Writer's Workshop

Where in the world did September and October go?!?! Thought I would have SO MUCH more time to blog since I had a student teacher this fall but nope. No time at all. These days  I come home from work around 6 (I also work for the after school department Monday - Friday running the homework room), eat dinner, get caught up on Facebook and Instrgram, and it is lights out by 9pm. So not like me. I am the one who is usually up till midnight NO PROBLEMS. Guess this is what happens when you get old.

Moving on.

This is our second year with Writer's Workshop and our second year using binders. While I am not a super fan of Lucy Calkins (*EEK* - please don't egg me), I am liking the workshop model and our Writing binders.

Now that I am starting to take over the teaching of writing (my student teacher is winding down) I have stepped our binders up a notch this trimester.

Last year, as well as the beginning of this year, we only had two tabs in our writing binders - green and red. Now this trimester, I have added both a yellow and a purple tab to our binders!

Say WHAT?!?! Crazy I know!

Behind the green tab (cut construction paper) goes the our current pieces of writing. The writing that are still being worked on.

Then behind the red tab goes the pieces of writing that students feel that they are done with.

There is nothing here to see since we just started our informational unit and I clean out the previous genre to declutter and make life simpler for ME!

I also have started using a FABULOUS Writer's notebook resource from the great Christina Bainbridge. She has a pack for grades 1st and 2nd and grade 3 - 5.

Christina also has grammar booster packs for each level that offer EVEN MORE grammar activities in addition to the ones included in her Writing Resource pack. I have the 1st - 2nd booster pack in my TpT shopping care ready for when I need them (and payday - hehe).

I was finding that we needed more grammar practice. Who would have thunk? So I decided to add a grammar tab (yellow). Behind this tab is where we will put anything that we are working on for grammar. We have been using some of the grammar pages in Christina's writing resource and gluing them onto notebook paper and putting them into our binders. AWESOME!!

Then behind the purple tab is going writing guides and "cheats" specific to the genre of writing that we are currently working on. Again, I am using pages from Christina's AWESOME pack to assist. We just started one of our Informational writing units. the other half will come this spring. I will take these guides out and hold onto them until then.

If you are looking for something to take your Writer's Workshop to the next level you should definitely check them out.

Hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into our Writing binders,

Have a great day!

Write About it Wednesday on a Thursday

This week and next week the third, fourth, and fifth graders at my school (as well as those throughout the state) have been participating in a really fun activity called...the FCAT! (Can you hear the sarcasm?)

A week from Monday my second graders will be taking diagnostic testing that will help drive instruction for third grade. One of those assessments is a new writing performance test which is supposedly similar to what my students will be doing on their writing assessments through PARCC. 

I am linking up with Halle from Across the Hall in 2nd and Kate from Second Grade Sparkle for the writing linky.

We have been working on writing informational booklets and my kids are LOVING IT!

They are turning out so cute!

I....being the control freak that I am...have been providing my students will articles about animals that we read together and then take notes on. We just finished our informational booklet on Loggerhead Sea turtles. I learned so many interesting facts about these turtles! I have been using the National Geographic for Kids website as well as some other articles that I found by goggling to gather enough information for my kids.

I think I am going to subscribe to this magazine for my class next year! I love the website!

After reading the articles together and discussing them (as well as some of the harder vocabulary) we start taking our notes. I am trying to push my kids into writing LOTS of details for each chapter so they have to write at least 4 notes for every subsection.

When we are finished taking notes we put the articles away and work ONLY from our notes. This is hard for second graders. When we did our practice assessment back in the fall a lot of them copied full sentences and paragraphs word for word from the articles. Now we are working on just writing short phrases in our notes and not full sentences to help us put the information in our own words.

When we start our booklets we start by writing our table of contents. This is our guide for the order that we write in. The first two that we have done were really guided step by step. The booklet that we are working on this week (about bottle nosed dolphins) I am really letting them take the lead and work without me. So far so good!

After writing the table of contents then we wrote our introduction together. I am working on teaching them they we don't include EVERY SINGLE DETAIL in our introduction. Just a quick "hello" about what they will be talking about. 

When our introduction is done we work on each chapter together. I do require that in addition to their introduction and conclusion that they have at least four chapters. I feel that kids at this age need to be taught and guided as to what would be an acceptable length for a piece of writing. If I did not set a minimal requirement then I believe that I would get one chapter and they would be finished - to me this is not enough.

After our chapters are written then we worked together on our conclusion. Again, we did this together as I am trying to model the kind of information that should be included.

When all of the writing, editing, and revising is completed then I allow my students to go back and add their pictures, diagrams, and text features. This is actually the part that some of them dread the most. I really think they would rather just keep writing. I can't tell you how many times in the last three weeks I have heard, "Do we have to draw pictures?" or "Do we have to color?". Uh - hello you're kids - you are supposed to like to draw and color!

I am going to leave you with some of the awesome drawings that my kids have drawn!

Have a great night!

Christina :)