Worksheet Wednesday -Summer Verbs in Action!

Sitting on the couch watching really bad SyFy movies (Blast Vegas) and scrolling through Bloglovin, I come across a fun little Linky Party happening over at Teaching Tribune.

The theme was Summer so I put together a sheet that will eventually make it into a larger pack on Verbs. This one is using Irregular Verbs and includes some sentence writing at the end. Just for y'all I made it completely FREE! Click on the picture below to download it from my TpT store.

Hope you enjoy it.

Wednesday Writing - PenPal Replies

Whoo wee! You should have seen how excited my kiddos were when I told them our Penpals from New York have written back.

Okay, well, you can see a picture here:

I had paired up with Jessica Ivey and Holly (Fourth Grade Flipper) as part of a project to get my students to write more often.

Jessica was telling me that her class has been asking about the return penpal letters ever since we sent the first batch off. Mine? Not so much. No one really seemed to be thinking about them or wondering at all what was going on up North.

But as soon as they heard what was in the package I was holding, their excitement really shone through. Totally made me smile to hand out these great colorful letters and all the fun gifts that Holly's students sent us. We had only two pouty faces because their penpal hadn't sent them anything extra. But I gave them the old 'Kill em with kindness' speech and they quieted down.

Mine immediately wanted to write back and send their pals gifts. I can't reveal what they are sending because that would just plain spoil the surprise! So be on the lookout Penpals!

We even got some tattoos that were super cool!

Wednesday Writing - Spider vs. Fly

Something a little fun this week from the Writing World of FrynsTown. I completely stole the idea from Jivey, but it was just too fun to pass up. I started out by reading the poem (fable) Spider and the Fly:

The Spider and the Fly

By Mary Howitt 

 

Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly.

Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy,

The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,

And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there.

Oh no, no, said the little Fly, to ask me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair, can ne'er come down again.

I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high

Will you rest upon my little bed? said the Spider to the Fly.

There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,

And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!

Oh no, no, said the little Fly, for I've often heard it said

They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, Dear friend what can I do,

To prove the warm affection I 've always felt for you?

I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice

I'm sure you're very welcome, will you please to take a slice?

Oh no, no, said the little Fly, Kind Sir, that cannot be,

I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!

Sweet creature! said the Spider, you're witty and you're wise,

How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!

I've a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,

If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself.

I thank you, gentle sir, she said, for what you 're pleased to say,

And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day.

The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,

For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again

So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,

And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly.

Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,

Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing,

Your robes are green and purple, there's a crest upon your head

Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!

Alas, alas! How very soon this silly little Fly.

 

Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by

With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,

Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue

Thinking only of her crested head, poor foolish thing!

At last,

Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.

He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,

Within his little parlour, but she ne'er came out again!

And now dear little children, who may this story read,

To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed.

Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye,

And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly. 

 

Then we read an article about how helpful a spider actually is:

http://www.natureofcreation.org/articles/spiders.htm

 

Followed up by whether flies are useful:

http://fohn.net/pictures-of-flies/life-of-the-fly.html

 

I have them take notes on a t-chart to describe how each animal is helpful or harmful. 

 

Finally I give them the choice to write an opinion piece from the point of view of the spider or the fly.  They write up a thought bubble of sorts using the voice of their character and tell the other creature why they should or shouldn't be eaten. They have to use some of the information from the articles to 'prove their point'. 

When they were done I have the more brave of my students read them out loud but using a different voice. Some read like Dracula, some a cowboy, some as a Southern Belle. It gave me a chuckle to hear their arguements. 

Wednesday writing - Thank You Letters

Today was the first meeting of our Photography Club. 20+ faces arrived bright and early at 7 A.M. to join me in my room as we started the year off right! I handed out yellow folders and explained that we would be talking all about Light and Photography, so yellow would help them remember how important light is to taking pictures. They all stared blankly at me, which I sort of expected.

Then I sprang the surprise I've been waiting for since August on them. I showed them the four cameras that we were given from donorschoose.org. I explained how some totally random people, complete strangers to each other and them, donated their hard earned money to help us out with our club. Their little jaws dropped when they heard how much money someone spent on them.

I asked how we could show our appreciation and they immediately wanted to make cards for the donors. I just happened to have some fun photo and film inspired thank you cards waiting to go. They jumped right onto it and managed to complete the cards before our 20 minute class time slot was complete. Yay!

Wednesday Writing - Pen Pals

I know some seriously cool bloggers, but Holly at Fourth Grade Flipper definitely tops the bill. Not only was she the first person to donate to my DonorsChoose project, but now she is helping my class find an authentic audience to write to. I've done some writing of letters with my classes in the past, but we've never had pen pals before. Not until Holly posted on her blog that she was on the lookout for a group to swap letters. I didn't see the blog post first, though. My BBBIRL (Best Blogging Buddy in Real Life) Jivey did. She immediately fired off a response to Holly's request. Holly was looking for 46 students to share letters and with my 26 kids paired with Jessica Ivey's 25 we had more than enough.

This fits so perfectly with my original plan for my group this year. We ask our students to write every day in our classrooms, but often times it's just a response to a book or an informational report. The students don't really see their audience for these daily writings. I wanted to offer them some real authentic people to write to, which would in turn give their writing more purpose. We are currently crafting a letter to our Cafeteria Manager to suggest Meatless Mondays in our school to help combat childhood obesity. I plan on having them write to their favorite authors later this year. But nothing will produce such results as Holly's Pen Pal Project.

Jessica has already written about our pen pals on her blog , so you can read more about it there and see some pictures. It was shipped out on Friday, and now we play the waiting game. I can't wait for our letters to get their first reply.

Wednesday Writing - Peer Editing form

We have been plugging along with our first piece of the year. It seems to be taking a lot longer than usual because we stop every now and then to do an opinion piece, or response to lit, or persuasive piece, or something else to satisfy the requirement to hit all of the genres in one nine week. Not sure if I like this idea, but I digress.

We have made it to the Peer Editing Stage where the students have revised and edited with colored pencils to show their changes. Now they are going to share their story with a partner. I have them swap books so that they can see their writing in a real audience's hands. Then they read each piece aloud so the author can hear their words. This will help them understand that their handwriting and spelling does really make a huge difference. If they know someone else will be looking at, they will try a little harder, right?

Since they only have ten minutes tops to read each other their pieces, I created this sheet to keep them on task. You can get it here.

They can take the sheet back to their seats once the time  is up to finish filling in their thoughts. Once complete, they return it to their partner to glue close to their story's rough draft in their Writer's Notebook. Each can make further changes at this time based on suggestions or questions their Peer Editor had. Then they are ready for the Final Draft.

Wednesday Writing - FABLE-ous Tales

If you remember Monday's post, I was telling you about my co-workers Fable Lesson called Aesop-lutely FABLE-ous. My students were to organize and write their very own fables. I wanted to check back in and let you know how it went!

I think they had some fun with this one. I had a few share their fables and then we had to guess what the moral was. It was interesting to hear some of the tales!

I thought I'd share a few (spelling intact):

From ND
One day there was a fox named billy. He liked to go to partys. When he found out there was a party nearby, he would always lie to his mother and say that he was just going to play outside. But one day he changed his lie. That was a mistake. He said he was going to go to get some berries. When he got back from the party his mom said where are the berries. He said none of them were there. She looked outside and there were thousands of berries there. She said you are in big trouble. Billy decided  to never lie again because the more you lie the more trouble you will be in.

From SG
One after noon an ant was playing with the other ants work. They told him to help But he said No. So finilly thay said that if he did not do the work he would have to always work and not aver get to play. So ant helped and was alowd to play.

From FK
The Fox and the Crane
There was once a crane with a chease in her mouth. A fox came he was hungry when the bird came the fox stared saying nice thing about her he said sing and sing as loude as she can 1 sec later the cheaze fell and the fox gulp it up and ran she was sad she couldn't eat it.

They have some creativity in there, most definitely. Now if only the grammar was up to snuff. Ha!

Wednesday Writing - Play doh models

Scrolling through my daily Bloglovin feed is always rife with inspiration. But what is a wee bit frustrating is the fact that I'll see a great idea, comment on it, and then can't find it again. GAHH!!

I know this idea came from someone's blog that I was reading. She had given her class little tubs of play doh and told them to create something from their Heart Maps (I believe) and then they could write about it in their notebooks.

I liked the sensory idea of building models and then writing off of it. So I commented what a great idea and ran immediately to the local Dollar Store to pick up the 8 pack size of play doh. This means all 26 of my students can get a tub for around $4. Win!

We were doing the whole sensory details lesson with Saturdays and Teacakes on Monday complete with a sensory chart. I had them think of the story we are currently working on and use the play doh to make something or someone from this story. Then to use this visual representation to help generate ideas to fill in their own sensory charts. This way they could use the chart while they are writing and add in great personal details just like Lester Laminack did in his book.

At first I was getting some odd questions from them. "Do you want me to write how the play doh smells?" My response, "Does your character from  your story smell like play doh?" "No." "then don't write about how the play doh smells, but really think of any smells you associate with your character."

I went off on a line of questioning about perfumes, or smoke, or drink coffee. They finally figured out what I was after and were happily writing away soon enough. They wrote about hair color, and clothes, and how they taste their mom's biscuits.

I can't wait to see how this enhances their stories.

Wednesday Writing - Notebook Know How

Aimee Buckner was teaching at a local school when I first met her. Little did I know she would grow up to be an amazing force in the world of Writing Teachers. I mean now she gets to hang out with Ralph Fletcher and Stephanie Harvey (Nonfiction Matters) now. I'm so happy she has done well, but it was never a doubt that she had awesome talents in teaching writing.

One her best resources is the book, Notebook Know-How in which she sets up her strategy for launching the Writer's Notebook with your class. After she gets them started, she goes through ways to help them maintain their personal adventure journals. I am currently working on instituting Daily Pages with my class.

Daily Pages are an assignment for your class to complete a whole page in their writer's notebook. Ms. Buckner suggests that you not limit their creativity by telling them what to write about on these pages. She suggests that you let them pick the topics and run with it. They can write about anything such as song lyrics, a recipe, a rundown of the newest Despicable Me film, or even some more heavier topics such as the death of a pet.

She warns you to be prepared at the beginning for them not to manage a whole page. A lot of them aren't going to know what to write about, or think that they don't have anything to write down. But as they get used to the process, they will start planning on things that they can write about and then there's no stopping them.

Wednesday Writing - Marshfield Dreams

Like everything I do, I always looking for ways to make it better. This year I think I found a great way to make my Favorite Places entry in our Writer's Notebook stellar. Thanks to Ralph Fletcher and his amazing autobiographical Marshfield Dreams.




















Normally what I would do is take the kids on a tour of the school on the third or fourth day armed with a clipboard, paper and a pencil. We stop periodically and they are to sketch the map of our school. Then I send the students home with an assignment to the same thing with their neighborhood.

The next day I have them use colored pencils to make a mark on both the school and home maps with a Heart shape. This is to be there favorite spot on the map. They also mark a smiley face for a happy memory and an X for some place that isn't so happy. Now they've got six different locations that they can write stories about.

This year, I had a staff development where the Literacy Coach pulled out Ralph's book and I knew I had to use. The inside pages included this very detailed drawing of his neighborhood growing up.

So after we took our tour of the school, I sat them down and read the short entry called Jimmy in Marshfield Dreams. It tells the story of the day they find the mudpuppy in the woods. It's a newt with bright red gills, in case you're curious. Then I sent them home with their assignment. 

The student maps were so much more detailed than they've ever been before and I could really see the benefit of having given them a visual to work from before they started.

I can't wait to hear all they stories they have to share.

Wednesday Writing - Heart Maps

One of the lessons I love doing every year as we set up our Writer's Notebooks is The Heart Map. I first heard about this way back in 2001 when my county had its first Summer Writing Institute for teachers. One of the presenters was Georgia Heard. An amazing instructor that had so many great ideas I still use today. Her Heart Map lesson was incredible. I still have the one I made that year and share it with my students every time we set up our notebooks.

The premise is to have them create a launching strategy for their notebooks that they can refer back to throughout the year. The shape that is normally suggested is the heart of course, but I always open it up for the students to pick their own designs. It is all about finding what is important to them, so letting them pick the design allows for their personality and creativity to stand forefront. I've seen students use soccer balls, flowers, and even a safe complete with combination lock. Awesome!

You start in the middle of your design and draw or write those phrases that are most important to you. Around the edges, you can place such things as favorite people, hobbies, books, subjects, etc. It is suggested that you have them color coordinate each section. Then when you need an idea for something to write about, this Heart Map is there for you.

In her book, Awakening the Heart, Ms. Heard includes several questions that you can ask to help students generate ideas for what to put in their designs. Here are a few:

What people have been important to you and why?

What are some experiences or events that you will never forget?

What happy or sad memories do you have?

What secrets do you keep in your heart?

The students enjoy celebrating those things they love to do and decorating to their {Heart's} content. Hope your students feel the same!

Wednesday Writing - Writer's Notebooks

First day of school. After a night of tossing and turning I wake up with butterflies in my stomach. Yes! Even after 23 years, I still get them. I enter my classroom and flick on the lights. It is quiet now but the room has a certain tension this morning. An air of expectation. The pencils are all sharpened, the chairs are all pushed in, and the floor is clean. I take a deep breath and glance at the clock. It's 7:15. I have another 20 minutes before the bell will ring and those eager little bodies will bounce down the bus steps and stream in the front doors. 20 minutes to make sure I have everything in place and go through my mantra, "I may be as prepared as possible, but never prepared enough for reality. I must trust in my ability to handle all things as they come. Today I will make a difference. Today I am a teacher."

I am ready.

We will be setting up our Writer's notebooks this morning. Another composition book to put in their desk. I want thing one to be special to them. So I'll let them decorate to their heart's content and then go home tonight with homework to gather more things to decorate it with. Then tomorrow I will mod podge everyone's covers so they stay perfect. I got the idea from one of the bloggers I follow and I am truly sad that I can't remember who the genius was. If I figure it out, I will definitely update here.

But for today, we are going to fold down the first two pages of our notebook to act as the Table of Contents. In the past I have held off having them write things here. I would save it as a busy work task during the long week before holiday break. But they do it only halfway, or not at all. So I am rethinking this part. I am going to have them get into the routine of updating their table of contents every few days. Next, we'll separate our notebook into four sections. I am going to have them glue ribbons into each section so we can find them throughout the year. Our county is asking that we allow them to write in all four genres this year instead of just concentrating on two. They believe the more exposure they get, the better retention.  And later the more skilled writers we'll produce. Hmm. There will be a ribbon for Personal Experience (Narrative), Information, Persuasive, and Fantasy. We'll really have to think about which genre to put our pieces in. If we are doing some poetry, are you writing about the weather? Then should it go it personal experience (A Day in the Rain), Information (Cloudless Skies), or Fantasy (The Rainmaker)? Fun, right?

This year I am having them put all of their planning and drafting into this notebook. Once they get ready to move it to the final draft, I'll have them use a legal pad. This move into a different paper is going to make them understand the difference between drafting and final copy. We'll talk about the importance of best handwriting and pay attention to correct punctuation. Always a struggle for us. Maybe the move to a different format will turn their brains into a higher gear. I can hope, right?

Writing Wednesday - Writing Conferences

Going through all of my teaching guides (something I should do more often) I came across Carl Anderson's How's It Going? This is definitely one of those books that cemented my teaching style. I love helping students with their writing. Listening to their voice come through and building on their skill set to push them even further is so amazing. Children have unique stories to share and Anderson's book is perfect to help you understand the ideas behind the writing process.

Poking through this book I thought it would be a great idea to develop a product for my TpT store for writing conferences. A writing conference is a once a week meeting with each student about their writing that lasts  maybe 5-7 minutes. The teacher's role in this is two fold. They need to listen to what is driving the student's intentions for that piece on that day. Then they need to pick one point to guide the students in developing their writing ability.

One of the things you need to do with this conferencing is to keep a record of what you talk with each child about. These notes come back into play the next time you meet. They act as a record to see how the child is progressing during the writing block. I have one of the record sheets that I use in my class to show you today.

You can grab this here

In the TpT product I want to include a bunch of different types of record sheets, tips and strategies for the teachers, some posters for your room, and student notebook cards that will remind them what to work on.

Can you think of anything else I might need, or you'd like to see included in this pack? Leave me a comment below and I will be sure to add it to the list. Thanks for your help!

Wednesday Writings - Travel Travails

I am finally home after the weirdest air travel vacation I've ever taken. I'm still trying to get over it all after losing almost two days to it, so I'm turning today's post into a bit of a vent. Bear with me.

It started right from the beginning of the trip. Last Wednesday, I was supposed to board a plane headed to Laguardia and catch a connection to Bangor, Maine then drive another four hours to the most northern city in the contiguous US. Sounds simple right? Mmm-hmm. No.

Driving into the airport you could see a huge black cloud with swirly edges just sitting right over the airport. Lovely. We bit our fingernails until they announced our boarding, hoping we'd get out tonight since we had reservations and such in all the other cities. They let us on the plane after delaying it almost an hour and a half. Then we proceed to sit at the gate for another two hours just waiting for the little storm to pass. It doesn't. Just when I should just take a nap, they come back on the intercom to apologize. Since we've been sitting so long, the pilots had timed out for the day and we would need to deplane for them to decide what to do next.

OY!

We've already missed our Bangor connection (which we discover was cancelled anyway), so we decide to just drive back home and try again in the morning. We rebook everything and eat the $100+ price of the hotel in Bangor for the bright and shiny time of 6 A.M. The alarm should never have to go off at 3:45 in the morning for anything. It was insane.

Without storms to impede us we made it to Bangor without a hitch, got our car and drove to the prettiest spot in Northern Maine to spend a wonderful five days celebrating my sister's reception. It truly was great getting to hang out with my two sisters and various family members for that time. We are all so spread out, it's hard to get us all in one place. My two brothers couldn't make it this time, bit sad about that.

Now that we shared some memories and were ready to head back to reality we drive back to Bangor to sneak a peak at Stephen King's house and drop off the rental car.

Now we're sitting in the tiniest airport I've ever been in,  including Key West, watching them push our departure time further back and back. Apparently there's weather in Laguardia and Atlanta...again. We were at the desk asking about changing flights, but the gal recommended we wait it out as our best option. Just when we think they are getting ready to announce our flight, we see on the CNN channel next to the gate that a plane has just crashed landed without nose gear at Laguardia. Really? Thankfully, no one was hurt.

But our flight was cancelled.

It was 9 P.M. by this time. We thought of just getting in a car and driving to a bigger airport such as Portland or Boston that would have a direct flight to Atlanta. But none of the rental places had any cars. We ended up staying at the hotel we originally supposed to stay at last week. The  next day wasn't being nice either. They were already delaying the 6 A.M. flights from Bangor another four hours. Our flight wasn't until 4. Had breakfast at a HoJo's and then called an offsite rental company to see if they had any cars we could drive one way. Enterprise came through and quoted us a price of $85. We showed up and they realized their mistake of not including the quote for a one way drop off. We got the car for the cheaper day rate. Woot! Score one for positive.

Then we proceed to drive through the biggest storm through the rest of Maine and into New Hampshire. Rain coming down in sheets and battering our little tin can. As we pull into Boston blue skies are back and the sun makes an appearance. We think the worst is over. Sigh. It isn't. That storm followed us down. And now it's sitting right over the airport.

As we watch the storm come through and slowly, ever so slowly, work its way overhead something happens to our plane coming in. The control tower makes them circle above the airport until the thunderstorms have passed. Well, they circle so long they run out of fuel. Lovely! The gate attendant comes on the intercom to announce this saying the plane has been rerouted to Manchester to refuel and then it would be back to pick us up for Atlanta.

Okay, that sounds like it will take a while, so we head to Legal Seafood's Test Kitchen for a much needed lobster roll. Watching the flight announcements on our phone, we notice that the departure time isn't changing. It's still set for 6:15 which is five minutes away. I leave the table to check with one of the attendants and she confirms that the plane is now at the gate and must have been let in instead of going to Manchester. OH BLEEPITY!

The waiter kindly throws all of our stuff in a bag and we race back to the gate on the other side of the terminal where they are boarding our flight. Geesh! We almost missed this thing.

Finally we are in the air and being pampered. Did I mention they upgraded us to first class because of all our troubles? It was nice, with linens and warm hand towels. Too bad we can't do this on our trip to Australia. Home never looked so good after this trip.

Writing Wednesday - FANBOYS

Howdy,

I managed to grab a copy of my work files to start filtering through as the last two weeks of summer winds down. Must be prepared before the kiddos arrive. One of the things in Writing I definitely want to start right away is introducing my class to COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS. I admit, I had to go look this up last year so I understood what they were.

Coordinating Conjunctions are small words that coordinate two separate sentences into one whole. In this sentence below you can see the main clause, + Coordinating Conjunction, main clause.

"I hate to waste a single second of summer, for it is precious and fleeting."

FANBOYS is a mnemonic device to help your students remember the different words that act as coordinating conjunctions. Each of the letters stands for one of the seven words that act as coordinating conjunctions. Here, read it this way

F - for

A - and

N - nor

B - but

O - or

Y - yet

S - so

While sitting on the couch watching Monster House (see yesterday's post) I created this little poster to put up in my classroom.

Please excuse my drawing skills. You can grab it for free here: FANBOYS Poster

Complex and compound sentences are hard enough to understand, so simple things like this will make understanding a little easier for students.

Hope  you can use it!

Writing Wednesday - What Kind of Teacher

It is now exactly three weeks until school begins. Teachers will go back for preplanning on July 31st (yes, it says July) and students come into to 'Meet Your Teacher' Day on August 1. One of the things I am going to grab them with right away has to do with writing. As their parents are filling out paperwork or asking me questions about what to expect during the year, my new class will be adding to 2 wall charts entitled 'What makes a good teacher?' and 'What makes a good student?'

I got this idea from Pinterest and have it pinned to my board  here. The original idea was to ask 'What kind of teacher do you want?' I changed it up a bit to let them give a more rounded response than just a list of adjectives.

As school starts I pull this chart back out and see if we can organize the ideas into categories. From there I can go right into the idea of paragraphing. We can craft a main idea sentence and use their responses as the supporting details. By the end we have a writing piece that establishes expectations for me right away.

I love it!

Wednesday Writings - Mentor Text

TWO LINKY Parties for me in one day! 

I love writing. Words fascinate me, especially how several different people can take a handful of words and put them together is such different ways. Writing is a way to express your soul and connect with others through visual experiences. Writing opens up doors and gives people impressions of you before you even walk in. I love writing.

For this week, I thought I would try up a LINKY party with those Collaboration Cuties. They are compiling a list of great mentor text to use at the beginning of school. Check out their site for a terrific list of books to use when those fresh new faces wander into your room.

My book choice for the sheer fun of it is definitely:

I Wanna Iguana by Karen Orloff and David Catrow is a personal favorite. The letters written between an overeager son trying to convince his mother, and a mother having some serious doubts is wonderful. I think it's the illustrations that really grab me about this fun little nugget. They just so fun and goofy that the kids love looking at the book over and over.

I would use this text to get them started thinking about the Opinion Genre (Persuasive in another life). They have to express and opinion and back it up with proof, just like Alex in the story. He does do a little begging, which is a trap we don't want students falling into when writing this genre. Rather, backing up your ideas with evidence will convince your reader to agree with you. The students would write to me or another student in regards to something they feel strongly about. Then that person has to write back to give the author that sense of communication, just make sure to remind them to be positive with their responses.

If you like this one, you'll love the new edition to the series: I Wanna New Room. Check them out.

For my second Linky of the day (last week, I didn't even know what a Linky was, ha!) I am linking up with Ideas by Jivey for her ideas on setting up a workshop in your classroom. Since my topic today is Writing, I will stick with that.

One of the things I do before the kiddos arrive is to create a Steps to Good Writing board. This is an area in the classroom where the students come up and move a clothespin from each of the steps to show where they are in their writing. This way I can quickly see who is spending too much time in the Drafting stage. Now I've used tons of things for this in the past. I've had separate pieces of paper, plastic plates, one long wall chart, etc for the students to show where they are. None of these has worked perfectly for me. The chart gets ripped, or the clothespins don't stay on the plates and they fall behind my bookshelves (GRRR). If anyone has the perfect method for this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment below!

The Steps I use are Planning, Drafting, Revising, Editing, Peer Editing, Final Draft, Publish. Each has a little reminder about what to do at each step. I am going to try and provide you with what I remember for each of the steps. Since I'm not at school right now, I don't have easy access to my files. So bear with me.

Planning: (15 min)
*Get your ideas down
*Jot down everything you know
*This is not the time for complete sentences

Drafting: (1-2 days)
*Choose one idea from your jots
*Jot everything you know just on this topic
*Choose one main character and two supporting
*Don't worry about spelling
*This is your Rough Draft
*Skip lines

Revising: (1 day) I usually attach a colored pencil to this step so they remember to use one for revising
*Make your verbs stronger
*Add sensory details
*Organize your thoughts
*Look for moments to EXPLODE (give more information to your reader)
*Take away extra ideas

Editing: (1 day) A different colored pencil is attached
*Check all spellings
*Watch your punctuation
*Have you capitalized correctly?
*Does your story make sense?

Peer Editing: (10 mins)
*Read your story outloud to a partner
*Partner is allowed 3 suggestions
*Make changes with colored pencil

Final Drafting: (1 day)
*BEST handwriting
*Don't skip lines
* INDENT

Publish: (1 day)
*Create a cover for your story
*Think about new ideas

Hopefully this helps you out as you get started in your Writer's Workshop!