Thursday, August 29, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Teacher Lesson Plans and examples of pages are coming soon.
This book, is meant to be used by all ages approximately 3rd grade up to adults. I have designed it to use with my writing groups and in my classroom. As we get the blog formatted we will be adding the page examples and lesson plans for each exercise. I hope that this will help teachers, and writers alike. If you are using this book, please share how and anything that is working or not working for you. This first workbook is only a part of the writing series I am creating. There will eventually be thirteen books in the series. Twelve will be for different writing genres and one will be on illustration. If I have something wrong, share before I make the same mistake again. If you like what I am doing- please let me and others know.
Writers: This book should be worked on regularly, but doesn't have to be completed in any specific order-unless the exercise refers to the exercise right before it. If you aren't understanding a direction check the two pages before it otherwise have fun skipping around. I will be posting examples as the school year starts and would love for you to add to them.
Teachers: this book is set to the core standards for writing. Blank pages- memoirs is the first in the series because generally a classroom focuses on writing non fiction memoirs first. The next book to come out will be poetry.
Each "day" is set up with three pages of choices. Students should not be forced to do them all, but should choose a few activities. I insist on some and let them have total flexibility about others. Every time they write it is a formative assessment for me. While I don't critique spelling and editing as they do the activities, I can easily tell if they are making the same mistakes over and over again and do a quick mini lesson on the error. I can then remind students of the lesson the next day when we write in our journals and remind them to concentrate on trying to not make that one error in this exercise. Please don't have students editing and correcting each exercise as they are writing. There are places for that at the end. The process of writing should be fun, not bogged down because some of us can't spell. That is why we have editors. While we want students to learn to spell and edit their work, we also don't want to miss the big stories that students are anxious to tell us. Please save the editing for after you have captured the story.And whenever possible, let students take a few minutes at the end of an exercise to share what they have written. If you only have a few minutes let them choose their favorite sentence and share that. Writing is all about being the center of attention.
Writers: This book should be worked on regularly, but doesn't have to be completed in any specific order-unless the exercise refers to the exercise right before it. If you aren't understanding a direction check the two pages before it otherwise have fun skipping around. I will be posting examples as the school year starts and would love for you to add to them.
Teachers: this book is set to the core standards for writing. Blank pages- memoirs is the first in the series because generally a classroom focuses on writing non fiction memoirs first. The next book to come out will be poetry.
Each "day" is set up with three pages of choices. Students should not be forced to do them all, but should choose a few activities. I insist on some and let them have total flexibility about others. Every time they write it is a formative assessment for me. While I don't critique spelling and editing as they do the activities, I can easily tell if they are making the same mistakes over and over again and do a quick mini lesson on the error. I can then remind students of the lesson the next day when we write in our journals and remind them to concentrate on trying to not make that one error in this exercise. Please don't have students editing and correcting each exercise as they are writing. There are places for that at the end. The process of writing should be fun, not bogged down because some of us can't spell. That is why we have editors. While we want students to learn to spell and edit their work, we also don't want to miss the big stories that students are anxious to tell us. Please save the editing for after you have captured the story.And whenever possible, let students take a few minutes at the end of an exercise to share what they have written. If you only have a few minutes let them choose their favorite sentence and share that. Writing is all about being the center of attention.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)