Writing for Dummies {AKA me}!

Okay--I think I have admitted this before but here I go again, I dislike teaching writing. {Gasp!} I know, shame on me. Such an important part of a day in the life of a first grader. I'm contributing my dislike of writing to not be such a great writer myself growing up.

One of my .unstated. resolution's was to become a better writing teacher. Well, let me tell you...this week I have jumped right in! Seems like I just hadn't found a way(in the past) that fit me or my students.  While I was going through my writing folder desperately searching for ideas, I found a sheet that gave me inspiration and my writing lessons were brought to fruition!

We started off this week talking about "story starters" and how important it was to catch your readers attention in the first sentence or two of your story. The anchor chart *fanatic* that I am made this:

 

Here are the books I used that had great beginnings to show examples of interesting ways to start a story.

 

 

The next day we picked a character to write our story about and described it using my 'Describe a Snowman' bubble map. I told them I wanted them to use their imagination and be creative.  I showed them a few different type of snowmen (from clipart I found) to get their little wheels spinning.  Their creativity came to life and describing is what they did!

 

 

Our next step was to talk about the parts of a story: beginning, middle, end.  We discussed these concepts: Beginning=story starter, character and setting introduction.  Middle=give your character a problem.  Ending=solve the problem and end the story.   They caught onto this SOOOOO much better than I ever imagined!  I created a worksheet for them to record their thoughts.

After completion, we talked about the AND Disease! They thought this was HILARIOUS!!! I wrote and example of something like this on the board:

When I read it they {laughed and laughed and laughed}!  They thought I was crazy for using the word AND so many times.  They were surprised when I told them that --they-- were actually the ones who were consumed by this disease! I had them go back and edit their papers for the "and disease", capitalization and puncuation.

Our final day of writing consisted of completing our final draft.  I had them transfer their edited writing and complete it by drawing a picture. I was in ~AWE~ after reading most of their stories....had I really taught them step by step with my own ideas!? Heck yes, I felt like I had hit the jackpot!!

We will be at it again this week creating a penguin story to go along with our penguin unit! I'm hoping the process will be a little bit more independent (fingers-crossed)!

This teacher is all smiles : ) 

P.S. If you made it this far, you can click on all the above templates and pick them up in my TpT store for FREE!