Writing

Rest of Year

Soon you will see kids' essay tests coming home. It will be stapled to the rubric. I was impressed with many of these writings and feel that kids learned a lot about essay writing!

May 

We are nearing the end of our essay writing unit. Kids were given 45 minutes to write an essay with a topic of their choice. This writing will be assessed and graded on report cards. It will take me a couple weeks to grade these!

Kids will then be typing the essay that they have been working so hard on this past month! I hope you read them when they are finished and are as proud of their work as I am!

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This week kids will be writing a conclusion to their essay. We will model this and then kids will have a chance to write their own. Kids will use an essay checklist to make sure they have included all important parts in their writing. They will then write the first copy of their essay at the end of this week. All of our hard work is coming together!

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Kids have finished their first draft of their essays! We will now add personal stories, traditions, an introduction and a conclusion. 
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We have set up folders for kids to organize their essays. This week kids spent time adding evidence and personal stories to explain their reasons and thesis. 

Next week kids will begin drafting their essay!

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We are learning how to add personal stories to make our essays better. I have modeled my personal stories in our "I love ice cream" essay. Kids will then flash draft this same essay, with their own examples and stories. 

We learned how to use prompts to make our writing more detailed. Kids practiced this with a writing of their choice. We are learning how to create 'Seed Ideas' - ideas that may grow into a thesis and essay. We are then learning how to form a good thesis statement. 


Kids have analyzed a free writing piece they wrote for 15 minutes and looked for good qualities in it. We are now learning how to 'Push Our Thinking' to make our free writing and essays even better. We are using prompts to do this. 

We are learning about the elements of good free writing in order to write well detailed essays. We are analyzing others' work as well as student's own work.

In writing, kids used what we learned about the structure of an essay and rewrote the first essay they had written. 
I also taught kids how to use a person they know well as a topic for an essay. We worked on one together and kids will then write their own.

We began our Essay Unit. We will learn how to use evidence and reasons to support our thesis. We did our first essay together - I Love Ice Cream - and then kids had to rewrite this for practice. We will be doing lots of 'flash writing' this unit where kids are writing short essays in 10 minutes. 


We will begin our 2nd unit in writing, Essays. Kids will learn how to use facts to prove a statement. Kids will do a 45 minute assessment before the unit, we will learn strategies on writing essays and kids will have many opportunities to practice in their own writings, and at the very end of the unit, kids will do another 45 minute assessment writing. 



Soon, we will begin our 2nd writing unit and kids will learn how to write an opinion essay. 

Kids turned in completed narratives and they will be scored in 2nd trimester. 

We begin our first social studies unit so check the Social Studies tab for more information!


November 2-13

Kids are currently typing their stories and we are all excited to finally get to share them aloud! We will do a few more mini-lessons and revising and editing to help with the final steps of their narratives.  They have been given a rubric so they know exactly how I will be scoring their papers. I will meet individually to help kids after they have typed their papers.

Kids have to have their papers completed and turned in by the last day of the trimester, Nov. 13th.



October 26-November 13

In writing, we have recently worked on setting, strong beginnings, and strong endings. Thank you for letting kids watch TV to do their homework!

Soon we are ready to type! Kids will type their stories and then we will revise and edit. By November 13th kids will have published narratives to share!


Oct. 19-23

Kids are working on writing a good lead to their story. I have given examples and strategies and they are choosing the one the prefer. This week we will also learn about setting and dialogue.

There will be homework late this week - kids will have to watch TV! They will have specific things to watch for about the setting of the show and this will help them create the setting of their story.

If time this week, we will begin learning about writing powerful endings to stories.


Oct. 12-16

I am so proud of the kids and how far their writings have come! They are currently working on the first draft of their realistic fiction story. I am excited to see what they have come up with! This week, after first drafts are finished, we will learn how authors create strong beginnings and endings. Kids will then begin typing, revising and editing their first story!

Oct. 5-9

Kids are learning how to become the character in their story so they can better write their story realistically. We are now working on drafting after working hard at getting all the pieces of our stories together. Hopefully by the end of the week, we will have some first drafts written!

Sept. 21-25

Kids have learned how to create scenes of a story and are now beginning to put their scenes together to create their first story. I am excited to see what they come up with!


Sept. 14-18

This week kids worked on developing a character that will become back of a story.

We also worked on creating a detailed scene. I read "Fireflies" and showed an example of a scene and also gave an example from my childhood. Kids have now been working on their own scene.

Sept 7-11

This week kids thought of what they wished were different about themselves, life, etc and used those ideas to create ideas for stories. I am excited to see what they create from their ideas!

We also are learning how to create believable characters using internal and external traits. Soon we will put our ideas together to create a story.


Sept. 1-4

We are beginning a brand new writing curriculum this year and I am excited to get started. The first 8-10 week unit is The Arc of Story: Writing Realistic Fiction. I will model writing strategies for kids and then students will be writing on their own. We will all be learning as we go in writing this year!

So far we are learning how to use Small Moments to create stories. I shared many Small Moments of my own and kids will now start creating their own list to use throughout the year.