

What are Target Skills™?

Target Skills are the specific writing-craft skills and techniques that we select to teach young writers. They include genre-linked organization strategies, beginning and ending techniques, and transitions, as well as composing skills, literary techniques, writing conventions, and writing process mechanisms. They are single-skill concepts correlated with students' ages and developmental stages.

Can I teach Target Skills™ before a child learns to read?

Yes. You can teach emergent writers many target skills while they are learning and applying their knowledge of print text and phonics. At any developmental level, the first steps in teaching a Target Skill are showing how an author has used the skill, discussing why it helps a reader, and then asking young writers to try the skill out orally.

You then show them how to apply the skill using emergent-style writing such as: any letter, starting consonant, or first and last consonant to represent a word; then employing temporary and phonetic spelling. Your young students will learn Target Skills best if you understand, recognize, and honor their current developmental stage, i.e., if you apply the work of Jean Piaget, Brian Cambourne, et al.

How do I teach Target Skills™?

You teach Target Skills through modeling and direct instruction. First you present your young writers with good examples (models) of how authors have used the skill in narrative and expository literature. You then build a classroom writing community that provides the children with opportunities to practice the skill, in oral and written form, emulating the models they have been shown. (You do not formally assess their practice pieces.) Finally, you require the use of a specific skill(s) in genre pieces that are taken through the entire writing process, and you assess those pieces for that usage. As is true in the learning of any craft, students will master these skills over time, from a basic level to more sophisticated levels, from the concrete to the more abstract.

Teaching writing explicitly with Target Skills is the core of CraftPlus writing instruction.  In busy classrooms, however, it can be difficult to find the time for extended explicit writing instruction every day. The 10- to 15-minute mini-lesson sequence breaks up explicit Target Skill instruction into a manageable instructional chunk that can be taught at the beginning of the 45-minute writing workshop block or during any small amount of time you have.   

You always begin with an Initial Mini-Lesson and end with an Assessment Mini-Lesson. The number and type of Follow-up Mini-Lessons you do in between will depend on your students’ needs. Expect a sequence of mini-lessons on one Target Skill to take from three days to three weeks. The number of mini-lessons needed to teach a single Target Skill is affected by:

· Familiarity with Target Skill instruction: the more familiar students are with the process, especially using pictures, the quicker the lessons will go.

· Writing level of S=students: Initial and Developing writers generally spend more time on individual Target Skills. 

· Degree of difficulty of Target Skill: For example, strong verbs are less complex than embedded definitions.

 Why is teaching with Target Skills™ effective?

• Target Skill instruction exploits children's natural learning and language abilities and takes into account their age-related abilities and limitations.
• Target Skills are taught in a logical progression, from concrete to abstract, through the grades.
• Target Skill instruction continuously improves children's writing by transforming the daily writing workshop into a goal-directed activity in which specific writing-craft skills are explained, modeled, and practiced. Students have immediate success and see that their writing is "like a real author's," because they are using the very same techniques.
• Target Skill instruction helps young writers learn that revision is the key to good writing, and a positive activity. They start the revision process in the early grades by adding and substituting concrete, specific craft techniques to improve the quality of their writing. Later they learn more abstract forms of revision such as reorganizing and altering the logic and flow of a complex piece.
• Target Skill instruction leads to objective assessment that children can understand. All children have the opportunity to "hit the target(s)" that they know is required by the assessment. (Exceptional use of the Target Skill can be rewarded with bonus grades.)