ENG writting #2

In my classroom the students will be younger than third grade; we are talking three to eight year olds. I thought that the book had some really great suggestions on how to handle a writing workshop; a lot of the solutions were simple things I can do as a teacher to change the environment. In my mind the best way to have a healthy writing workshop in classrooms with young children is preparation and active involvement. I plan to organize the writing workshop in a specific way so that I can easily asses my students. Many of the ideas that I used to create my lesson plan came from the classroom readings.
The outline for the timing of my writing workshop would be after recess. While the students are coming in from recess I would play wiggle songs- children songs that require the students to move and dance. Once all of the students have really wiggled I would have them sit on the carpet, and have a Why We Wonder? time. After that there would have a short lesson on a grammatical concept, new vocabulary word, or writing concept. Then the students would have time to draw and practice writing. In my mind this would last as long as possible (about 20 to 30 minutes). I would take sections of writing on my own and reviewing their work. Then I start reading a story, and ask the students to come back to the rug with what they had worked on that day by the time the story was finished. Once all of the students have come back to the rug we will have sharing time. I would have two students perform their work- these students would have signed up earlier to perform a finished piece. Then until time was over I would have other students volunteer to share their unfinished work with the class.
This specific lesson plan would relate to how I plan to asses my students. I would formal grade my students on their performance- how they present themselves, their voice, and then they would turn this piece in to be graded by the 6 plus traits of writing. The students would also get points for performing, and they would also get points for sharing- although they would only have to share their work a set amount of times a year. At the beginning of class during the Why We Wonder? would also be graded on a self-grading format for preparation. The work that they do in class would also be graded eventually. By the end of the year they will have to turn in several of their rough drafts that model each of the grammatical concepts we discussed throughout the year. While I am reading the story I would ask the students to participate in reading the story by touching their nose when they hear a golden line- from our reading.
The Why We Wonder? time would be vital to the lesson. This time would be when a student shares something that they learned. I want this to come before the writing workshop because I want the students to simply explore and get ideas before writing. Each student would sign up for a time when they would bring in a show and tell but it would be about science, art, or math. They could bring in an item, photograph, or something and explain it to the class. For example they could bring in a glow in the dark sticker and tell us why the sticker glows in the dark- then tell us what the sticker reminds them of such as a memory or an emotion. This is an important part of the writing workshop, because I want my students to start thinking and learning about the world around them before we start writing. This is how I plan to encourage them to have important things to write about, and to help direct my student’s attention span.
I thought that the Writing Workshop had some really good ideas, and identified a lot of potential problems. One that I thought was interesting was to watch for student’s language. Another one that I found helpful was to let children draw, add words to their picture, let them expand the picture again, and then I add more words to their new drawing. I think that this would be good to help them learn that words symbolize things just as a drawing does. Something that I was not expecting to read about was to have oral readings and talk about performance to help them learn how to become expressive in their writing.