We are
well into our Narrative Writing Unit and Writing Workshop has definitely become
my favorite time of the day! I really
feel like I have been organized with Writing Workshop this year more than I have
ever been! Anyway, I wrote a post about setting up Writing
Workshop by introducing rules and routines (these are the first 4 lessons in my
Ultimate Writing Workshop Narrative Writing Product). You can check out that blog post {HERE}.
I have
just finished Lessons 5-10. The topics
of these lessons include:
What is a Personal Narrative?
We
brainstorm ideas and listen to a story that is a Personal Narrative.
I Don’t Know What to Write!
We
use our Ideas to Write About Chart in our Writing Folders as a tool to help
them come up with topics to write about.
Planning- Pictures First!
We
start to plan our 3 page stories while talking about sketching the pictures
first. The reason for this is so that
the students will remember what they are writing about the next day.
Help! I Don’t Know How to Spell It!
In
this lesson we start to talk about how we spell those longer words. We stretch those words like bubble gum and we
practice this in our Interactive Writing Lesson.
Using the Word Wall to Spell Words
We
also discuss how we can use our Word Wall and our Writing Words books to find
sight words that we need to learn how to write.
Using Words We Know to Spell New
Words
Lastly,
we discuss how we can spell words using words we already know like –and to
write the word s-and.
We have
been writing stories together using Interactive Writing on the Smart
Board. This allows me to model all of
the skills that I want them to become independent at in their own writing. I conference with 4-5 students every
day. I love the conference time because
this allows me to meet with each student and work on their specific skills at their
level.
For
example, I have some students writing stories like this:
And I have
some students writing stories like this:
When I
conference with my students, I really try not to focus on the mechanics of their
writing too much. I ALWAYS first have them read
their story to me. I focus on the IDEAS
in their stories and we talk about the great things they have already done and
then we talk about how they can add to their story and make it more interesting.
When we
conference, I help the child set a goal.
The goal is directly related to the lessons that we have covered so
far. For example, I have several students
working on adding more to their words and pictures. I have some students working on stretching
out words when they are spelling longer words.
We sent
home our first stories the other day.
Every couple of weeks, I have the students give me their best story (or
two). I keep them in my conferencing
binder so I can use them for assessments etc.
They take the rest home. I always
send home this EDITABLE letter with their first writing samples. I really want to make sure parents aren’t
trying to “fix” all of their writing when it comes home.
Next week
we will be moving into how to write Small Moment stories and focusing in on
those Small Moments.
The plans
that I made for this unit are so EASY too follow! It’s one page and includes the Materials
needed for the lesson, Connection, Mini-Lesson, Student Engagement, and ideas
for Sharing. There are 25 Lessons altogether!
All of the
lessons also have a Notebook File that can be used on Smart Boards. You DO NOT have to use this option to use
this product, it’s just an added bonus!
More to come later after we do our next 5 lessons!
