Tag Archives: informational writing

Second Grade Writing Warm-Ups: Week of May 9-13, 2016

This week I used our warm-ups as a means to throw in odds and ends, as well as connect to what we were doing in Writing (which is usually where our questions come from).  And one of our WWUs even served double-duty by leading to a math conversation.  They thought I was pretty clever when I brought that one up.  Ok, so I thought it was clever.  Maybe they didn’t so much care….LOL  Please leave us a comment and let us know your thoughts on our work this week! 🙂

Monday

There’s not much to say about this one except it’s something kiddos need to know, and we’re about to start writing lots of “You’re a great friend because…” messages and it will NOT be ok if everyone says YOUR instead.

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Tuesday

Ava read the book A Chocolate Moose for Dinner to us on Monday, and we heard lots of words that sounded the same, but meant different things.  We worked to find some more that we could talk about.  We continued to find examples to add to this chart all throughout the week in different texts we encountered.

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Wednesday

We are continuing to work on writing like scientists and exploring plants and pollinators in pretty much all of our day; reading ,writing, and science are all connecting right now in a marvelous way.  This warm-up was to help us think of what we’d learned so far, as well as to emphasize the idea that scientists write in a very specific (and different) way depending on what they are studying.  You’ll notice we also discussed how many words can be made from the same base.   Oh, and I may have spelled some of those green words incorrectly.  I apologize if that’s the case.

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Friday

We were WAY over due for a writing celebration for our past fiction unit in Writing, so I had a quick survey for them as their warm-up on Friday.  This is the one that turned into a great math conversation about graphs and data collection.

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On-Demand? Give Yourselves a Hand!

I know, I’ve been talking about on-demand writing a lot lately, haven’t I?  Well, we did it again today, as the pre-assessment for our new unit of informational writing.

The directions were pretty much the same as the last time, but I threw in a couple of wrenches.  Instead of handwriting their piece, they were expected to use technology–either their iPad or a laptop.  Instead of writing about something they knew a lot about, they were to do some research–well as least look for some facts in a book from our classroom.

I also laid down the expectation from this rubric from our writing curriculum:

Screen Shot 2013-12-11 at 9.21.20 PMThe part about having to type a “minimum of 2 pages in a single setting” is new for us, and was a BIG STRESSOR for some of my friends.  We agreed that today was a try-it–that we would focus on trying to do our best and recognize that there were a lot of things to do (figure out the technology, think of what to write, find the information we’d use in our resources, editing, revising, publishing) and that we’d just give it our best shot.  So we chose our topic by deciding what book we’d use from our classroom library:

I put many options of science books (animals, weather, force and motion, etc.) out on the rug and we dug in!

I put many options of science books (animals, weather, force and motion, etc.) out on the rug and we dug in!

Kiddos also chose from a variety of other nonfiction texts in our room to use as resources for their writing piece.

Kiddos also chose from a variety of other nonfiction texts in our room to use as resources for their writing piece.

After we had chosen a seed, decided if they would us an iPad or laptop, we got busy.  And it was great!  I love how the pictures speak to what was happening–lots of multitasking and hard working kiddos!

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And when we were finished, we breathed a huge sigh of relief and stepped back to see what we had done.

Look at all those words! Do you see all that we accomplished? I'm totally impressed! :)

Look at all those words! Do you see all that we accomplished? I’m totally impressed! 🙂

Here are some thoughts on the day:

And like the video suggested, give yourselves a hand, friends for a JOB WELL DONE!  YOU ROCK!!  I’m so proud and you should be, too!

Informational Writing Lessons

Remember when I wrote about what had been going on with Narrative Writing Lessons a little while ago? That post was actually one that I used in my class with my kids (an idea I stumbled upon last year in a grad class I was taking), and this one is instead a roundup-and-reflection type post that I do a lot around here after we try some new things.

We started our informational unit in a similar way that we ended our Narrative unit: with an on-demand writing piece:

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We began by looking at lots of nonfiction texts, recording what we noticed about them:

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Then we began a very exciting and learning-filled journey into the genre of informational text, focusing on how writers organize their writing, write for their intended audience and use text features meaningfully.  I’ll tell the rest of the story in pictures.  Be sure to check out the captions! (This is all about text features, after all!)

This was the first of two informational text units we're doing, and we focused on just things we knew alot about--that we were "experts" on. Here is our Rm. 202 Expert List, compiled from everyone's individual lists.

This was the first of two informational text units we’re doing, and we focused on just things we knew a lot about–that we were “experts” on. Here is our Rm. 202 Expert List, compiled from everyone’s individual lists.

After we built our expert lists, we spent some time working with some ideas on those lists to see which ones we liked best. We worked on deciding what our reader would be interested in knowing more about. This chart shows how we focused on questions that we could answer, as well as creating trees or webs to organize subtopics.

After we built our expert lists, we spent some time working with some ideas on those lists to see which ones we liked best. We worked on deciding what our reader would be interested in knowing more about. This chart shows how we focused on questions that we could answer, as well as creating trees or webs to organize subtopics.

This was one of my favorite (and impromptu!) lessons from this unit. As we considered what info the reader would be interested in knowing about, we had to think about who our AUDIENCE really was supposed to be. This chart shows a strategy we tried: we picked two completely different audiences and recorded how the subtopics/questions would be different based on the reader. Check out the difference between how you'd write about shoes for a fashion designer and a kid. :) They had some pretty great ideas, huh?

This was one of my favorite (and impromptu!) lessons from this unit. As we considered what info the reader would be interested in knowing about, we had to think about who our AUDIENCE really was supposed to be. This chart shows a strategy we tried: we picked two completely different audiences and recorded how the subtopics/questions would be different based on the reader. Check out the difference between how you’d write about shoes for a fashion designer and a kid. 🙂 They had some pretty great ideas, huh?

After we spent a couple of days trying out seed ideas and strategies for nuturing htem, we were ready to pick a seed, plan around it and then draft! Drafting was a quick process, and meant to just get the ideas initially down on paper. We would begin the work of cleaning up the messy parts as the next step! (and just in case you're wondering, I was out of the classroom this day and my sub made this chart instead of me. :) )

After we spent a couple of days trying out seed ideas and strategies for nurturing them, we were ready to pick a seed, plan around it and then draft! Drafting was a quick process, and meant to just get the ideas initially down on paper. We would begin the work of cleaning up the messy parts as the next step! (and just in case you’re wondering, I was out of the classroom this day and my sub made this chart instead of me. 🙂 )

 

After we had flash drafted our initial ideas, we worked on creating interesting leads...

After we had flash drafted our initial ideas, we worked on creating interesting leads…

...and then focused in on writing paragraphs to organize our subtopics into chunks that made sense to our readers. We did this over several days because it was hard, confusing work for many of us.

…and then focused in on writing paragraphs to organize our subtopics into chunks that made sense to our readers. We did this over several days because it was hard, confusing work for many of us.

First try at a paragraph with topic sentence, 3 details and a conclusion. We wrote this one together.

First try at a paragraph with topic sentence, 3 details and a conclusion. We wrote this one together.

Another paragraph. This one is colored coded to try to help writers see each part (although I wish I had written the topic sentence in green since it's how you GO...too late now, I guess.)

Another paragraph. This one is colored coded to try to help writers see each part (although I wish I had written the topic sentence in green since it’s how you GO…too late now, I guess.)

One more paragraph. This one was written several days later as another example to hang for kids to reference.

One more paragraph. This one was written several days later as another example to hang for kids to reference.

While there are lots of ways to describe the structure of a 5-paragraph essay (informational report, poster, etc.), the one I go to is always a sandwich or a hamburger. Excuse my really bad attempt at art. It did the job. :)

While there are lots of ways to describe the structure of a 5-paragraph essay (informational report, poster, etc.), the one I go to is always a sandwich or a hamburger. Excuse my really bad attempt at art. It did the job. 🙂

Before we published, we planned out what our posters (which they made under my suggestion) would look like. They each created a "map" of where each paragraph and text feature would go.

Before we published, we planned out what our posters (which they made under my suggestion) would look like. They each created a “map” of where each paragraph and text feature would go.

One last step before we published was to edit (which we had a chart for, too, but I didn’t have a picture of just now).  We focused on how editing is a COURTESY TO THE READER so that they both read and understand our intended message.  Final posters were made and then we had a 5th grade writing celebration to showcase our hard work!

But wait–that wasn’t it.  Yesterday, after our celebration was finished, we sat down to do a post assessment version of the on-demand writing assignment.  It was AMAZING to see how their writing changed from the beginning to the end.  That led them to the post here,  where writers were reflecting on those changes.