During our writer's workshop time, we started off the year writing in our journals. We have been practicing putting capitals at the beginnign of our sentences, periods or exclamation marks at the end, and using buble gum writing (s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out the sounds we hear, like a piece of bubble gum!). They were doing very well, so we started our first writing project! A book called "Things I Like". It's a very simple book where the students write about things they like. It has six pages that go "I like..." and the seventh page ends the story with, "But I don't like.." Simple, but cute! So I started off the lesson by modelling a brainstorming session. Before we can write a book, we have to think about WHAT we are going to write. I made my bubble map on chart paper and wrote down six things that I like/like to do. I also thought of one thing I don't like to do. Then I gave my little bunnies their own sheet to write about what they like. I had them write the one thing they DON'T like either on the bottom of the page or on the back. I tried to stress that these were just ideas... not the whole sentences. But of course, you still have some that write all the words! Then we worked on our rough copies. I printed the paper on 11 x 17" paper and my students had to write one sentence in each box and draw/colour a picture to go with it. We did a mini-lesson on making our drawings WOW! We looked at this anchor chart that showed what it looked like to make a Wow! 5 drawing. It had to use lots of colours, have many details, be outlined, and look neat! Now I always ask them, "Is your drawing a Wow! 5 drawing?" They always go back and add more details or colours. It has really helped so far! Finally, we turned our rough copies into a good copy .We made a title page on half of an 8.5 x 11" paper and glued it to a piece of construction paper, which was then laminated. I put all the pages together and bound them. The books turned out super cute! They shared them with their parents at our parent-teacher conferences. Parents were quite impressed with all the work that went into these books! If you are interested in any of the papers we used, you can download them below. Brainstorm Map Rough Copy 11 x 17" Good Copy Writing Paper