Small moments writing for Big impact! Show your students how to use small moments in their writings and watch the magic unfold!
Small moments writing for Big impact! Show your students how to use small moments in their writings and watch the magic unfold!
Small moments writing for Big impact! Show your students how to use small moments in their writings and watch the magic unfold!
Small moments writing for Big impact! Show your students how to use small moments in their writings and watch the magic unfold!
So many great ideas for using the book Crankenstein by Samantha Berger as part of a close reading lesson routine. Awersome Crankenstein activities.
The perfect writing lesson to help grade 3 students learn to find ideas for creative writing time. Help your students answer the question, "What do I write about?" with this narrative writing lesson for third grade.
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
Zoom into small moments to launch your Narrative Writing unit is a hands-on and fun way! Read these tips and ideas for getting littles writing narratives!
I was talking about this book with a colleague the other day. More like singing its praises. It was then that I thought I needed to share this resource with my blog friends. If you teach intermediate grade writers, YOU WANT THIS BOOK! The title of this gem is Razzle Dazzle Writing: Achieving Excellence Through 50 Target Skills by Melissa Forney. I love this book! It is so on-target with the skills it covers and so appropriate for intermediate grade writers. This book is perfect for 3rd grade through middle school. If I don't tell you another thing about it, you should just go buy the book because it is selling on Amazon.com for a very cheap $13.57! Honestly, I would quickly pay at least twice that for this book without blinking. Ms. Forney also has a sister book for the K-2 set called Primary Pizzazz Writing. I haven't seen it in person, but it looks like a winner. The pages of Razzle Dazzle Writing are meant to be copied for your friends and used as a teaching and reference tool. Here is a checklist from the book that notes the 50 skills covered: As you can see, the topic lend themselves to your everyday teaching throughout the year. However, this book is also great for test prep. Ugghhhh! I hate to even utter those words, but they are a fact of life for us these days. Let me be clear though that Ms. Forney is very clear in the book that it's not all about the writing prompt. She does state that our friends need to know the difference between prompted writing and free writing. I also believe this. As much as we would like our friends to embrace writing and freely write as they are inspired, the reality is when the state test comes they are going to be directed via a prompt to do a very specific type of writing. I used the mini lessons in this book to create an anchor chart on understanding the different types of prompts: And, here is another chart I created using one of Melissa Forney's lessons on using a "writing glove" to help your friends properly address narrative prompts. Sigh! Just noticed that I spelled dilemma incorrectly on the chart. Will be fixing that in class ASAP. Sorry about that! Ms. Forney has great ideas for this mini lesson. The book even includes reproducible gloves for your friends to cut out and put on a stick. The creation of these two anchor charts is directly inspired, if not copied, right from Razzle Dazzle Writing. I tweaked a bit for my friends, but the book is so well put together you can essentially photocopy what you need and do your lesson with minimal prep. Razzle Dazzle Writing includes tons of pages you can copy for your friends to keep as reference, there are also poems and reader's theater scripts that are included to reinforce many of the lessons. The poems are fun and easily understandable for your friends. The reader's theater scripts get right to the point in a fun way , yet they are short enough to be done as part of a mini lesson. I have yet to find anything in this book that isn't a perfect fit for my friends. Melissa Forney has an incredible web site where you can learn more about her books and philosophy. Click HERE to be taken to Forney Educational, Inc. There are also free downloads available on the site. THIS PDF DOWNLOAD is for a booklet titled Young Writer's Survival Guide. It is an excellent resource for your friends. Many of the topics in this guide are topics covered in more depth as different mini lessons in Razzle Dazzle Writing. That PDF alone should convince you to buy the book! So, have I gushed enough? I hope so! This is not a paid endorsement. This is a post on a book that I find myself going back to again and again and think you will, too. If you know this book, please share your thoughts. If you end up getting this book, let us know how you like it. On a totally different topic, every time I think of the name of this book, it makes me think of this scene from the movie Stripes with Bill Murray. I know, totally dating myself yet again! Also, don't forget to enter my giveaway to win a copy of Testing Miss Malarkey and assorted other goodies!
Small moments writing for Big impact! Show your students how to use small moments in their writings and watch the magic unfold!
We’ve been working hard on writing personal narratives. It’s hard business. Of all the writing genres we teach in second grade (narrative, informational, and opinion), I think personal narratives are the hardest to teach, and the hardest for students to write. While personal narratives are challenging to teach, they’re also one of my favorites because ... Read more
Are your students writing stories that are blah? Show them how to build suspense and climax in their narrative writing stories! This post will review plot, show an effective mentor text, and give ideas and activities for building suspense and climax! These ideas are ideal for any writing curriculum
Something amazing happened this year… somewhere between learning how to do multiplication and our weekly close reading sessions… My class became writers. You heard me right… WRITERS! For realsies, folks. Every time I turn around, my kiddos have notebook paper on their desks and they are writing. They’re writing stories, poems, chapter books, information booklets. […]
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
Writing Writing can be tricky, but not if you have these writing ideas and resources! Tons of 2nd grade writing, 2nd grade expository, 2nd grade persuasive, 2nd grade narrative writing ideas and lessons. Includes links to more resources and free writing activity downloads. Hi, I’m Leigh. The Applicious Teacher is all about creating hands-on and […]
Small moments writing for Big impact! Show your students how to use small moments in their writings and watch the magic unfold!
Got a talkative class? Check out these 5 ways to quiet the chatter!
We are knee-deep in our 5th grade historical fiction unit right now. This is always a favorite each year. We've blogged about our various HF adventures HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. In 5th grade, kids have already completed a HF unit when they were with us in 4th grade. During that time, they all read the SAME book. This year, to take them a little deeper, the kids main focus is studying the ERA they selected. Due to this, kids are all reading DIFFERENT books that are within the same era as their book club members. Our students also had to select a different era this year from the one they studied last year in our space. Eras we focused on this year: Colonial America, Revolutionary War, Westward Expansion, Civil War, WW2, and Civil Rights. Our favorite part of this, is that kids of all levels are in book clubs together, really creating fantastic discourse tied to era understanding and how their book fit together. A huge part of any historical fiction unit is nonfiction understanding of the era they are studying. We spent the first week+ immersing ourselves in nonfiction materials tied to our era. Kids shared ideas with each other and created a group timeline outlining important events from their era. As we have been working through our books and discussions, they started to bring up and share where their books fit into these non-fiction timelines. Last year, we made "double timelines", which were fun, but only one book could fit in that framework. This year, our amazing student teacher, Megan Leverence (she's looking for a job, people...anyone hiring?? :) found a great blog post. You can read it HERE. She took the idea and changed it up a little bit, and found a way to connect it to the timelines the kids created. Rather than write up "reviews," like the blog suggested, she had the kids create "book timelines" of the books they had been reading. She had them find 5-10 important events in their books (no spoilers allowed), and create a timeline "flipbook." Once the kids created their "flipbook timelines", they placed their books on the nonfiction timelines. This created a fantastic visual of where all of the books we were reading fit across history. We utilized a huge bulletin board in our hall to hang all the timelines and books on. It's been a great discussion and visual tool for all of our kiddos. How have you taught HF units? How do you bring in nonfiction? We'd love to learn with you! Happy Teaching, Angela
Today was the first day that we did our Daily 5 stations in class and I am so pleased with how it went! I am currently using 5 stations (rea...
In order to compose a clear and concise paper, a writer greatly benefits by jump-starting their process with questions! By asking themselves some questions about the intent and purpose of the paper the writer can correctly choose an appropriate writing style for their piece. Here’s a short list of
See 10 great mentor texts for creative narrative writing. Teach students the writing process and elements of creative narrative using these mentor texts.
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
On theBlog 2ND GRADE CLASSROOM MATH READING WRITING
One of the biggest questions I get about my Interactive Anchor Charts is whether or not they’re appropriate for kindergarten. I’ve always answered that question with a solid “teacher’s know their students best”. Why? Because I didn’t know better. I hadn’t actually seen or used Interactive Anchor Charts in kindergarten to verify. But now? Now I […]
Got a talkative class? Check out these 5 ways to quiet the chatter!
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
There's a lot of ground to cover when you teach creative narrative writing. Here are 5 creative narrative mini-lessons you should be sure to use!
The biggest gap between a student's attempt at writing a personal narrative and a fictional narrative is a really strong character. ...
We’ve been busy working on my Personal Narratives: Interactive Notebook Resources and Minilessons unit, and if I am being totally and brutally honest, it has been taking longer than I anticipated. Not because of the unit itself. It was designed to be fluid. Each lesson can be done in a day (within 30-40 minutes), or …
Small moments writing for Big impact! Show your students how to use small moments in their writings and watch the magic unfold!
I love making anchor charts, but they take so much time and worse! They don't engage the students.I love idea of making interactive anchor charts.
My new obsession this year has been making and using anchor charts for my lessons. Here are just some of the anchor charts I have made this year. Some of these charts are original ideas but many are ideas I have seen and used from other teachers. I am not good at drawing so I use clipart from my computer to add pictures to my anchor charts. I print them out and glue them onto the chart! It’s so much easier and looks so much better than what I could draw! I also laminate my anchor charts so I can use them year to year. By laminating the charts I can easily write and erase on them by using an Expo marker. Click HERE to download the worksheet writing templates for opinion writing, informative writing, step writing, personal narrative writing, fictional narrative writing, and postcard writing that match these anchor charts from my TpT store! Click HERE to download the files needed to make the Sequence of Events and Transitional Word Examples anchor charts from my TpT store! Click HERE to download the file needed to make the Fiction/Non-Fiction Sort anchor chart from my TpT store! Click HERE to download the words I used on these anchor charts on my TpT store!
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
Hello! It's Hannah from The Classroom Key. Today I've got a kid-friendly rubric for evaluating personal narrative writing. This rubric breaks personal narrative writing down into four components for your students to focus on. I've used this rubric a few different ways. I like to have kids critique writing samples using this rubric so they know what they're shooting for when they do their own writing. I also use it for students to evaluate their own work and for me to evaluate their work as well. Parents appreciate it when they see rubrics like this with their child's work because they can fully understand why their child did or didn't receive full points. When grading is subjective like it is with writing, it's nice to be able to give some explanation for the grade you have given. I hope you find it useful!
Do you have a favorite book series? I do! Mr. Putter and Tabby Series just purrs right into my heart. Read about some fun activities for this book!
Since coming to 1st grade, I’ve adopted a Daily 5 style to our Reading Block. I have shared dozens of posts about how Daily 5 works in our classroom (click here to read more) but I’ve n…
Teaching writing DOESN'T have to be complicated! With these simple strategies, you can improve students' writing without having to work so hard.
