One of my students seemed to be stuck as she sat in her writing focus spot today. She was supposed to be collecting entries and growing some thinking, but her pencil was barely moving. When I pulled alongside her, I realized that she needed some more structure. Hence, I created some crude graphic organizers to… Continue reading Helping a Student Generate Non-Narrative WN Entries
Category: non-narrative writing
Immersion Begins Tomorrow
I'll begin immersing my students in the literary essay genre tomorrow. I'm fortunate to have had some wonderful students last year who graciously allowed me to share their essays with future students to-come. Hence, I have quite a few literary essays copied, ready-to-go for my students to possibly use as mentor texts tomorrow. I realized… Continue reading Immersion Begins Tomorrow
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Teacher as Writer.
One of the most powerful ways to become a better writing teacher is to write. And one of the most essential things to write is what we expect our students to write. Dina Coverstone is doing just that. Her fifth graders are learning about research and speeches. Their charge is to research a president and… Continue reading Teacher as Writer.
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Drafting a Solar System Book
Tomorrow afternoon in Science Class I'm going to start teaching my kids how to transfer their note cards into details they can use in paragraphs for their Solar System Planet Book. Hence, I needed a model to demonstrate with. Therefore, I spent a bit of time this evening drafting my own report on Planet Earth,… Continue reading Drafting a Solar System Book
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Getting Organized for a “Report” Writing
Th entire fourth grade is going to be doing a report writing within science class (separate from our Writing Workshop). (It's not actually a report since the final form will be an illustrated 10 page non-fiction picture book.) They're also reading nonfiction books about the Solar System in Science Class. Hence, we needed to teach… Continue reading Getting Organized for a “Report” Writing
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reading research.
Today's lesson in the sixth grade class went along the lines of Ways to Be a Good Researcher. I taught: Complete your source sheet only when you know you'll be taking notes from the source. Determine if your subtopics are worthy. Will they offer you the chance to collect several bits of information? Are… Continue reading reading research.
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research mania.
Let's be honest. How many of you out there about lose your mind during the research phase of expository writing? Here in Indiana, it is expected that beginning in 3rd grade, students use the Internet to find facts for their expository writing. Now I'm all for technology . . . and learning to integrate it… Continue reading research mania.
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Narrative Feedback to a Student
Narrative Feedback to a Student Originally uploaded by teachergal When we returned from Winter Recess I had my students complete self-evaluations of their Writer's Notebooks. (They do this in the middle and at the end of the year. This idea was inspired by Aimee Buckner's Book on Writer's Notebooks.) Each and every student receives a… Continue reading Narrative Feedback to a Student
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What if…?
Ruth's post from Thursday got me thinking about how to improve the practice that surrounds the teaching of non-fiction writing. Just how can it get better? What if teachers from across age levels got to together and talked about the expectations across grade levels for what kinds of things kids should know by such-and-such grade?… Continue reading What if…?
