RAFT Writing Unit Rationale

When my cooperating teacher asked me to create a writing unit, I was left slightly
perplexed about exactly what she wanted me to teach. Writing itself is a multi-faceted and
holistic skillset, involving grammar and punctuation conventions, sentence structure, various
purposes, and multiple formats; as a result, writing is developed rather than learned. As I
researched third grade writing standards and spent more time with the students, I made two
revelations that guided me to design the RAFT Writing Unit.
First and foremost, this group of students has received almost no explicit writing
instruction during their school years. While daily oral language (DOL) practice is apart of the
morning routine, the students rarely apply their writing skills in any other context. The result is
students who can easily correct anothers sentences, but struggle to identify errors in their own
writing. My second discovery came at my first grade-level meeting, where the principal worked
to familiarize the third grade teachers with the quickly approaching ACTAspire Test. In silent
horror, I listened as the principal described not only a narrative writing task, but also multiple
justification questions, requiring students to explain their answers in writing. Despite my
admittedly limited experience with the class, I knew that even the most gifted children in my
class would struggle with these rigorous writing requirements.
These two realities ultimately lead me to search for a writing strategy to teach my
students; essentially, I wanted a uniform process for writing that was applicable across writing
genres and styles that students could use in state testing. At the recommendation of a reading
specialist, I began researching RAFT writing. Developed by Dorothy Vandevanter in 1982,
RAFT is an acronym representing the four choices students must consider before writing any
piece: role, audience, format, and topic. As I continued to research RAFT, I grew continually
more excited. Not only does the RAFT writing apply to the narrative, expository, and opinion

writing tasks mandated by Common Core State Standards, but also has inherent differentiation
for my class of 26 students.
After choosing to create a unit around the RAFT writing process, I began to brainstorm
concepts to guide my teaching and connect daily instruction. As I considered the philosophy
behind RAFT and my students present levels of functioning, I concluded that purposeful
choices would be the best mantra for the entire unit. RAFT writing centers around the idea of
choice: before beginning the writing task, writers must choose a role, audience, format, and topic
for their work. Forethought and purposeful choice is exactly what many of my students lack in
their writing, and they often fail to address the assigned writing prompt. By teaching students to
choose these four components of effective writing during the unit, they will always have a
guiding objective when they approach a writing task.
With the unit topic and guiding concept firmly in place, I then began to design the seven
individual lessons in the unit. In order to teach the RAFT model effectively, I knew that I had to
explicitly address each acronym component while still connecting the concepts together. To
achieve this goal, I centered every lesson on the RAFT Writing Portfolios. Consisting of fourteen
pages, the RAFT portfolio includes all the notes, diagrams, and most assessments from the unit.
The three guiding unit questions are also centered on the front pocket of every folder. By
streamlining instruction into one cohesive form, students can easily review concepts and
previous work and have a tangible product of their learning at the units conclusion.
Not only to the portfolios serve as a writing instruction tool, but also as an opportunity to
teach essential school skills for later success. Third grade is a very pivotal year in schooling as
the child take on more and more responsibilities. Rather than learning to read, students are
expected to read to learn. Classes tend to become more lecture-based. Tests become more
vigorous and regular. Multiple homework assignments are given on a single night. Unfortunately,
many of the students in my class are not developing these skills. Early in my placement, when I

first suggested they take notes during my instruction, most of the students did not have any
understanding of note taking. The RAFT Writing Portfolios are specifically designed to scaffold
students skill development. For example, the portfolio includes multiple styles of graphic
organizer notes, and the scripted instruction has the teacher guiding students through the process.
In addition to note-taking skills, the portfolios are also designed to foster motivation and
completion. My students have a chronic habit of turning in half-completed work; as they have
not received reprimands in the past, the students have no problem not completing assignments.
As a result, I chose to grade a portion of the portfolio from simple, on-time completion. My
purpose is twofold. One, I do not want to set the expectation that not finishing is ok; if my
students leave early from their future jobs, they will be fired! Secondly, I desperately want my
students to feel a sense of pride in their completed portfolio. Many of these students have
extremely negative school experiences and little self-confidence, and I believe that experiencing
pride in their completed portfolios may motivate them to accomplish future assignments and
goals.
Although note taking is researched based instructional strategy, it alone will not achieve
the various learning objectives. Research shows that engaging multiple learning pathways
(auditory, visual, motor, etc.) increases student achievement. The RAFT Writing Unit lessons
align with the research and intentionally include instructional strategies designed to appeal all
learning types. For example, many lesson include games or activities involving movement,
allowing kinesthetic learners to fully engage in the content. Interpersonal learners benefit from
the numerous think-pair-share and class discussion activities. Conversely, students with
intrapersonal intelligence are likely to enjoy the choice aspect of the RAFT writing model and
the reflection activities in the writing portfolios. The multiple instructional strategies in the

lessons certainly require more planning from the teacher, but maximize the effectiveness of her
instruction.
Because writing proficiency cannot be adequately evaluated on a select-response
assessment, a large component of the RAFT Writing Units final assessment is a RAFT writing
piece. A cross-curricular connection to social studies, the students will get to choose their own
set of RAFT choices to guide a writing piece of their choice. After completing a rough draft, the
students will have the opportunity to share a writers conference with the teacher, allowing the
teacher to differentiate instruction for every child. The final writing piece will be graded on a
rubric and included in the final portfolio grades.
The final assessment is the RAFT Writing Unit Portfolio grade and is made of three
sections. Categories 1 and 3 are completion, requiring students to complete all portfolio pages
and turn it in on time. Category 2 is the final RAFT writing piece. As the writing piece is the
clearest indicator of learning throughout the unit, it is double-weighted in the final grade
calculation. Together, these three categories combine for a total out of 60 points for the unit.
Formative assessments, such as 3-Ws, 3-2-1 sheets, checks for understanding, and practice
activities, during unit lessons ensure that the teacher can properly adjust instruction to achieve
full class proficiency on the final portfolios.
In addition to the unit portfolio, the lessons include several resources designed to balance
the benefits of technology and multi-sensory learning. Although technology is an integral part of
each lesson (the SMART board, iPad mini, computer lab, video links), the unit also requires
paper, pencils, beach balls, magazines, and other tangible items. As students get visual input
from the many technology resources, the other items give a kinesthetic and tactile experience
that complement the lessons instruction. The iPad mini resource also increases the accessibility

of this unit to all learners. While one of my students is illiterate, she will be able to use the
speech-to-text feature on the iPad mini to fully participate in unit assignments.
As I created the RAFT Writing Unit, I was struck by the irony of creating a unit guided
by the concept of purposeful choice; striving to teach writing purpose to my students forced me
to make intentional choices in my instruction! This attention to detail is apparent in all the
various aspects of the RAFT Writing Unit and I believe will ultimately result in confident,
capable writers.