If you have been following along with recent blog posts, you know that we have been working on narrative writing. We have been working on creating a good plan, adding details and then using that detailed plan to write a draft. We are producing so much more writing than we were even a week ago! Today my mini lesson revolved around these two words: We learned what these words mean ... Read the Post
Our Writing Expectations!
Today we continued our focus on narrative writing by using our planning sheets from yesterday to dig into writing a quality draft. Before we started, I wanted to continue to raise the level of quality in our writing. As in most classrooms, I have a huge range of writers in my classroom--both in terms of skills and motivation. I have working hard to "paint" a picture of what 4th grade ... Read the Post
Improving our narrative writing…
Today started like any other day . . . kids were a little chatty . . . a parent stopped in to chat before school . . . the sky looked a little dark and ominous but-- I wasn't quite prepared for the storm that suddenly popped up and blew out the power for a fraction of a second--just long enough to wipe out our network. My connection was not reestablished for 4 hours. So . . . it was punting for ... Read the Post
Inside the Writers Notebook
A number of years ago, I discovered a professional book that made a tremendous difference in the way I taught writing. I shared the text with all my other intermediate teacher friends and one by one they all jumped on board and began using many of the strategies included. Buckner is a fourth grade teacher, so her ideas are classroom tested and realistic--isn't that fantastic? This ... Read the Post
I am such a procrastinator!
So . . . instead of lesson planning cleaning report cards exercising or anything else that I SHOULD BE DOING . . . I have been working on these seasonal demand writing prompts that I have had in my mind since the middle of my vacation! I wrote down all the information on the trip and then spent today working on the format. For those of you who have seen my other demand prompts--these ... Read the Post
Literary Essays, Summaries, and Retellings
Hello! The quest to write our first literary essay continued today as we revisited the work we did on Friday about Sistine and Rob. I was still a little miffed about the somewhat simplistic view of Sistine, but I knew I had to proceed. Our goal today? To write an introduction and select our three pieces of evidence to support our thesis statement. What I realized over the ... Read the Post
Literary Essays: Digging Deeper
Hello! I don't know about you--but I can't lie. I am excited to have a four day week and a week off next week! I know not everyone has the same break schedule (or even breaks!) so I promise to not rub in that not only am I off next week, but that I am going to be on a small land mass totally surrounded by water! I have a few blog posts that I hope to write this week, ... Read the Post