Free printable lined handwriting paper to practice writing in kindergarten, first and second grade. Several designs to choose from!
Are your kids learning how to write research papers? Do they find it hard to remember the steps and what is
Today I'm talking about using the 6+1 Traits of Writing. Why do I teach with the Traits? It works perfectly with the B.C. Curriculum. Students get it. It breaks the writing process down into steps we can layer up all year. That means writing doesn't seem like such a large task. And that means, kids will usually write more because they feel a whole lot less overwhelmed. Sounds pretty good to me! Here is the writing board in my classroom. A large portion of it is taken up by my 6 Traits checklist. As the year goes on, and we introduce new pieces, it fills up and serves as a giant criteria list. The blank space to the left is where I add pieces specific to a current focus (figurative language, punctuation, etc.) You don't need to have a board dedicated to the Traits if you teach with the Traits. I do for two reasons: 1) I have the space. 2) It serves a giant checklist students can self assess their writing on that builds through the year as we learn new elements. You'll often hear me say "just because we are working on -----, don't forget all the other pieces we already know". A quick scan of the board and students know exactly what I'm looking for in their writing. (Download that awesome "What do Writers Write?" pencil here!) VOICES? Why does it say "Use your writing VOICES?". Well, VOICES is an acronym for the Traits. V- Voice O- Organization I - Ideas C- Conventions E- Excellent Word Choice S- Sentence Fluency They are now promoting 6+1 Traits and the +1 is Presentation. That didn't make it to my board.... but we do discuss it often. When I was starting out with the Traits, I wasn't sure where to go for resources. Here are some of my favourites to help you out: "Using Picture Books to Teach Writing With the Traits" is an excellent resource. Even though I teach grade 4, I still use it. They give you a scripted lesson plan for every trait as well as several other picture books that fit the trait and how you could use them to inspire writing. I use their examples and then extend on it for my bigger kids. Here are my favourite picture book for for each trait: Voice The story of the 3 Little Pigs told through the Wolf's perspective. Gives students a chance to think about the other side of things, and, it's funny. Organization Or any of the "If you Give a..." books. I love how they are cyclic. You really have to think ahead to write one of these stories. Good cause and effect too. Okay, I picked two for organization. Scaredy books are organized in a different way. I love all the charts and diagrams. Ideas This book is a favourite for many reasons. It is so touching. The boy in this story is searching for the answer to what a memory is. So many beautiful answers are given to him. Conventions This book uses two words. Yo! and Yes? You can talk about how the punctuation helps imply more language than is given. I also like to teach inferring with this book. Excellent Word Choice Max collects words. Although some of his words are basic, he collects some powerful ones as well. The author uses descriptive language throughout this book. Sentence Fluency I like to teach sentence fluency with poetry, because Jack's poems have such a good flow. They just roll off your tongue when you read them. And, they are hilarious. Pin this post. Helping to inspire,
Printable ruled paper can streamline your note-taking, journaling, or assignment work, providing a neat and structured way to capture your thoughts and ideas.
Hello! I’m dropping by to share something I started doing that is saving me tons of time, not to mention paper! I have been teaching for nine years, and something I have always dreaded was stapling rubrics onto my students’ writing. I was wasting so much time and paper copying these things and stapling them ... Read More about Time Saving Writing Templates with Embedded Rubrics!
Printable ruled paper can streamline your note-taking, journaling, or assignment work, providing a neat and structured way to capture your thoughts and ideas.
I may have gone overboard on the photos for this post, but this is one of my favourite art lessons so far. I was inspired by this ...
How to Write Circular Gallifreyan (Doctor Who): Today We are gonna learn how to do the easiest form of Circular Gallifreyan!
Asemic WritingDo you remember when you first heard about asemic writing, and what impelled you to take it up?I have been making asemic works long before there was a name for it since as far back as the 1970's. An…
Our class will be reading a biography about Helen Keller this week (Journeys reading program). I will also be using these books from Scholastic... to have my students research an additional person during the week! I whipped up a little organizer and writing paper for my students to do this... (Click to grab it on TpT!)
Check out this procedure writing freebie. This 'how to' writing worksheet helps students write about how to make popcorn!
Each comic book genre has it’s own unique layout which makes it even more special and fun to read. Famous Styles And Layouts: 1-Regular 2-Suspense,Crime and Action 3-Superhero 4-Graphic Novel…
Use this foldable in an elementary classroom to teach capitalization rules. There are two sizes available. Cut around the entire box, then cut each flap (right to left). Put glue on the bottom-left capitalization rules box, and then glue it down on a piece of paper or in the students' interactive notebooks. Now, in a whole group lesson, under each flap, give examples of each rule. OPTIONAL: Have students highlight each letter written that is a capital letter.
Help the learning process with these simple strategies for making studennt thinking visible. Perfect for middle and high school English classes.
The first week of school generally consists of getting to know one another, in addition to discussion and practice of classroom procedures and routines. We also got our creative juices flowing by creating summer reflection writing pieces, squiggle stories, and "All About Me" mini-posters. Students are getting to know one another and me, and we are learning to work together to build a successful and positive classroom environment. On Wednesday, I wrote out six questions, all having to do with how to make our classroom and ourselves function to the highest level, on six pieces of chart paper. Students, in groups of three, spent two minutes at each chart, collaborating and responding to each question on a sticky note. After all groups visited each chart paper station, I hung all of the charts up and we discussed each answer and noticed some very interesting trends. Here's the finished product, which you can click on to enlarge: Inspired by Life in 4B To tie into the previous activity, I was inspired by my wonderful teammates, Mrs. Fadden and Ms. Mattox, to develop at class pledge with my students. We reviewed our responses to the above questions, and then we put all of the ideas together to form a cohesive paragraph that we have all agreed will help us to remember why we are here at school and what our common goal is. Below is the rough draft of our class pledge (which I will type up, make pretty, and have all of my students sign): Since we were able to develop a class goal (to achieve success in third grade), I also had each student determine an individual goal after reading the story Matthew's Dream by Leo Lionni. I displayed our "Hopes and Dreams" for third grade near the classroom door, so that we can refer to, and revisit, them throughout the year. Lots of students are interested in learning how to sharpen their cursive skills, multiplication and division skills. I was very impressed by the number of students ready to take on our 40 book challenge! More on that later! Here's our class display of our hopes and dreams for third grade: Lastly, I read a book called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? The premise is that everyone carries an invisible bucket everywhere they go. When your bucket is "filled" you feel happy.When your bucket is "empty" you feel sad or upset. People can fill buckets by lending a helping hand, smiling, being kind, including others in games, and more. People can empty buckets by teasing, being ungrateful, acting disrespectfully, and more. I encourage my students to recognize the actions of bucket-fillers by writing them quick note and sticking it in their bucket display. This helps make everyone feel good. When we feel good, we want others to feel good. Therefore, kindess is passed from person to person. This is our bucket-filling display, complete with ways we can fill buckets and ways we can empty buckets: I look forward to more of these types of meaningful activities that promote teamwork, kindness, and achievement with your child!
I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!
Writing thesis statements strikes fear into many students' hearts. I have developed a way of getting from a broad topic to a thesis stat...
Fingerprints are unique to every individual on the planet and serve as one of our most reliable identifiers. The process of fingerprinting can be instrumental in a variety of settings, from teaching the study of forensics to creating a personalized craft idea for kids.
Paper Bag Dramatics: A fun activity for Team Building and Developing Community. Here's an idea that can be used just about anywhere at any time. It encourages groups to solve problems, think creatively, and work as a team.
FREE French verbs minibook: a one-sheet, one-cut foldable minibook to help out your students to master those tricky French verbs conjugations!
With the beginning of the year here, it is time to establish new classroom routines and procedures! One procedure that I wanted my students to 'get down' right away is writing their name on their paper. I have cards on the board with the steps they are supposed to follow, I remind them to write their name a couple of times, and still....I get papers with no name! On the second day of school, I showed my students our 'hand in' box and we went over highlighting our names before we put our work in. So far, so good!! There was a couple of times where a student went to hand in their paper, they grabbed a highlighter, and realized they hadn't written their name! To grab your freebie and read more about my first week of school, click here or on the picture above. Enjoy! and start catching those 'no name' papers!
It's been a while since I've posted a project - it always seems to be that I'll have a couple of weeks where we are "in process", then sudd...
Add a fun twist to your journaling activities with this fun Roll It and Write Dice Game! Such a fun and creative journal idea even for reluctant writers!
Clever ideas for kids' book reports, from mint tins to cereal boxes to a Wanted poster.
The August art session with my little "firsties" was a HUGE success. We created "Wild About 1st Grade" self-portraits. They turned out so dang cute! It was a lot of fun to combine some guided art along with "do your own thing" directions. The bulletin board is adorable. We'll be adding their writing prompt responses to "I'm WILD About 1st Grade Because..." as soon as we finish the edit process. I created a file with the guided art directions, supply list, and writing prompts. Feel free to download this activity file and enjoy it with your little ones. This is a "no fail" activity that make for a super cute parents night bulletin board. Click on the image to download the file I've created prompts for kinder- 3rd grade.
In this article, you'll find eight tips for pretty penmanship. You can also download a free cursive worksheet to improve your handwriting!
