Yearbook of Writing
Developing Writing Skills (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 1: Beginning LiteracyStage 2: Consolidation / Fluency
Stage 3: Literacy for Growth
Ages:
5-12
Grade Range:
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6thFood Groups:
Primary: Writing Processes & Strategies
Transcript
At the beginning of every month the students are asked to write a summary about that month. What we do is we meet at the carpet, at the gathering place, and we brainstorm everything we can think of that's happened at school, what we've liked, what we've learned, something that may be a new topic of interest for them. And, after the brainstorming session, we meet with our talking partners, discuss what we're about to write, what we're going to write, and what the most important part of that month was for us. So then the students are asked to go and write about that. Depending on grade level, the expectation is, write successful sentences, or for the older students write successful paragraphs, recognizing big idea and sentence structure, and then a corresponding illustration. And what happens at the end of the year is we have part of a yearbook for them, their writing samples from September till June. And what's fun throughout the year, or throughout the process is when they file their current selection into their file folder they'll go back to previous months, and at that time they have an opportunity to review ideas and memories and things, but also a really good opportunity to recognize what they've improved on, and what in fact they can continue to improve on the next month. It's sort of a "look how far we come".
Activity Objective
The goal of Yearbook of Writing: Developing Writing Skills (Virtual Tour) is to encourage students to write for different purposes and to monitor their growth as writers throughout the school year.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- Collect writing samples from September to June to create a yearbook of writing.
- After brainstorming ideas as a whole class, have students meet with their "talking partners" to discuss topics. Inviting students to share their ideas in pairs ensures student participation.
- Conduct mini lessons on paragraph writing, generating ideas and sentence fluency. Modeling how to write sentences and paragraphs helps students to understand the process of writing.
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Read to Someone: A Component Of The Daily Five
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Running Records: Assessing and Improving Students' Reading Fluency and Comprehension
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Estimation Station: Developing Critical Thinking Skills (Virtual Tour)
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The Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in Second Grade (Virtual Tour)
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CAFÉ: Engaging Second Grade Students in Assessment and Instruction (Virtual Tour)
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