Writer's Workshop: editing

Today we talked about the 4th step in the writing process: editing. I introduced the class to our writer's eyeglasses bulletin board first thing. The students are being taught to use their "writer's eyeglasses" to look at their work a little more closely and fix some of the errors they might have made the first time.

I made these bookmarks to help students remember what information to look for during editing. We will add more to this as the year goes on, but for now I am mostly looking for editing of periods, capital letters, good spaces, and sentences that make sense and are in order.

During editing, students are allowed to use a red pencil to show what changes they made. We have practiced using some basic editing marks so we reviewed those by looking at an example page I wrote together. We went through the writer's eyes checklist one by one and fixed up each thing on the list.

After the students have attemped to edit their work on their own they sign up for a writing conference. To do this they simply move the clip with their number on it from the "I'm working hard on my own" sign to the "I need a writing conference" sign. I can then go down the ribbon and work with each student one on one to help them fix up their work to get it ready for publishing. This is a great opportunity for me to talk to each student one on one about their writing and their thought process.

Next up: publishing!

Writer's Workshop: Revision

Today in writer's workshop we started looking at what it means to revise our first draft. We read the book Hello Ocean, which is a great story that uses the five senses to describe a trip to the beach.  We talked about the ways in which the author added detail to help keep the reader interested in their work.

In writer's workshop in our classroom, during the revision stage, students get to use special blue pens. This makes revising and adding details exciting to them, but it also helps me as the teacher to see what their thought process was. Using a different color makes it clear to me what they wrote as a first draft, then how they changed their thinking and added details. We talked about different ways to revise, and I showed the class how to use an asterisk to insert information that might not fit in the space they have left.  Below is a great example of a revision to the first page of a book:

We still need to work on getting that asterisk in the right spot, but the thought is definitely there! I didn't give the kids enough credit, they set about revising their work and had so many great details to add. I thought it was going to be much more difficult to get those revisions out of them. They impress me more and more each day!

Writer's Workshop: Pre-writing and Drafting

This week we started setting up writer's workshop in our classroom.

I love writer's workshop when it is all set up because the kids are really able to work at their own level and their own pace to create stories, however I always forget how much time it takes to get them used to the routines and set up the procedures!

First I introduced the idea of writer's workshop. Each student got a writer's workshop notebook and we talked about 5 page narratives. The idea here is that they think of something that has happened to them that they could write 5 pages about. We practiced thinking of an idea using our fingers to help us stretch it out to 5 pages, then shared our ideas with our friends.  After sharing, I had each of the kids record their thinking on a brainstorming page in their notebook.  The prewriting step looks something like this:
Next we talked about drafting. We discussed how authors do not just write their ideas one time and then publish, but that there are a lot more steps involved. We talked about how the first step is to get your ideas on paper. They do not have to be perfect, and you might want to add more later, but first you have to get your initial ideas down.  We looked back at our prewriting page and took some time to start drafting the first page of our books.  I told the kids to strive for 3 to 5 sentences on each page, but this can be adapted for kids so that it is on level with their individual writing ability.
We spent a couple days working on drafting our ideas and having some time to catch up before moving to the next step. Not everyone was ready to go on just yet, so we took some time to play catch up.  Students who had finished drafting their first page spent some time writing in their treasure book. Our treasure book is sort of like a diary where students can record their "treasures" or important things that happen to them.

Next week we will be talking about revising to make our writing more exciting and detailed, as well as editing and publishing. After that, students will be able to move at their own pace to complete their stories. Lot's of exciting things ahead! I'll have pictures to post as we begin publishing pages next week.