The Writer's Workshop Process

So, with the help of some YouTube magic, here are the steps I came up with for Writer's Workshop (DII - Input model). I taught this lesson today and it went really well! yaaaay!

Step 1: Think of something you know

Step 2: Draw a quick picture

Step 3: Write 3 sentences about your picture

Step 4: Add details

• 5 colors
• 5 sentences
• 5 labels

We talked  about (and I modeled) the three ways to add details: 5 colors, sentences, labels. I also made a poster of the steps and put it up under our word wall as a reference.

Of course, I modeled each step at the carpet as an interactive writing lesson (guided practice) before the kiddos went to their seats (independent practice). The nice thing about the model was that it ended up working as a way to differentiate for my struggling writers.

Writing in first grade.... what I'm slowly learning

Stockton Unified, my current home, uses California Treasures ELA curriculum - at first, I was really thrown off my game since I am not as familiar with Treasures as say, Open Court (which I had a lot of exposure to while student teaching), but now I am LOVING it! Especially for Phonics, sound spellings, fluency, decodable readers... I have finally worked out a routine and I can really see improvement in my student's reading! yay! 

But I digress, this post is about WRITING.... which was really a struggle for me to teach effectively. So I came up with the first of many ideas. Treasures really focuses on the main idea/details graphic organizer (the formative assessments are all about it,) so I started here. Almost every day the kids take out a 'brainstorm bubble,' we think of a main idea together, repeat for details (I've found for management purposes that it helps to have ALL of them write as I write).

Once our brainstorm bubble is ready, we move on to our writing, again we do this together.

We write 1 sentence for each bubble, crossing out the bubbles as we go. Once they are done writing with me, I give them a stamp and they can work on creating 'tear art' for their writing (motivation! they love art)

Now, here's my problem - they are COPYING and not writing on their own :(

While it is great that we are thinking of details and sentences together, I really want more of my students to be able to write on their own by the end of the year.

So, here's the plan (at least for this last month of school! oh, there's never enough time!) .... I am going to stick with the brainstorm bubble (because they need to be familiar with it either way) BUT I am going to try to give them more opportunities to create their own writing using aspects of Interactive Writing (along with Direct Interactive Instruction) and LUCY CALKINS Writer's Workshop. I found a few blogs that mentioned Calkins and then I found THIS awesome video on YouTube to help me understand it a little better.