Catawba County Schools Writing Plan

1. Catawba County Schools Writing Plan First Grade

2. Components of the Writing Plan • NCSCOS Objectives • Essential Questions • Activities/Strategies • Resources • Assessment • Rubric • Writing Products • Portfolios

3. First Grade Writing Genres/Products • Personal/Imaginative Narratives • Journal Entries • Informational Paragraph • Friendly Letters • Poems • Cloze Sentences

4. Turn and Talk • Sit knee to knee. • Quickly choose who will go first. • Partner 1 talks. • Partner 2 talks. • Speaker speaks loudly and clearly. • Listener listens with a calm body. • Everyone takes responsibility for their own listening.

5. What must the young writer be able to do when he/she writes? Turn and talk

6. The Writing Process • Prewriting • Drafting • Revising • Editing • Publishing

8. Anatomy of Writer’s Workshop • Connection • Teaching • Active Engagement • Link • Writing • Mid-workshop teaching point • Confer • After the Workshop Share

9. Recommended Curricular Calendar

10. Connection • Links what has been done to what is expected to be learned in the present lesson • May serve as a quick review of previous learning • Explicitly name what will be taught/learned

11. What do you need to know before planning a mini lesson?: • What is easy for the writer to do? • What is hard for the writer to do? • What do you expect the writer to do ? • What do you expect to do for the writer? -Linda Dorn, 2002

12. Teach(Mini-lesson) • Has a Clear Objective - Teaching Point • States the Purpose Explicitly • Teacher Models – Demonstrate • May Provide Guided Practice • Explains and Gives Examples

14. Active Engagement • At the end of the mini-lesson students are given the opportunity to try-out the lesson through sharing with a partner • At times students may watch other students trying something out

15. Link Before sending student off to write independently, restate the teaching point and encourage students to use the skill taught in the mini-lesson in their ongoing work for the day.

16. Writing Time • Students write • Teacher confers with individual students or small groups

17. Personal Narrative

18. Descriptive Writing

19. Report on an Animal

20. Cloze Sentences- Character Sketch

21. Writing in Math

22. (Mid-workshop teaching point) Sometimes you will find it necessary to stop and teach/re-teach a concept/skill during the writing workshop- this will be necessary when you are seeing several children struggling with the same issues

23. Conferring • The teacher may meet with students individually. • The teacher may meet with small groups of students with similar needs • The teacher takes the time to record her compliment and teaching points

24. Conferring The Compliment • The teacher looks for something that the student is trying to use in his/her writing. • The teacher uses specific language to compliment, “I am going to compliment you for….”

25. ConferringTeaching Points • The teacher looks for what the student knows. • The teacher looks for what the student needs to know next • The teacher asks herself what is the most important thing that she can teach this student next? • The teacher must decide how she is going to teach the child Conferences are conversations, not interrogations

26. Sharing • Students return to same place that they were for the mini-lesson. • The teacher may decide to restate the teaching point of the mini-lesson and share examples of student work. • The teacher may decide to introduce a new writing behavior that was observed. • Students are given opportunities to share their work

27. Lesson OneBegin with the Whole “We don’t begin by breaking the process of writing down and asking children to do just one small part of the process. We believe it helps learners to have an image of the whole thing they’ll be trying to do, even though it can feel ambitious to show them the whole thing and say “Get started doing this” -Lucy Calkins, 2005

28. Writer’s Workshop Times • Gather on the carpet (2 minutes) • Mini lesson (7-10 minutes) • Write (25-35 minutes) • Confer (while students write) • Share (3-5 minutes)

29. Lesson OneGather on the carpet • Don’t worry about assigning partners the first day. • Designate an area for students to gather.

30. Lesson OneSet the Purpose for Writer’s Workshop • “We are going to write books like the authors of the books we like to read. • We will write songs like the ones we sing. • We will write letters. • We are all going to be authors.”

31. Why write? List all of the examples writing that people do on a daily basis… • Laws • Emails What else?....

32. Writing is all around us…

33. Lesson One Connection • Explain that every day students will work in a writers workshop and that it will always begin with a meeting. • Share that they will become writers.

34. Lesson One Teaching • Show how you go about choosing a topic you know and care about. • Think aloud. Highlight the kind of thinking that you hope the students will do.

35. Lesson One Sketch • Show how you are thinking about your story. • Make your sketch simple. • Show your whole idea and then separate it into parts.

36. Lesson OneLabel the Sketch • Label the parts that are important to the story. • Expect students to try even if they do not know enough about graphophonics to do as the teacher does.

37. sledding freezing earmuffs toboggan scarf mittens hill snow boots Illustration retrieved from www.jmeacham.com/

38. Lesson OneThe teacher restates what she did in the mini-lesson • A writer thinks in his head about something he enjoyed or was important. • Then he sketches it quickly. • Then he labels the parts of the sketch that are important.

39. Lesson OneActive Engagement • Have students close their eyes. • Have students think of something that they have done recently or something that they do often. • After a moment, have students open their eyes and tell someone sitting next to them what they might write about (Turn and talk).

40. Lesson OneMaking a Link • Let students know that they will be thinking of something they know about or happened • Students can write by sketching and writing

41. Lesson One The Teacher Passes Out Paper • Have paper ready. • Have one sheet and one pencil for each student. • Be prepared with a system to pass out paper quickly.

42. Lesson One Practice • Close your eyes, think of something that you would like to draw and write about. • Turn and talk to someone about your story. • Sketch your story. • Label the important parts.

43. Lesson OneThe teacher confers as students write • Conferring is the heart of teaching writing. • Students will learn to write for longer periods of time as they become more experienced.

44. Lesson One Share • Options for sharing: Author’s Chair Partners Small Groups Author’s Tea (parents) Writing Cafe • Praise and celebrate

45. Lesson OneDemonstrate How to Put Away Writing • Tell students that everyday they will keep their work in a folder. • For the first day, have a place that students can quickly put their folder • Instruct students to come to the carpet.

46. Lesson OneOn the Carpet-Celebrate • Share one or two students’ work. • It may not be necessary to highlight the entire work. Focus on the part that needs to be emulated. • Make the students know that writer’s workshop is special.

47. Turn and Talk • Identify the key points to remember in this lesson. • Why start with the whole lesson first? • What happens in each part of the lesson?

48. The Mini-Lesson, Lesson Two • Focus on what happens in the mini-lesson. “Today, and everyday, we will start the writer’s workshop with a mini-lesson. In a mini-lesson, I will remind you what we have been doing in writing and then I will tell you what we’ll learn today.” -Lucy Calkins, 2005

49. Predictable Charts