I am working on poetry as my genre study. I started out by reading all different types of poetry as the read alouds during SSR. After about a week my class started a list of the elements of poetry or "What makes poetry?". When we went to library the next time some of my students even chose to take a poetry book. The next week books of poetry with poems marked started showing up on my chair. The next library time there was quite a crowd around the poetry section. This week we will begin writing some formatted poetry. I think it is safe to say I have blessed poetry and they are hooked!!!!
How exciting, Lynne! We just finished a report writing unit and the level of interest with the kids was great. They really got into researching in the library, bringing in things from home and sharing what they saw on the History Channel. They shared their finished reports with their special friends on Friday and felt really proud. Audience was important. Third grade now has a plan for a Memoir Unit. We were really inspired by the meeting and reading about memoirs. We will use it in the fall to start the kids off writing from the heart. It will be a great way to see inside them right at the beginning of the year.
My first graders and I are also in the middle of a poetry writing unit. Two weeks prior to spring break I read a poem or 2 to them each day as part of my self-selected reading block with the purpose being to emerse them in poems. On our return from break, we listed things we noticed about poems - from some are funny to some are sad and some rhyme and some don't as well as some are long and some are short. Now we are into the writing stage. Using frames, we have written poems about recess and about imagining we are something round. They love hearing each other's poems and we are binding them into a book. They are usually the first ones off the shelf in the morning. I have a remaining 4 poem writing activities planned, with the final destination being a small book of poetry for our mothers for Mother's Day, beautifully decorated and dedicated. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these remaining 4 will come together!
My First Graders have also been immersed and have practiced working within the poetry frames provided. I have been modeling: Jack Prelutzsky, Kevin Kammeraad, and Shel Silverstein. My students love "silly poems" and ask to read more! I am also using ideas from Lucy Calkins, and will go outside tomorrow to do a sensory walk in nature, in hopes of writing a poem focusing on feelings from a tactile point of view. When my students began the process before spring break, they could not understand that poetry does not always rhyme. It has taken many attempts to model different forms. It's definitly a work in progress!!
After several weeks this past March and April, my class finished their genre study of legends. We began by immersing ourselves in the many legends provided by our media center and with some of my favorites. Sue and I designed a graphic organizer where the children could collect the common information on each one of the legends they were studying with their selected (by me) group. The sections included: title, Settings (what does it look like? What's going on? What feeling does it create? In Characters we asked, "What do the characters want?" In Problem/Solution we asked, "What happens that must be solved and how?" We asked for the common Magic/Fantastic Element in each legend, followed with the Moral/Lesson to be learned where we asked, "What did the character learn from the problem/solution?" The children compared two legends with their group for a couple of days; then brought it back to the large group for discussions/conversations. I felt we were ready to write! I designed a rubric for them to follow and was quite pleased with their products. . . a bit hard for a couple of my students though. It took a lot of time; however, I think they were saturated with the elements of a legend and produced a quality piece of writing!
I have been working on non-fiction writing. We have read a lot of non-fiction and had our author focus be Gail Gibbons. We started with "How-To..." papers and then moved on to an "All About..." piece. Students did some research on plants using sites (from the Internet)I had chosen for them. They answered questions that they then used as a form for their rough draft. In addition they did a life cycle page, plant parts and functions page, and an interesting plants page. The finished product was a 4 page non-fiction "book" about plants. Students were given the requirements with specific directions at the beginning of the project. I used a rubric (which made grading easier) and I was pleased at how they turned out.
I have been working on gathering examples of Memoirs to be used during the immersion stage of a Memoir unit. Looking in Southwood and Townline's libraries, it was difficult for me to find a variety of written work in this genre that was appropriate for 4th and 5th grade students. Katie Wood Ray, unlike other experts from the field of teaching writing, suggests Memoir is an appropriate genre for even young writers to study and produce. I can see how important it is for me, as I am reading in my everyday life, to collect good examples of genre writing, and have a good way to organize it for future use. I have started a large binder with tabs for different genres, for this purpose.
Shawn's non-fiction writing sounds interesting. The way she laid it out seems quite manageable for students of all grade levels. It seems that we spend so much time working on fiction writing that writing informational text would be fun to teach. Especially for the boys. I would love to see the finished products.
The writing unit Mandy and I are working on is on "memoir". We have not really gotten very far on it and are planning on it for next year. We just finished tall tales and going through the Regie Routman piece helped us rework how we taught this genre this year. We spent much more time reading and discussing examples of tall tales before they worked on their own piece.
I am working on poetry as my genre study. I started out by reading all different types of poetry as the read alouds during SSR. After about a week my class started a list of the elements of poetry or "What makes poetry?". When we went to library the next time some of my students even chose to take a poetry book. The next week books of poetry with poems marked started showing up on my chair. The next library time there was quite a crowd around the poetry section. This week we will begin writing some formatted poetry. I think it is safe to say I have blessed poetry and they are hooked!!!!
ReplyDeleteHow exciting, Lynne! We just finished a report writing unit and the level of interest with the kids was great. They really got into researching in the library, bringing in things from home and sharing what they saw on the History Channel. They shared their finished reports with their special friends on Friday and felt really proud. Audience was important. Third grade now has a plan for a Memoir Unit. We were really inspired by the meeting and reading about memoirs. We will use it in the fall to start the kids off writing from the heart. It will be a great way to see inside them right at the beginning of the year.
ReplyDeleteMy first graders and I are also in the middle of a poetry writing unit. Two weeks prior to spring break I read a poem or 2 to them each day as part of my self-selected reading block with the purpose being to emerse them in poems. On our return from break, we listed things we noticed about poems - from some are funny to some are sad and some rhyme and some don't as well as some are long and some are short. Now we are into the writing stage. Using frames, we have written poems about recess and about imagining we are something round. They love hearing each other's poems and we are binding them into a book. They are usually the first ones off the shelf in the morning. I have a remaining 4 poem writing activities planned, with the final destination being a small book of poetry for our mothers for Mother's Day, beautifully decorated and dedicated. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these remaining 4 will come together!
ReplyDeleteMy First Graders have also been immersed and have practiced working within the poetry frames provided. I have been modeling: Jack Prelutzsky, Kevin Kammeraad, and Shel Silverstein. My students love "silly poems" and ask to read more!
ReplyDeleteI am also using ideas from Lucy Calkins, and will go outside tomorrow to do a sensory walk in nature, in hopes of writing a poem focusing on feelings from a tactile point of view. When my students began the process before spring break, they could not understand that poetry does not always rhyme. It has taken many attempts to model different forms. It's definitly a work in progress!!
After several weeks this past March and April, my class finished their genre study of legends. We began by immersing ourselves in the many legends provided by our media center and with some of my favorites. Sue and I designed a graphic organizer where the children could collect the common information on each one of the legends they were studying with their selected (by me) group. The sections included: title, Settings (what does it look like? What's going on? What feeling does it create? In Characters we asked, "What do the characters want?" In Problem/Solution we asked, "What happens that must be solved and how?" We asked for the common Magic/Fantastic Element in each legend, followed with the Moral/Lesson to be learned where we asked, "What did the character learn from the problem/solution?"
ReplyDeleteThe children compared two legends with their group for a couple of days; then brought it back to the large group for discussions/conversations.
I felt we were ready to write! I designed a rubric for them to follow and was quite pleased with their products. . . a bit hard for a couple of my students though.
It took a lot of time; however, I think they were saturated with the elements of a legend and produced a quality piece of writing!
I have been working on non-fiction writing. We have read a lot of non-fiction and had our author focus be Gail Gibbons. We started with "How-To..." papers and then moved on to an "All About..." piece. Students did some research on plants using sites (from the Internet)I had chosen for them. They answered questions that they then used as a form for their rough draft. In addition they did a life cycle page, plant parts and functions page, and an interesting plants page. The finished product was a 4 page non-fiction "book" about plants. Students were given the requirements with specific directions at the beginning of the project. I used a rubric (which made grading easier) and I was pleased at how they turned out.
ReplyDeleteI have been working on gathering examples of Memoirs to be used during the immersion stage of a Memoir unit. Looking in Southwood and Townline's libraries, it was difficult for me to find a variety of written work in this genre that was appropriate for 4th and 5th grade students. Katie Wood Ray, unlike other experts from the field of teaching writing, suggests Memoir is an appropriate genre for even young writers to study and produce. I can see how important it is for me, as I am reading in my everyday life, to collect good examples of genre writing, and have a good way to organize it for future use. I have started a large binder with tabs for different genres, for this purpose.
ReplyDeleteShawn's non-fiction writing sounds interesting. The way she laid it out seems quite manageable for students of all grade levels. It seems that we spend so much time working on fiction writing that writing informational text would be fun to teach. Especially for the boys. I would love to see the finished products.
ReplyDeleteThe writing unit Mandy and I are working on is on "memoir". We have not really gotten very far on it and are planning on it for next year. We just finished tall tales and going through the Regie Routman piece helped us rework how we taught this genre this year. We spent much more time reading and discussing examples of tall tales before they worked on their own piece.
ReplyDelete