Work on Writing Choices

I use Daily 5 as my management tool during my Language Arts block. One of the choices for Daily 5 is "Work on Writing". Each year I try to add more choices on the list of things for the students to choose from and these activities will generally last all year long. There may be sometimes that I want certain kids to work on a specific activity, but for the most part I let them pick what "Work on Writing" activity the want to do.

I want to explain a couple of the choices so that if you want to use the same activities you understand what each one of them are. At the beginning of the year I read an Andrew Clements book called "The Landry News" which is a story about a girl who writes her own newspapers. This book allows a wonderful author to explain how to write a newspaper and all the components that are involved. After we finish reading this book, the kids get in to groups and write their very own newspaper. Each year the editions pile up in our reading corner and the kids enjoy using Daily 5 time to write new newspaper editions!

Another one of the activities is Buddy Conference. This activity allows the kids to work in pairs to go over their Writing Workshop pieces if they did not get a chance to conference with a classmate during the allotted writing time. I learned much of my writing instruction from Lucy Calkins and she is BIG on peer conferencing. Be careful that you don't give this option in the beginning because students will not know to appropriately use this activity and end up playing around for 20 minutes. I'll do a post later on setting up Buddy Conferencing so it's successful.

The last non self-explanatory writing choice I give my kids is the Write in Your Composition Journal. This journal is begun at the start of the year and it's basically a portfolio of ALL sorts of different concepts we've learned throughout the year. The "Table of Contents" will show you what types of reflections we put in our journals. A couple of the entries will not apply to every school just because they're specific to our school. The first 6 entries are personal and I let the kids write whatever they want and then each page should have a decorated border that applies to the words on the page. The document I shared does not include all of the entries we did this year. I will print a copy of the contents as we update and add to it and then put a copy of it at the writing center in my room.

I hope some of these choices are useful to you and your kiddos! If you have any questions, please ask!