Writing

Hello Fabulous Readers!
So, as you know, this year has been SUCH a change for me!  I know, I know change is good.  How do you promote writing in your classroom?  How do you differentiate among grade levels and abilities?  Here are some of my ideas, but I would love to hear yours also! 

I try to set my schedule up during the day where I work with 1 to 3 students at a time.  This way I can really have a productive mini lesson.  I still have large group lessons, but really focus on the areas of IEPs in my small group settings (for those just joining... I teach children kinder-5th grade with different abilities)

 

Last week I had one of my small groups choose a topic.  Coming up with an idea to write about is hard, and I hope with practice will get easier!  On Tuesday I gave each student a pencil and a sticky note.  We brainstormed together over the topic.  Students could draw a picture, write a sentence, or just write a word, as long as it stayed on the topic.  On Wednesday and Thursday we worked on writing correct sentences using our brainstorming ideas.  This is where we really talked about capitalization and punctuation.  We also talked about rough draft.  On Friday we put it on our blog (now, I don't know if that is going to change... because I don't know if I like how it looks there)  I am excited to see my students writing grow over the year!

So, this is what I do with just one group.  As a whole group we have been tweeting.  Be sure to follow us @mrskellersclass to see what we are doing!  My next blog will be over how we are using twitter in our classroom!

Hope to hear from you and what you are doing to increase rigor and writing in your class!