What have we been working on in writing?
October 19, 2021 | Posted in: Class Updates
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Writing is a key part of our daily instruction. My goal is to give the students time to practice their writing skills each day, even if only for a few minutes. Today, we’re wrapping up our first unit, which was about realistic fiction writing. Each writing lesson is broken up into two main parts: We start with a minilesson in which I introduce a skill to the class, and we end writing writing time, during which time I conference with individual or small groups of students. This conferencing time helps me to support students with applying the skills that I introduced in the lessons, and it also allows me to work with them on skills that either I or they feel that we need to tackle. In doing so, everyone gets instruction that’s right for their needs.
In our realistic writing unit, students worked to brainstorm ideas for stories, using their own experiences and interests as inspiration. We worked on how to plan stories and how to decide where they should elaborate and where they can speed ahead in their story. Students worked on developing their characters, learned how to develop a problem throughout a story, and took time to revise and edit their writing. Throughout this unit, we worked together on a shared writing story that allowed me to model certain techniques. (Ask your student about our story about Luz and her sleepover!) They are typing up their stories now, but it’s important to understand that we’re routinely starting and working on different pieces of writing, and we emphasize that writing doesn’t need to lead to a “finished” or published piece in order to be valuable. Today, students are completing an “on-demand prompt”, which serves as a summative assessment for the end of the unit.
Later this week, we will kick off our next unit, in which students will learn how to write personal and persuasive essays about an issue that is important to them.
