Today, with your group, you’re going to do a little digging. You’re going to dig into the paragraph examples here and here:
Next your job is to figure out what makes them all paragraphs. What do they have in common? What are the “rules” for writing a paragraph? After you’ve figured out the answer, post your thoughts in the comments (along with your group members’ names) and we’ll discuss together. Happy digging! Can’t wait to see what you uncover!
I am a writer. I am not a published author, but I see myself as a person with an opinion, something smart to say, someone with ideas to express. I do that is many venues, and one of them includes following along in each writing cycle that I ask my students to go through.
Usually this is a relatively easy task. I’ve been writing for myself for years now, and have TONS of ideas to choose from in my many Writer’s Notebooks. And as long as the genre is something non-fiction, I’m ok. And then this time every year a fiction cycle rolls around and I start to get nervous. For whatever reason, writing a story is just not something that comes easily to me. It seems that every story I do end up writing has something to do with Santa Claus or Christmas. Other than that, I got nothing.
So when we got to Thursday–drafting day–I should have been ready to sit down with my students and use my own seed idea and nurturing notes to draft, I had a little confession to make instead.
“THIS IS HARD!” I started. I had to admit to them that I was not ready to draft. I had to tell them that, in fact, I didn’t even have a start of an idea. I had NOTHING! Ok, not nothing–I did have 7 years of Writer’s Notebook filled with ideas, but nothing that spoke to me and said, “Hey, Mrs. Bearden–write a story about this!” or that could easily fit into a Santa or Christmas story (that’s all I know how to write about, remember??).
So on drafting day, instead of drafting, my job was to figure out my idea. But I needed help. And I knew just the people to ask. 🙂
As my students worked on their own drafts, then, I went back to work digging through my notebooks to find anything that I was at least a little bit interested in. I wasn’t really even sure what I was looking for, but I did end up finding a couple of cute stories from my childhood. Then one about my little brother. And another about something funny my husband did when he was a kid. And so finally my wheels starting turning…
After a few minutes, I at least had a start:
What I came up with was an idea to incorporate many stories from my childhood (about me, my brother, my dad, my husband) into one, set in an old house I used to live in. The trouble was figuring out how to do that. All I had to do was just begin to mention all of this to my students and within about 10 seconds I had at least 10 possibilities–one that even had a link to Christmas! Love it.
And do now my hard work continues as I try this weekend to come up with my draft. And believe me, it’ll have to happen, regardless of how impossible it feels to me now. They’re counting on me. I ask them to do it, so I should be able to do it, too, right? I’ll let you know the answer to that when I figure it out. Hopefully before Monday. 🙂
What’s your favorite genre to write? Is there one that’s easier or harder for you? Tell us about it!
So hopefully by now you’ve seen posts about how we use math warm-ups to reinforce and extend what we’re working on in our current math unit.
Well…math warm-ups have been working SO WELL for us, that I finally got around to trying something I’ve been thinking about for a while–writing warm-ups.
First a back story…
Everyone knows that learning the mechanics and grammar of writing is important. But what is the best way to teach it? For many years, I did what many people do–give kids lots of sentences to edit and correct, hoping that they would then transfer that “learning” into their writing. One year I even turned daily edits into a weekly quiz, so that I could be sure I was assessing this work we were doing. And I guess it worked ok. Kids showed me that they knew how to capitalize correctly, use basic punctuation and pick the “right” word depending on the question they were asked. But yet they didn’t do a great job of doing this in their writing. It was like they had never encountered the rules for punctuation, capitalization or grammar.
This puzzled me, and I was curious about what else I could do to improve these skills in my students’ writing. After learning from a smart friend of mine, and doing a little reading on my own, I had some different thoughts about what was better practice in this area. For one thing, I abandoned Daily Edits. These exercises, after all, only gave my students exposure to these skills in isolated situations–situations that made them unable to transfer the knowledge. The thinking in not doing them, is that when all that students see is the wrong way to use mechanics and grammar, they may subconsciously be learning that wrong way to do it. It’s totally against the logic of why I did those activities, but after I heard it, it made perfect sense.
So fast forward a few months: I began doing a punctuation study as a means of helping my students discover and learn more about how writers use punctuation. I wanted them to see the right ways that writers use punctuation to make meaning; I wanted them to learn why they should want to know how to punctuate correctly, not just “because my teacher told me to follow these rules.”
And so for several years I’ve also wanted to try something else. Something that finally happened this past week.
The basic idea of the Writing Warm-up is to show my students a piece of writing (that I choose specifically based on what I want my students to discover) and ask them what they notice. I want them to look for things the writer does with words, spacing, punctuation, etc., that they could then try in their own writing. And unlike with daily edits, I can highlight a specific skill by showing them a quality piece of writing demonstrating the right way to do it, rather than one filled with mistakes.
So far we’ve only had three of these warm-ups, and here they are:
#1
This first one, from a beloved read aloud we finished recently, had all sorts of “good stuff” to discover. I specifically picked it because we were trying to figure out more about how to use the semi-colon, but obviously they found many other things I hadn’t expected. We worked on this one together with the document camera so everyone could see it on the big screen. They had their own copy of the text, too, so that they could take notes if they wanted to.
#2
This one gives you a better idea of logistically how we manage these warm-ups. Unlike the math version, we use the ActivBoard instead of the easel. Instead of doing them in the morning, our writing warm-ups happen right when we return from lunch and recess. Their “bellringer” before they head to read aloud is to check out the text, then jot an idea on a post-it what they think they can learn. They put the post-it on the text near the thing they noticed. Then, at the beginning of our Writer’s Workshop lesson, we return to this text and have a quick conversation before moving on to the main daily lesson.
#3
Another excerpt from our current read aloud Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer, one that I chose specifically because of the dialogue included. We’re in the middle of a fiction writing cycle, and there is an expectation that they will include dialogue in those stories. We’ve already discussed how commas work in this situation, and so this is an extension–how you start a new paragraph each time a new character starts, to help your reader keep track of who is speaking without having to write “he said” each time. The cool part is that most of them mentioned this without me even prompting them! Good stuff.
The verdict is still out on whether these warm-ups will do what I want them to, but then again we’ve just started. At the very least, it’s a good start for us, and my writers love them, so there’s good potential. We’ll keep you updated. 🙂
How do you teach grammar and mechanics? What do you think of Writing Warm-ups? Leave us a comment and tell us what you think. 🙂
We have been busy over the last week collecting new ideas in our notebooks as we start a fiction writing unit. As with every unit I teach, there are specific strategies that I teach about how to collect for that genre; the idea is that these can then be used over and over again once you know how they work.
Together throughout the week we read several books together, then looked at an idea we could pull out of that book to use in our writing. First we read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris Van Allsburg and talked about how to meld real and imaginary events into the same story. Then we read Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street by Roni Schotter, and talked about how to collect “interesting people” to use as characters. We also tried a strategy that Eva, the girl in the story, uses when she asks “What if?” and then twists the story in an interesting way. On Thursday we read Moira’s Birthday by Robert Munsch, and brainstormed “messy situations” that we could use in our stories to add interest, conflict and fun. Lastly, we tried something that I knew my writers had probably never done, and that I knew they’d love. And they did. 🙂
Let me tell you about it.
The big idea was that kiddos were given pictures from which to get inspiration for a story. The strategy was a lot like something we did at the beginning when we first started our Writer’s Notebooks. The first time around, though, the pictures were from magazines, and this time they were from my iPhoto albums. Yep, pictures of my kiddos–I knew my school kiddos would be excited about this one and give it their all. They really love anything related to my family, which I love, too.
We rotated pictures around the room, two at a time, and kids brainstormed ideas for stories that they could write. Each time they got a new picture, they could then start a new idea, or add on to the one they were already writing. Here are the pictures we used for inspiration:
The activity was really fun, and I am pretty sure that many of these ideas will become the seeds they’ll choose to publish. Be sure also see the posts about it on our blogs. Maybe you could even try it yourself. What stories would you come up with from these pictures? Comment and tell us about it! We’d love to use your stories as inspiration, too! 🙂
The second section of our punctuation chart is finally hung! Check it out:
We’re working on #3, so stay tuned!
But boy, I’m sure some of them were worried about it.
Yes, of course, I’m kidding! Let me tell you about what I mean. 🙂
I wrote yesterday about the writing cycle and our recent celebration. Well, if you remember the way the cycle works, after you celebrate, you start over again with a new project. In this case, we’re working on Personal Narratives. We spent a couple of weeks collecting memories and other stories in our Writer’s Notebooks and then picked a seed and nurtured it with some help from our writing partners, and then today we were ready to draft.
Here’s the basic directions about drafting in our classroom:
Now, the first time through the cycle we didn’t do it exactly this way, and maybe I even let them just use the version that was collected in their notebooks. But this time I made them do it “right.” At least my right way. And that’s when they thought they would all die….
I started our mini-lesson with a reminder about how I wanted them to draft, and then showed them how to do it with the seed I had chosen. It was based on this entry from one of my Writer’s Notebooks:
So, as they watched and listened, I read, then reread my piece to get the big idea of how I’d written it in my head. The second time I also paid attention to the parts I really liked and knew I wanted to include in my draft. We talked about how those were parts that we read and said to ourselves: “Man, that’s good…” Those are the highlighted parts. Then I read it again, and had most of what I wanted to say ready to write down.
And that’s when it got scary. Now, I’ve told my kids that I wouldn’t ask them to do anything I haven’t done or wouldn’t be willing to do myself. And writing is an especially good example of this idea. I always go through the cycles with them; we write together and make mistakes together and grow together. So today, that meant that we would draft together.
We sat in front of our ActivBoard, and I was ready to write my story using the document camera so they could see it. And I’m not kidding when I say that I TOTALLY understood the feeling that kids get when you ask them to do things like this for the first time. I really didn’t know what I was going to write and I had an audience waiting for me to write something fabulous! Luckily, my kids understand how to be gracious and go-with-the-flow with me, and so they supported me through this struggle.
After what seemed like forever, I had a rough-draft version of my piece. And just like I told them might happen, I think I liked most of the new version better:
And so after we reviewed the steps: read, reread and highlight the “Man, that’s good…” parts, reread and then start writing, I sent them off. DON’T EXPECT THIS TO BE PERFECT, I tell them, because we’re going to work on revising it anyway. Give yourself a break and just write your story. 🙂 But still, there were so many frightened faces in the bunch; I really did think someone was going to throw up over these directions I had just given them.
I think, though, because they trust me and they trust the process–no matter how different or crazy it seems at first–they did what I asked. The next thing I saw were kiddos all over the room drafting in a way they never had before, and not dying. They really were able to do it, and it wasn’t as hard as they thought it would be. But even it if was, that was ok. “Hard is good!” is another saying I have, because, as we have also talked about many times before, “hard” is an opportunity to learn and to do things that amaze you.
Maybe the two best things that came out of today were this: one friend came to me and told me that even though this was hard, she was glad that she’d done it–the version she wrote today was even better than what she thought she could do; and another friend–who usually has trouble finishing a draft quickly, and who was a little unsure about this process when we got started today–finished his whole rough draft, and was able to do it in a fabulous way! I even got chills when I read a line from his piece because it was that good!
Today was another example of many that I hope I teach my friends this year: just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Hard is good, and many times when you persevere through something you first think is a challenge, you are amazed at what you’re able to do. And that amazement motivates you to keep going and do something amazing again! 🙂
What have you done recently that amazed you? How have you persevered through something hard? Do you have a writing story to share with us? We’d love for you to share your thoughts!
I figure that most people teach the Writing Cycle as a means to publish a piece of writing, right? Well, I do, and it’s kind of a big deal in our room. I start at the very beginning of the year (after I’ve set up our Writer’s Workshop routines and introduced Writer’s Notebooks, that is 🙂 ), teaching my writers about the writing cycle–what it is, why writers do it and how it will help them as we go through the year together.
In the back of our Writer’s Notebooks we have a a place where we keep notes related to mini-lessons I’ve taught. One of the first things that goes in there is this:
We spend the first writing cycle, then, learning about how to do each part, and end up with a fabulous piece of writing that we’ve worked really hard on! And so what does that mean next? We celebrate!
There are many things that our class does to celebrate our writing and “send it out into the world,” but this time, we decided to have a Writing Museum (structured much like our Reading Museum from the beginning of the year) so that we could sample each others’ writing and leave compliments.
So when the “exhibits” were set up and the music started playing, Rm. 202 writers spent the next bit (well actually it was more like 30 minutes or more!) reading the work of others and leaving kind words for our friends. If only you could have heard how amazingly quiet it was the room during this time! Writing is important business in our class, and we took this (as we do most things!) very seriously. 🙂
Each person set out their writing piece, along with a compliment sheet for others to write on. 🙂
I love how they’re all sitting with their heads in their hands. Something about that seems like they’re deep in thought, doing some serious business!
How do you celebrate writing? 🙂
We have been on a journey these last few weeks. It’s a journey many of my students have never been on before. And it’s related to these piles of books:
Can you see it? All the punctuation goodness on that table? No? Well my kiddos can now. Let me tell you about it. 🙂
Punctuation is a funny thing. No? You never thought of it that way? Well, it’s one of those things that has gotten a bad wrap for a long time, and without good cause–in my opinion. Many people (including most kids!) think of punctuation as a bad word. It’s just a you-have-to-go-back-and-add-it-in-the-right-place-at-the-end-because-your-teacher-told-you-too kind of a thing. Not a this-really-matters-and-helps-me-as-a-writer kind of thing. And that’s too bad. Punctuation is a powerful tool for a writer, and I want my kiddos to know that. But it’s only a powerful tool if you know how to use it, and most of my kids don’t. At least not yet. With this goal, we started 2nd quarter Writer’s Workshop.
After spending a bit of time on what they already knew (or thought they knew) about punctuation, I asked them to tell me if they’d ever thought about what it meant. Most said no. Some even groaned a little bit at the beginning of this conversation when I said the word. It was obvious that they’d never had a positive experience with this topic, and that made me a little sad. As a means to hook them in, and get them to understand my goal for this study, we visited a section of a book we have read together and all love: Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea. I found a place in the book I knew we could all chew on together; the paragraph right before the big action in the book was a great place to dig in. I asked them to talk to a partner next to them about why the highlighted sentence was written the way it was, and how it would be different if it had been written without the given punctuation. We discovered that the punctuation (which was mainly a series of commas) was there to force us as the readers to slow down. The part just before was fast-paced, crazy and choatic; the commas made us slow down and pay attention to what was happening next. And what happened next was the climax of the story–without it, the rest of the book wouldn’t have happened.
So remember that pile up there? After we set the table, and got them feeling a little more love for this idea of punctuation, I put them into study groups. They had one goal (ok, I guess it was really two): find examples of punctuation in the texts they were given, and figure out what it means when authors use it. They had a chart to fill out with their partners and a big chunk of time to search.
After the groups had a couple of days to study (yep, you heard right–they worked diligently on this treasure hunt for 2 days!), we gathered to collect our thinking on a big class chart. They took turned sharing the marks they found and telling the rest of us what they thought it meant. For some this was hard thinking, since they hadn’t done it before. By the end of the first day we had this:
Ok, that’s not exactly true. We had all but the hyphen part, but hey–good stuff, right? They were amazed that they had figured all this out, and that they did it all without me telling them what it was.
The second day we added some thinking about hyphens:
I wish I would have recorded this conversation, because it was so great! It started with the discovery that a hyphen (-) and a dash (–) are actually two completely different punctuation marks, which mean (and are used in) completely different ways! (Did you know that?) This totally blew some kiddos’ minds and so we had to dig in a little deeper to figure out what each meant. And hyphens were first. The first two meanings were hard to explain, but once we started to find examples in the texts we were reading that fit each one, it became more clear.
Since then, we’ve come back every day to add a little more smart thinking. So far (and we’re only a little past halfway done), we have another whole chart the size of this one, plus we’ve started a third. The things they are discovering are amazing. The most amazing–and meaningful–part is that they’re doing it all for themselves. I’m not pouring the information into their heads, or having them spend time correcting sentences in an isolated exercise for morning work; we’re learning together and really focusing in on what these marks mean. They’re beginning to care, and they’re beginning to notice these marks more and more–in their reading and now in their own writing! They are aiming to use them in new ways, and can even tell you how a paragraph is punctuated as I read it aloud to them. Often I’ll stop after we’ve read something in our chapter book and ask “What do you think that looks like?” and they can tell me exactly what kind of punctuation is there!
Teaching about punctuation is not hard. But it is time-consuming, and it does require me to know more than I may have first considered about the topic, as well. But the time that is definitely well spent. These friends are walking away from each conversation we have with a new understanding of how to they can use punctuation just like word choice, organization, paragraphing, and voice to create a more meaningful experience for the reader. Pretty cool, right? 🙂
Now the first section hangs on our windows, where it will be there for us to use for the rest of the year! The goal (and I think they will make it!) is to make their punctuation chart “6 windows” long. So far we’re at 4 or 5, and still going! SO MUCH LEARNING!!
What are your feelings about punctuation? How did you learn about it when you were in school? How do you teach punctuation in your class? If you’re a parent, what are you noticing (or hearing) about punctuation with your student? Please comment and let us know what you’re thinking! 🙂
Really they’ve been blogging all year. Only it’s been on our class blog. A few short weeks ago now, though, our 5th graders got their own blogs!
There is a long story behind how I started down the road toward kid-blogging, and I posted about it here. We did much of the same process this time, and it went equally as well with these kiddos as it did the first time around. Only I have a little bit of hunch that this year’s class will go even farther with their blogs. Partly because we started earlier and so they’ll simply have more time, but also just because this class just seems to dig into their work with such eagerness and enthusiasm. I think they’ve already written more posts on their own at this point. They really think in terms of what is “blog worthy” as they go through their normal lives. I love it when I go home and there are posts waiting for me in the inbox that tell the tales of all the great things that happened during the learning day. And not because I told them to write about them, but because they wanted to write about them! It’s great.
But I digress…
Here are some pictures of our first days on the blogging journey, which started with creating our paper blogs:
Some kiddos got inspiration by checking out last year’s blogs before they got started on their own.
After we had our blogs created, we learned how to comment. And got to work practicing on post-its before we went into the “real” world. I have to say how proud I am with how great they did, remembering to be positive, tell something they liked about the blog post, as well as ending with a question to keep the conversation going.
So needless to say, they are totally rocking this blogging thing! If you haven’t had a chance to check us out, visit our student blogs to see what it looks like live! We would LOVE it if you left us a comment to tell us what you think!
I remember it like it was yesterday, in my first year of teaching–1st graders. It was extra eerie on this anniversary as that morning was very much like it was today: bright, cool, and with promise of exciting things to come. Who knew what tragic events would unfold as I was driving to work that morning? And while you and I have memories of that fateful day, our friends do not.
This is the first class I have where most of my kiddos (well, all but 2!) were not even born on September 11, 2001. Everything they know about September 11, 2001 is from stories, TV, books, etc. And I wonder if even the stories they’ve heard are true, or if they’re more based on bias and opinion–intentional or not.
So how do you deal with a major topic in their history in a way that both makes sense and doesn’t scare them? How do you share truth in an appropriate way for a 10- or 11-year-old?
I decided to tackle the anniversary first in Writer’s Workshop. First we read Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey, and then talked about what we were thinking. We used this as an opportunity to both teach a strategy for writing (responding to literature and what’s going on in the world around us) as well to work through their thoughts and feelings of the day. Everyone wrote entries about what they knew about 9/11 or what they were wondering.
Later we took some time to watch a news segment made just for kids. It was from Nick News and was called What Happened?: The Story of September 11th. It did a super job of explaining what actually happened as well as addressing questions that many kids have about that day. They went back to the entries they wrote earlier in the day and listened for answers, or to add information they wanted to remember. Hopefully your student came home talking about it, and you were able to have a discussion with them about it, too.
Let’s help them learn, so that they, too, can remember. 🙂
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 