Engaging, fun ways to teach your students summarizing skills. Strengthen their reading skills and provide practice with this challenging concept.
Analyzing writing curriculums, planning writing workshop and teaching writing lessons can be overwhelming. You might think, how am I going to fit everything in and produce successful writers? Where do I start? What skills do they need? This post will share the 7 BASIC WRITING LESSONS that every teacher should teach! With this basic knowledge, students will be able to perform other writing assignments more effectively. The following skills are not only effective in upper elementary, they are often needed at the middle school level for review or the primary level for differentiation. So yes, every teacher should teach them! If you start with these 7 fundamental skills, it will set the expectations for your writing lessons and assignments throughout the year! Frequently Asked Questions What are the basic skills and what order should I teach them? Sentence Structure 1. Complete Sentences Lesson for complete sentences 2. Fragments Lesson for fragments 3. Run-ons Lesson for run-ons Paragraph Writing 4. Topic Sentences Lesson for topic sentences 5. Relevant Details Lesson for relevant details 6. Transition Words Lesson for transition words 7. Closing Sentences Lesson for closing sentences How much time should I dedicate to teaching these fundamental skills? I recommend one day for each skill. If you spend a whole writing block for each skill, students will benefit from the practice. How do I teach each skill? First: Start with an anchor chart explaining the skill. (See each lesson link above for effective anchor charts.) Second: Provide examples. Students can share examples too! Next: Students should take notes. I love using Interactive Writing Notebooks to take notes. Research supports the use of interactive notebooks through studies on multiple intelligences, the brain and note taking. Here are a few videos to Set Up Interactive Writing Notebooks. Click photo for the Upper Elementary Version. A Primary Version is also available. Then: Identify the skill. Provide practice sheets and task cards for students to practice identifying the skill in sentences and paragraphs. Last: Apply the skill. Students should have the opportunity to write their own sentence or paragraph to apply the particular skill. What if I can't fit the lesson in one writing block? If you can't extend the days to complete them, there are other ways to get the whole lesson in. You can put practice sheets or task cards in a center, or you can have students apply the skill for homework or morning work the next day. What if my students, some of my students, or absent students can't do interactive notebooks? Make a small anchor chart to put in their notebooks with the same information! If you don't have a printable poster, take a picture of the anchor chart you used in class and print them off! I hope you found this post helpful and your students become successful writers this year! Connect With Me! TPT Store Facebook Pinterest My Blog
When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult
I receive a lot of questions about how I run my literacy block. At my school, our schedule is blocked out, but I have freedom to arrange my own blocks (if that makes sense). So my literacy block is 9:40 – 11:15, and this is what I’ve decided to do with it: We start right ... Read More about My Literacy Block
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Launching writing workshop or even just setting up your writing block can feel overwhelming, but with the help of these anchor charts, you’ll feel confident and prepared to set your students up for writing success this year. These writing workshop anchor charts and posters are perfect for back to school and will help your students remember all the important writing habits and behaviors they should practice this year. This set of anchor charts will be your teacher bestie when it comes to launching writing workshop and setting up your writing block. These posters describe and explain key writing habits and behaviors you want your students to embrace. From building the writing process, to collecting ideas, to independent writing to peer review, these anchor charts will help you teach all these key back-to-school writing lessons. With the help of these posters, students will understand exactly what they need to do to become successful writers in your class this year. And let’s be honest… back to school can be a stressful and busy season for teachers. Having this set of ready-to-print anchor charts will take the guesswork out of your first few weeks of writing lessons. You’ll be able to print out the anchor chart you need for your lesson each day and will be set for the first three weeks of school! HERE’S WHAT YOU GET: In this resource, you’ll get 20 anchor charts to help you launch writing workshop. The posters are formatted in the following ways: Half-page anchor charts - perfect for students journals Full page anchor charts - works great for whole group lessons Digital version - created using Google Slides FIll-in version - available for both the half-page and full-page versions and are great if you want your students to take notes during the lesson LOVED BY BOTH TEACHERS AND STUDENTS: Your students will love having access to these anchor charts during the year. They won’t feel the pressure to remember all the different parts of the writing workshop because they know they can look back in their journals anytime they need a reminder. You’ll love these anchor charts because they have easy-to-read font and are written with clear and concise language. Your students will understand the objective of each lesson with these anchor charts. So many upper elementary teachers love these anchor charts because they aren’t cluttered with excess clipart or fonts that are too “cutesy”. And, you have options. You can choose to print them in half pages for students to glue in their journals… or you can share them with your students in Google Classroom… or you can give students the fill-in version so they can take notes during your lessons. You can pick the version that will work for you and your students. Prep is quick and easy... Just print the anchor chart option you want to use before your writing lesson and you’re ready to go. ANCHOR CHART TITLES INCLUDE: All About Writer's Workshop Collecting Ideas Conferring Habits of a Strong Writer Independent Writing Looks Like/Sounds Like Peer Review Revise vs. Edit Sharing Our Writing Show Not Tell Story Telling Strong Listeners Student and Teacher Roles During Writing Workshop Think I'm Done, Now What? Using Mentor Texts What do Writers Writer? Why Writers Write Writer's Notebook Writing For Your Audience Writing Process HOW TO USE THESE CHARTS IN YOUR CLASSROOM: Use them at the start of the school year to help launch Writing Workshop. Use them throughout the year to review key writing habits and behaviors. Use as a model for your whole group lessons. Give students a copy to glue in their journals. Send home a copy to parents to keep them informed. Include a copy with your lesson plans to show your administrators what you’re teaching. Put posters on a ring or in a binder as a reference for small groups or workstations. TEACHERS LIKE YOU SAID: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “My students loved using these as a resource during our writers workshop. They helped students stay focused on the lesson.” - Sarah H. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "This was a very helpful resource in distance learning, but I also think it is going to be equally as helpful in-person. These are helpful to have on hand digitally and can easily be printed out. Thank you for a wonderful, helpful way to make learning more accessible in these trying times. :)” - Jaclyn Parolin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Writers' Workshop is a great method of laying out your writing, and these posters really supported a clear structure to the system. Thank you!” - Jeanine F. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “These writing workshop anchor charts provided so much visual support to my 2nd graders! I was so thankful to have purchased such a resource that I have and will refer to throughout the year!” - Haley W. _______________________________________ ⭐️ BUNDLE & SAVE FOR A DISCOUNT⭐️ Purchase the Reading & Writing Workshop Bundle to get this set of posters plus 30 Reading Workshop Anchor Charts to help you launch both reading and writing workshops. I THINK YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: → Writing Tools and Resource Bundle → Show Not Tell Mini Charts → 20 Writing Graphic Organizers ________________________________ Copyright © The Stellar Teacher Co. LLC www.stellarteacher.com Permission to copy for single classroom use only. Please purchase additional licenses if you intend to share this product.
A collaborative blog where two friends share great ideas, activities, and resources about teaching, coaching, and tutoring in the primary grades!
How to writing is one of my favorite writing units to teach. My students just get it and they enjoy writing many, many pieces! Maybe it’s because my students think they know how to do everyyyytthiinngggg. 😉 If your students are like mine, let them run with the idea that they know it ALL and have […]
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Teacher Truth- I used to despise teaching Writer's Workshop. I understood the structure of the workshop model and the focus of each grading period, however, I didn't really know WHAT to teach each day during my mini-lessons. Fast forward a couple of years, and I had an amazing opportunity to visit an amazing teacher's classroom and observe her in action and I fell in love with her writing instruction! And then the next year, my amazing team and I decided to each tackle one subject and share our plans. I chose writing (even though it still wasn't my favorite) so I could spend more time learning about teaching writing and *hopefully* fall in love. It worked! Now that I LOVE writing, I wanted to share what I currently do to launch Writer's Workshop! I've taken pieces from what I love from different resources to make what works for me and my students. This post is a little peek into my mini-lessons, anchor charts, and mentor texts that I love! I posted them in the order that I usually teach each lesson, however you can change them around to make it work for you and your group of writers! For each lesson I shared an example of an anchor chart! In my classroom, I always prepped the anchor charts with the title and an image first, but added the content WITH my students during the mini-lesson! The books that I have posted are linked to my Amazon affiliate store. If you purchase them through the link, I will receive a small commission! This might just be one of the most important lessons to launch Writer's Workshop because it explains exactly what it is and what students can expect from their teacher and their own expectations. This is always the very first lesson that I teach when beginning Writer's Workshop and I love using the pie chart as a great visual! I begin this mini lesson using the book Arthur Writes a Story to get my little writers thinking about writing! After we complete the large anchor chart together, my students completed their own mini-anchor chart to glue in their writer's notebooks! I love using these mini-anchor charts because my students can reference them at anytime, even if the large anchor chart is not visible in our classroom anymore! After this lesson, I continue to follow this model for our writing instruction each and everyday! The independent writing time is always the most important and longest part of our writing time! For the next mini-lesson, we discuss WHAT writers actually write! Some groups do a great job at brainstorming different types of writing, while others need a little push! This would be a great mini-lesson to bring out different types of writing to show your little writers! Think cookbooks, Christmas cards, printed e-mails, grocery lists, newspapers, magazines, etc. You can put all these items in a basket to have your writers explore independently, or pull them out while you are making your list as a class! After creating a list as a class, students can either create their own list OR they can simply glue in a similar list into their writer's notebooks or folders! This is another important mini-lesson! It really allows your little writers to think about WHY writers write and why they should write! I love using the book Author A True Story by Helen Lester because it is a story from an author's point of view and allows writers to hear why an actual author chose to write! In my experience, sometimes writers have a difficult time determining WHY they write and might need some guidance to brainstorm ideas for the anchor chart! This particular mini-lesson sets up your expectations for HOW students behave during Writer's Workshop. Using the book Ralph Tells a Story, you can show students what not to do during writing time. This really allows them to brainstorm ideas of what they should be doing during writing! I always teach this lesson right after the {What Good Writers Do} lesson because it always focuses on writing behaviors. For this particular lesson, I reference back to Ralph Tells a Story to help my writers determine what writing should look like, sound like, and feel like in our classroom! For this mini-lesson, I always ask my writers what our classroom would look like, sound like, and feel like if one of our administrators walked into our classroom during writing time. Depending on your class and group of writers, you could complete this in one lesson or split it up into three different lessons! This particular mini-lesson discusses the tools that writers need in order to write. I'm going to be honest, if I'm struggling with time this is probably the first lesson that I would cut out because you could also discuss it in the What Good Writers Do mini-lesson. But, this is a good lesson to go over all the tools that your students can use in your classroom and your expectations for using them. Writing journals or folders? Pencils, erasers, pens for editing? Extra graphic organizers, writing pages? Writing prompts? Word wall or personal dictionaries? There are TONS of writing tools for the writers in your classroom! It's really important to talk about your expectations and even discuss with your writers how they should set up their writing journal or folder! It's common for little writers to not able to keep their belongings organized, so this is a great lesson to really focus on that! Using the book The Day the Crayons Quit is a fun book to use for this lesson because you talk about what would happen if you didn't have access to certain writing tools! "Mrs. Dills, I'm done!" If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that statement, I would probably own my own island! I don't know what it is, but at the beginnin writers always think they are completely finished as soon as they finish with one writing piece! This anchor chart stays up in my classroom for a very long time and I reference it A LOT! This book is a great story to read for this mini-lesson because they are SUPER short stories and allows you to discuss how writers could add lots of details to complete their story!. Then, you could discuss what else writers could do when they think they are done! Because of course, they've really just begun! In my first and second grade classroom, it was very common for my writers to freeze when they couldn't spell a word correctly- especially at the beginning of the year! Some would ask how to spell the word and some would just sit there and not write anything else! This mini-lesson really focuses on stretching out their words the best that they can instead of focusing on spelling the word perfectly. For this mini-lesson, I don't read a mentor text but instead I really focus on modeling how to stretch out words by listening for each sound and then writing them down. I go over each step with the students and then model writing my own story using this strategy. There are times that my writers still have a difficult time stretching out words for their writing, so during this lesson I also give them a personal dictionary. I didn't have a word wall in my classroom, but instead each of my students received a personal dictionary to keep in their desks. I like printing this 2 pages to a sheet and allowing them to keep it in a pocket in the back of their writing journals or folder! And FINALLY, it's time to really dig into story writing! I absolutely LOVE hearing from my little story tellers and I really look forward to teaching them HOW to write a story! This can definitely be broken into multiple days if you want to focus on modeling each step! However, it can easily be taught in one lesson! A Squiggly Story is such a fun little book about a little boy that is learning how to express himself, just like your writers as they learn how to write a story! This is another important anchor chart that I refer back to a lot during my writing instruction. A lot of times writers want to skip right to the writing part, but it's important for them to realize that there is a process! This is a great introductory lesson to the writing process for your little learners! I model this a lot in my classroom! This lesson really focuses on allowing students to come up with their own ideas for writing. I teach this after the {How to Write a Story} lesson because then I can really focus in on the first point, which is thinking of an idea! I like to reference the book Ralph Tells a Story again because the character in that book really struggled with thinking of an idea to write. The character in The Best Story has a similar problem, but she figures out that she should write from her heart! After reading the book, we talk about what is in our heart. Then, we talk about maps and their purpose. It would be really great to show students a picture of an actual map during this lesson! Then, I begin creating my own heart map and have students create their heart maps to keep in their writing journals to use throughout the year! Oh my goodness! I always, always, always have writers that get stuck or frozen and just don't know what to do! Stuck is the cutest book about a little boy whose kite gets stuck in a tree and he is determined to get it out! For this mini-lesson, I really like having my students brainstorm ideas for what they can do when they get stuck during writing time! So the anchor chart will look different each year because it really depends on the ideas that the group comes up with! Then, during independent writing time my students get to practice using those ideas if they get stuck! This might be one of my FAVORITE writing mini-lessons, which is crazy because not a lot of writing actually takes place! This mini-lesson shows the importance of illustrations and having them match your words! All of these book options are great because they have very little or no words at all, and students have to look at each illustration to tell the story. For this particular mini-lesson, I did not create an actual anchor chart with the students. Instead, I drew a simple picture and had students tell me what was happening in MY story! Then, my writers had to do the same thing! I had their return to their desks and they drew a detailed illustration. Afterwards, in pairs, students had to look at each other's illustrations and try to explain what was happening just from their drawings. This really helped them see the importance of their illustrations! To introduce the Writing Process, I like reading the book Rocket Writes a Story and discussing each part with my writers. Of course, this is truly just an introduction and students will not go through the entire writing process in one lesson! However, it is good that they have an understanding of each component and are aware of the process as they begin their writing units! I allow my writers to glue this mini-anchor chart into their writing notebooks so they always have a visual reminder of the writing process even if it is not currently displayed in our classroom! After students have an understanding of the writing process, we spend more time on how writers can fix or "fancy" their writing using the book Fancy Nancy! Although we go over editing and revising in a mini-lesson, this is definitely not the last time that my writers are introduced to this concept. I model editing and revising throughout the entire year and they have A LOT of practice working independently, with writing partners, and during writing conferences! For these lesson ideas in one easy FREE document, click here or the images below! For the mini-anchor charts click here or the picture below! For the personal dictionary click here or the picture below! For the FREE writing notebook cover and dividers, get the password to my Resource Library here! Or click on the image below to get the password emailed to you! Send it my way! Powered By ConvertKit For all of the subject covers click here or the image below! For the books click here or the image below for my Amazon Affiliate storefront! How do YOU launch Writer's Workshop in your classroom!? I hope this post gave you some ideas for your classroom! If you want to save these ideas for later, make sure to pin the image below!
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So.... it's been a while!! For most of December and the first two weeks of January, our house was riddled with germs!! And in a house with four small kiddos, this meant lots of children's Motrin, fever checks, tissues, sleepless nights, and filling humidifiers! It's been exhausting, but I am hoping healthier days are ahead!! * * * * * * * * * * Lots going on in my classroom! My students have been working away on our argument unit, and I have to say, they LOVE it! Like, love it so much they want to talk about it the entire walk to specials! It KILLS me to have to "shh" them (I'm a stickler for quietly walking in the halls!) because they are just so spirited about this unit! The kicker are these debate cards that I'm using. I spent the summer Googling like crazy trying to find some refreshing hot topics for the kids to argue over (I was just so over the school uniform and longer school day debate!!). I came up with a GREAT list and created a set of task cards. Here's a sneak peak at a few (the full set of task cards are available in my complete argument writer's workshop available here): Each day, I randomly distribute a few of the topics and give the students five minutes to jot down their gut reactions to the card. I also ask them to brainstorm some potential opposing arguments. Then, I have them find everyone else in the room with the same card and together they discuss/debate. I do have them use a "talking stick" (we use the super-fancy highlighter :) to keep the overly-enthusiastic voices from drowning out the students who are on the quieter side. Basically, I give one person in each group the highlighter and they "begin" the discussion (usually they will start by reading the gut reaction they had when they first saw their topic). If someone wants to respond, they can raise their hand for the stick. Otherwise, it just gets passed around the circle so each kid gets a chance to speak. If a group is struggling, I will go over and raise my hand for the talking stick. Typically, when I throw my two-cents into the mix, it will get them going for at least another few minutes! After 15-20 minutes of talking, students go back to their desks and draft their argument. Typically, I give them 25 minutes (there is absolutely NO TALKING during this time!), and believe me, their hands are FLYING across their notebook page!! Almost always, every single student finishes their essay in that time! It is absolutely amazing how the "talk time" prior to writing gives even the most reluctant writers plenty to say. So far, we've completed this activity three times (students get a different prompt each time), therefore, every kid has three great first drafts in their notebook. And we will probably do this activity two or three more times over the next week. Then, students will be able to take the draft they are most excited about, do a little research on the topic, and turn their draft into a full essay. These debates have just been so much fun. I am eager to see how the final drafts of their essays turn out! Any tips and tricks for teaching argument writing? I'd love to hear about them! Happy Teaching!!
These nine main idea strategies will help your students successfully master this important reading skill. The Teacher Next Door shares her favorite main idea strategies for teachers of upper elementary students.
Use these free Writing Folders and freebies to give your writers support during their independent writing time. Find all our FREE Writing Printables HERE. If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, you can download all the printables that go with it for FREE! Not a subscriber? Simply subscribe HERE! NOTE: If you are already a ... Read More about Writing Folders – for K-5 Learners
