So the writing journey begins...

The start of a new school year is always exciting.  Teachers return with a fresh mindset determined to

change or adjust instruction from last year....and....so the journey begins.  Last year, I focused my Spotlight blog entries in writing after participating at the Invitational Summer Institute sponsored through the Inland Writing Project.

As I implemented many new writing strategies into my classroom instruction, I felt that I needed to dig deeper in certain writing aspects and this is where a new year, a new journey, begins.  This year I will be focusing on explicitly teaching and practicing the 6 Traits of Writing more thoroughly.

The 6 Traits of Writing includes the following: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.  This month I am focusing on ideas.

Last week our class started a narrative story.  I had collected some super cool Writing Traits items like my Scholastic kit: The Trait Crate which includes mentor text to help frontload the six traits along with posters and a reference book.  I also had a Traits of Writing big book which someone had left in our community "grab-n-go" table of our staff lounge...(this was a treasure of a find!).

I explained to the class how writers sometimes struggle with not only coming up with ideas to write about but supporting details in order to expand on those ideas.  So here were two days worth of activities in a nutshell:

1.  Think of your comprehension skill of the week.  Ours was Problem/Solution.  Try to align this skill with a student-produced narrative essay.

2.  Provide students the "problem" of their narrative piece.  I gave my students the sentence "Suddenly, I heard the dark clouds roar like _____ and it began to rain cats and dogs!"  I left the line blank in order to review similes.  Students decide independently to write their own simile.  I also included an idiom as this was the vocabulary strategy of the week in our Wonders reading program.

3.  Students fold their graphic
organizer into six sections and draw borders using a sharpie.  They label the first two boxes "B," the next two "M," and the last two boxes "E."  These will be their beginning, middle, and end sections of their stories.

4.  I then proceeded to ask the class to think about something that may happen in real life that could be ruined by a sudden storm.  They came up with a lot of interesting ideas for their beginning event.  The problem would be the actual rain storm.  On the back of their graphic organizer, they selected their event and then proceeded to think about main characters, supporting characters and any details that they could possibly include in their stories.

5.  Next we proceeded to share these ideas for their stories with partners.  Students

gave each other feedback and encouragement to keep writing.

6.  I then allowed them two draw their panels with as much details as possible.  They could color their panels as well.

7.  They also received post-its and place the post-its on the panels in which they wanted dialogue.  They quickly "scripted" some dialogue on their post-its since this is part of the narrative writing standards for fourth graders.










8.  Now they are ready to write their first draft. After spending two days of sharing ideas, I feel they will have much more to write about during their first draft.

Happy Writing!
Gus Macuil