Expanding Writer's Workshop in First and Second Grade!

After teaching writing to my first graders for 5 years, I have a sad secret to share with you:

I totally underestimated my young students.

Bleck. That pains me to say, but it is true. My first year in a classroom I thought writer's workshop was going to be an absolute trainwreck in 1st grade. I would look at exemplar writing pieces from 1st grade students and thought to myself, "who are these genius little children?!" Clearly I didn't think they really existed... and if they did I thought for sure they wouldn't be found in my room.

I knew writing was an area I needed to work on and build confidence in, so I began to tackle it. Slowly, but surely I took each Common Core writing standard and broke it down in a way that I thought I could handle. I still had my doubts, but my students had NO problem proving me wrong.

I started with personal narratives. We picked our small moments, learned the difference between a watermelon and a seed moment, and used Froggy books to add capital letters, sound effects and more. It was fun and it was eye-opening! My students could do a lot more than I gave them credit for.

Then, in the winter, we researched and published our own all about books. Talk about FUN! My students were gaining more and more independence as they became better writers (and readers).

Come springtime, we would learn how to express our opinions. We had fun respectfully arguing with one another and providing reasons for our opinions. By the end of the year we all felt successful and I could see tremendous growth in their writing!

Now, each of these units took about a month, give or take, so what we were doing the rest of the year?! Prompts! Lots of prompts. Now... there is NOTHING wrong with writing prompts... in fact, we love them in room 102 and still use them from time to time (especially at the beginning of the year to build confidence - see post HERE). However, with all that extra time in the year, I felt like I might be able to push my students a little further through more writer's workshop. So the past two years I have made it a personal goal to expand my writer's workshop!

I took a look at my yearly writing scope and sequence that my team had come up with and decided that room 102 was going to dive in head first and see what happens. Well, the last two years I have been THRILLED with my students' ability to take what they have learned in each writing genre and push it one step further.

My year overall looked like this:
August- September: Gaining confidence and building stamina in Writer's Workshop
October-November: Personal Narratives
December: Seasonal prompts
January-February: All About Books
Early March: How to Unit
March - May: Opinion & Reviews
May- June: Realistic Fiction

We took what we learned from writing personal narratives at the beginning of the year and shifted our focus writing realistic fiction at the end of the year. We took our informative writing and expanded upon it through a writing how-to mini unit. We also took what we knew about writing our opinions and wrote reviews of local restaurants and movies. We dug deeper and I raised the bar in each of the Common Core writing genres and I am so happy I did!

Immediately after we finish our informative, All About Books, we took just a week or two to publish our own "How-to" booklet. Since non-fiction was still fresh in my students' minds, they were able to quickly identify things they knew how to do and teach others:

Since they could do most of this unit independently, I was really able to pull smaller groups to focus on specific skills (punctuation, sentence variation, leads, details, closings, etc). You can read more about what is in my how to unit {here}.

Right after we learn how to express our opinions in the spring, we take it one step further and write reviews! My kids seriously love this and I totally play up the whole "critic" concept.

There must be something to giving your students the ownership and pride to be an expert, or  teacher, or a critic. Let them take that leadership and empower them they will soar, I tell you! To read more about my reviews unit, head {here}.

Lastly, at the end of the year is our "toughest" unit, When we write realistic fiction it is when we bring everything full circle. We take all we have learned the whole year and create our very own story books!

My higher students really push the envelope here and write their own chapter books or series and create their own "boxed set" by decorating a cereal box. I can tell you that before these last 2 years in my classroom, my students NEVER would've written chapter books! And that's on ME, not them.

All of these extended units are available in my writer's workshop bundle {HERE}!

So if you are working towards polishing up your writer's workshop blocks this year, maybe these ideas will work for your kids! Expand their thinking and their writing and I think you will all be impressed with what your students turn out!

Happy writing :)

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Writing Realistic Fiction in 1st and 2nd Grade!

Writing realistic fiction is a genre I hadn't taught before two years ago, but once we hit the ground running with it, I knew it was going to stay for the long run.

My first graders LOVE coming up with their very own character and the problems/solutions their character will face. I find that this is when they really, truly feel like authors.

In my classroom, I teach this unit in the spring (March-April). It is in this unit that my students really draw on everything they have learned so far in their previous writing units. By the time I teach this unit, we have already been through all the other genres of writing so my students have a lot of knowledge they can apply to their realistic fiction pieces.

Many of my higher writers take this opportunity to stretch their learning and publish their own chapter books or series and we turn it into a little box-set by decorating a cereal box. They LOVE this and it is such a fun keepsake!

We use many mentor texts throughout this unit to highlight why authors choose to add certain things to their writing. Here are a few of my favorite mentor texts for this unit:

Like many of my other writer's workshop units, I have laid out this unit as a guide for you to follow with your first or second grade students. The unit includes the following:

Here is a closer look at some of the anchor charts included:

If you think your first or second grade students would enjoy this unit, take a closer look by downloading the preview below:

I also bundled my latest 3 writer's workshop units for a discounted price below! This unit includes the realistic fiction unit, my how-to unit, and writing reviews unit!

Happy writing folks!

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Starting Writer's Workshop in First Grade!

This past week we began our writer's workshop lessons!

I use my writer's workshop units throughout the year, but before we dive into small moments we talk about what Writer's Workshop looks like in our first grade classroom.

This poster is hanging in our classroom and we go through each of these bullet points throughout the first week!

-Lights off: My classroom is lucky enough to have tons of windows and we are able to turn down all the lights and still have plenty of natural sunlight to write with!

-Music on: This one little CD has allowed me to curb talking during writer's workshop more than anything I have tried in the past:

This little CD is one of a six-pack designed to help students stay focused during reading and writing. I had all 6 at my old school but unfortunately had to leave them all there! This was my favorite though, so I bought it again. I play it softly in the background and let the students zone out. If we get louder than the music, we have to turn it off and my kids get really upset! I am always amazing by how into it they are.

-Students at desks: most students sit in their seats during writer's workshop without any problems. However, I always allow students to find a quiet space at a center table or on the floor with a clipboard if they need it!

-Teachers with students: It is important for my kids to know the expectations for the adults too! During writer's workshop we are currently walking around and checking in with students. As time goes on, we will be able to pull small groups and individual students who need extra support.

Voices off/Feet in front/Sitting up straight: All self-explanatory, but we make sure to model, model, model what this looks like!

Brains working: Seems self-explanatory but this one, but this also takes a lot of modeling. I have students come up in the front of the class and show us what it looks like when our brain is working during writer's workshop. It is pretty funny. My kids scrunch of their faces like they are thinking really hard and then they start pretending to write or draw. I always have them show the many ways it looks when our brains are NOT working during that time (heads on desks, slumped down in seats, pencils on floor, etc.)

Neatest handwriting/Colorful illustrations: The neatest handwriting I am not too much of a stickler on at this point in time. It will come to my students as the year goes on and we are beginning Handwriting without Tears next week. The colorful illustrations however - yikes! I don't know what has happened to drawing, but I swear my kids don't know how to color anymore! I spent one whole class period talking about using many different colors from our crayon box and adding more detail to our illustrations! They are getting better though!

Those are the basics in room 102 and if you walked by during our writer's workshop block that is what you would see going on!

As for WHAT we are writing, we start simple. I want to know what my students can do at this point in the year and before we jump into the meat and potatoes of our writing units. I want my students to practice getting into the writing routine and building up some stamina.

We do this using activities from my Write from the Start Unit:

These sentence completion sheets are just one example of many included in the pack. I love them because it lets me see who can complete the prompt in a way that makes sense and it also allows my students to trace the beginning and see what good handwriting should look like before they continue. We completed this one and "Good Friends" (I can be a good friend by...)  on days 1 and 2 of writer's workshop.

Another writing activity we will complete is a picture prompt:

I will give students a sheet with a cartoon image and they are told to write what might be happening in the story. I also include some relevant words at the bottom for my students to reference. This helps get them started and not be held back by spelling and ideas, but instead it lets me see the basics of their writing. It establishes a starting point for each of my students to work from throughout the year!

I also include these activities at my writing center along with some mini-books that students can complete:

Now that my students know the routines and procedures of writer's workshop in our classroom, we will be able to seamlessly dive into small moments and start writing some fabulous personal narratives!

If you want more information about my writer's workshop units, I cover the following in my two bundled units below:
Personal Narratives
Informative Research Projects
Opinion Writing
How-to Writing
Writing Reviews
Realistic Fiction

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Writing Reviews in 1st or 2nd Grade: Opinion Writing Fun!

If you have been following my blog for awhile, you may know that teaching writing is my FAVORITE subject to teach in 1st grade. I have a feeling I would love it in kinder or 2nd grade as well. My students' writing gets longer, more detailed, more persuasive, more informative, more interesting to the reader. I truly love the transformation from our beginning writing in August to the fiction stories with characters, problems, solutions, and more that we write in June.

It inspires me. It really, really does.

My three years in Vegas I had a shorter writing block and a shorter day than I do here in Massachusetts, so naturally I had to make a few tweaks and changes to my writing curriculum. In Vegas, we would spend a trimester each on writing personal narratives, writing informative texts, and then writing opinion papers. I used my Common Core Writing for 1st Grade for most of my core lessons and units and then would supplement with seasonal writing prompts and writing crafts/activities using my Writing Through the Seasons pack. All were Common Core aligned, my students got it, bada-bing, bada-boom.

This year, with 1 hour and 20 minutes to teach writer's workshop each and every day, I needed more. I could have continued to supplement with writing prompts and fun crafts with writing pieces, but I wanted to add more substance to my previous units. I wanted to take it a little further - and I am glad I did! We, of course, still continued to use seasonal writing prompts and even did a few, fun crafts, but my students got a much deeper knowledge of all three common core writing standards this year than ever before.

I am lucky enough to have the full Lucy Calkins writing curriculum at my new school for the first time and I was able to use that to create a pacing guide with my team that worked for our first graders. I also know from past experience, that while I love Lucy... I need a little more. A little more structure and guidance. A few more options. You might feel that Lucy is enough and then you are one, lucky teacher to have her! But me... I needed a bit more.

In the spring, we started teaching opinions. We expressed our opinions, wrote our opinions, and provided numerous reasons for them. We also spent some time writing persuasive letters to our principal and our parents. Most of the lessons and activities came from Lucy mixed with my Let's Write an Opinion unit. After we completed that unit, we started writing reviews. My students became critics on all things around them and learned to express their opinion and give a "star-rating" to all sorts of different things.

We had a blast doing this! It took our opinion writing a bit further and got my students to dig a little deeper. They were able to argue (the polite way) their opinions and were even able to persuade others to change their minds. It was so much fun!

I didn't think to snap that many pictures as we were completing this unit, but here is one of kiddos' paper reviewing the movie, Frozen. He loved it... shocker ;)

This, month long unit, sparked my creativity and I created a detailed opinion writing pack to help you teach your students how to write reviews:

Inside this unit:

- Getting Started: a detailed outline on how I teach the unit
- What is a review? anchor chart
- The parts of a review mini reference posters
- What can we review? anchor chart
- 3 different activities for students to practice reviewing: a toy review, food tasting, and plenty of different review cards
- 2 different 1st grade "exemplar" student samples
- Graphic organizers to map out student thinking
- Writing templates to pick and choose from
- Class book ideas
- Individual and partner editing checklists
- Individual and partner revision checklists
- Writing reviews rubric

A few samples:

A few anchor charts and to help students reference throughout the unit.

Just one of 3 different activities to help students practice reviewing things! There are 3 more sheets of review cards, along with blank ones for you to fill in reviewable items. My kids loved doing these as warm up activities and they can be used for quick writing prompts as well. The other 2 activities are a toy review and a food tasting. I can tell you the students loved all three!

 Some of the "parts of a review" mini reference posters to use throughout the units. I also typed up two different student examples from this year and put them into this unit for reference. They are exemplar pieces, but the students love seeing what they are striving for by the end of this unit.

 Plenty of graphic organizers, paper choices, as well as class book covers to use as you please throughout  this unit.

 Like in all of my writing packs, this one also has editing and revision checklists (individual and partner choices) as well as a rubric at the end to use for assessment purposes!

My kids and I truly loved this little unit and if you like the set up of my other writing packs, I think you will enjoy this as well. Click on the picture above and download the preview to see more of what is offered in the unit. 

As always, Happy Writing!

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Writing Activities for Kindergarten and First Grade - Write from the Start!

New school, new environment, new kids!
With these new kids, comes new challenges and I have to figure out how to make it all work!

One of the challenges this year is writing. I love to teach writing (as you all know) but many of my kids struggle to put their thoughts on paper. We are using Lucy Calkins and I loveeeeee her units. My kids are able to sketch out their stories, but after that, it is difficult for them to actually put the words on their paper without me right next to them coaching them along... and with so many kids in this stage of writing, it is hard to be next to all of them at once!

A few weeks ago I had started creating sentence completions for my kids to complete at writing centers. I thought it would work since my students could trace the beginning part of the sentence and just add one or two more words and illustrate. These also let my higher students add more sentences on their own while I check in with the others.

This is one we completed whole group so my students would know the expectations:

 The other sentence completions have now retired to our writing centers and my kids are doing great on their own!

Another activity I made for my struggling writers is picture descriptions. I used clip art to make some cute illustrations that my students can describe and then color. I added a word bank to the bottom so students could quickly spell the words that are in the illustration. Some of my students just described the picture, while others made up a whole story about the picture.

^^ This little guy is one that often sits and has trouble writing during our writer's workshop... at this center he filled up the whole page.... I made a B-I-G deal about it ;) ^^

Adding to the fun, I created some detailed and organized writing prompts that I am doing with my lower groups. This will help them (and me!) focus on each step of the writing process while we talk through it and help each other:

I started one with my group yesterday about what we do if our teddy bear came alive:

First a little brainstorming...

Then some drawing!

Tomorrow we will start completing our graphic organizers to get the sentence structure of our paragraphs.

I have also noticed that as my "high-flyers" start to write long, detailed stories during writer's workshop, my lower students want to complete their own books as well! While I always have them share their illustrations with the class, I created this simple mini-books to be used during writing centers.

I am excited about these because ALL my students can complete them and feel the success of writing their own short stories. It's been raiiiiinnnyyyyy here in Mass, so I already have the "Rainy Days" mini-book prepped for tomorrow's centers!

All these activities are available in my new pack, Write From the Start! Writing Activities for Kindergarten and 1st Grade.

{Click on the link or cover to check out the preview and see what else is in the pack!}

This will also be on sale for the next 48 hours starting..... NOW!!

Happy Monday :)

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Let's Start Writing!

We are full into the swing of things here in Mrs. Jones' Class!

Yesterday during writing we talked about the rules and expectations of writing and we practiced some sustained writing time in our journals. Today, I wanted to kick things off with a fun lesson!

I saw the book, Rocket Writes a Story, the other day at Target and I had to grab it! It is so cute and inspired me to create a fun, little lesson for my class.

 To prepare, I cut out the word cards and taped them up around the room. I read the story aloud and we talked about how words can inspire us to write all sorts of different stories. Then, I modeled walking around with my collecting sheet and choosing 4 words that inspired me! Next, I modeled writing my own short story using the four words I chose:

“There once was a queenwho had a pet dog, Max. The queen and Max were going on a boattrip. When they were on the boat, it started to rain and the queen found an umbrellato keep her dry.”

I then prompted students to ask more questions about my story to help me add more (just like the owl and teacher from the story).

Example questions:

Where was the queen going? What did Max look like? Did Max get wet in the rain? Was there a storm or just a little rain?, etc.

When I finished my modeled lesson, I passed out the collecting sheets and let students try it themselves!

We have lots to work on, but what else would you expect during the first full week of first grade?! Overall, I am so proud of their hard work and I am using these as their beginning of the year writing assessments. I already can't wait to see their progress as the year continues :)

Since it was such a hit in my classroom, I decided to make it into a freebie for you! Click on the image below to download the lesson for yourself.

Happy writing!

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