It seems that when school begins, it's easier to focus on creative writing--the "big" units haven't yet begun nor have reading groups. Since our study on Lewis and Clark and doing reading groups twice a week, there is not as much creative writing time (including mini lessons, editing and publishing). I guess it's a trade off. In reading groups students write questions, connections, and summaries--more expository-type of writing. Yet students (especially in this class) also love to experiment with voice, dialogue, description and just write creatively. We're planning on spending more time with this type of writing.
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| Example Tilden Park reflection piece |
Given that students were so tired after Thursday's muddy and rainy field trip, today they did a ten minute reflection. It's impressive to see students' growth in writing fluency, diction and voice. Students who began the year by just writing a few sentences during a ten minute quickwrite are now writing much more--and the content reflects a varied voice, diction and sentence structure. Students really absorb language and have been quick to pick up on various writing styles and strategies.
Homework for tonight is to:
1. Prepare for tomorrow's reading group by reading (or re-reading) assigned chapter and doing job. If that's complete then read a Just Right Book for 30 minutes.
2.
Fourth math
Fifth math (for tonight and tomorrow night)
3. spelling
