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K/1 Writing

The Kindergarten students have been enjoying a gingerbread man kick! We have read several different versions and enjoyed comparing and contrasting them. They had fun with their special writing and adding it to their Writer’s Notebooks. In January, we will begin our special unit on author Jan Brett focusing on The Mitten. If you have any of her books at home, please feel free to share or send them with your child to Rex. Our First Graders have definitely taken their writing to the next level, and I am so proud of them! We have enjoyed our winter writing and learning how to complete self assessments with mini rubrics (we call them tickets). The students check off if they included capital letters at the start of their sentences, details, and a period at the end. They are doing an amazing job. Please be sure to check out their work in their Writer’s Notebooks!

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2nd-3rd Writing

Our 2nd and 3rd graders writers wrapped up the Organization Trait at the end of November. While learning about the Organization Trait, students wrote great bold beginnings, mighty middles, and excellent endings for their writing pieces, How to Pack a Lunch, and How Turkey Escaped Thanksgiving. One of their favorite writing assignments was to write from the perspective of the deer in a wordless, short film, “Hey Deer!” We recently started the Word Choice Trait and are excited to dive into learning more about it. The students designed mittens and had fun using awesome adjectives and details to describe their self-designed mittens for the class to guess which mitten was theirs. They are doing a fabulous job writing and applying what they have learned from the previous writing traits. When we return from break, we will continue some more fun Word Choice writing activities.

4th/5th Writing

Our 4th and 5th graders finished up the Organization Trait with presentations of their great writing. We had such fun recalling a really great day or not so good day. Students captured their audience’s attention with a Bold Beginning. They continued their writing with their Mighty Middle, using specific details and transition words, and wrapped it up with an Excellent Ending. We were impressed with the beautifully formatted pieces that we received! Our students demonstrated their use of indents and spacing, while writing their paragraphs. This is a skill we work to perfect in 4th/5th grade. In December, we began our Word Choice unit. Students heard examples of stories without any thought put into the words chosen. They compared that to stories, whose words were carefully selected, and earned their place on the page. What a difference word choice makes! We learned about the FAAVS--Figurative Language, Awesome Adjectives, Attractive Adverbs, Vivid Verbs, and Super Sensory Words. These FAAVS will be referred to during this unit as ways to improve their writing. Students will work to replace Worn Out Words with Million Dollar Words, as they utilize the many resource pages in their Writer’s Notebooks. These will definitely get them off to a great start! Be sure to check in with your child and ask them to share their notebook with you.

6th-12th Writing

Mrs. Nichols finally finished offering feedback to each student’s Sharing Family Stories essay.  The feedback is in Canvas, and students know how to access it.  Thanks for your patience!  Then we did a fun collaborative creative writing assignment to finish up the semester.  Their stories are also shared in Canvas.  Check them out!

Second semester, we will start by writing Reviews (similar to the kind you might read in a newspaper article.)  They can review just about anything (books, movies, restaurants, music, etc.)  This will be a fun & unique assignment used to practice our opinion writing. As usual, the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing will be our guide.  Second semester, we will also complete some sort of public speaking project, but I am still flushing out the details on what that will be.  Thanks for sharing your writer(s) with me!