Writing Bulletin Board

Yesterday I went in to set up my classroom so I can have my two full days next week to plan and not have to worry about cosmetic things. Of course when I show up my classroom looks as if it went through a tornado over the summer. Everything was out of place and I made the mistake of not taking a photo before I put everything away. So with that I decided to move things around because change is good. I'm on an owl kick if you haven't noticed. Since I've gotten photoshop I started playing and I've created owls, hence my classroom theme for the year.

I just finished up my reading bulletin board and you can check that out on my previous post. So, today I spent the day creating my writing bulletin board where I hang up the 5 major elements in writing. This is what I teach my first graders throughout the year. There are 5 areas we focus on: focus, detail, structure, voice and conventions. After the first month of school and assessing where my students are they are assigned reading and writing goals. We conference together and talk about their strengths and weaknesses in writing and how we can get better. Students write out their goals and stick a small post it with their name on the goal they are working on. I actually thought this would be too much for my kids last year but most of them really understood what we were expecting out of them. It was nice to see a piece of writing they did and how proud they were when they met or came close to that goal. You can find my writing goals on my TpT store. Here's a sample of my writing goals. I printed them on card stock and laminated them. They look amazing. Next up are my owl labels for my classroom door. Stay tuned!

Conferring in Writing Workshop

This year I've been lucky enough to work with writing guru Carl Anderson. He's taught me how to not dread the conferring part of writing workshop. Let's face it, writing is just plain hard for some students and they dread the conference as much as you do. I had to take a step back and figure out why I had that dreadful feeling some days. The problem was me. I tried to do too much with a struggling student and I was the one overwhelming them making them dread me! I reorganized my teaching notes to have a clear teaching point for that day. I already knew where my students struggled so I knew to pick the most important area, whether it was focus, detail, conventions or structure. For one of my students I made her goal to improve her use of conventions in her writing (e.g. capitals, punctuation, and finger spacing). This is what we've been working on all year and boy have I seen improvements. She doesn't wince when it's time to conference anymore. I'd say all of my students now understand they have one clear goal to focus on in there writing. I think what we as educators need to understand is that our students already feel bombarded with information we throw out at them all day. Having a clear teaching point makes for an effective conference between teacher and student.

Qualities of Effective Teaching Points

1. We give clear, precise feedback to the student.
2. We should start the conference off by saying, "Something good writers do is....."
3. We name what we are teaching the student. For example: five finger rule in writing.
4. We give an explanation of what we are teaching (what is it? why are we teaching it?)
5. We give clear example of what we want the student to do by using mentor texts and our own writing samples.
6. We have the student give it a go by talking it out and telling them, "I'd like you to try this right now..."
7. We end the conference by linking the conference to the student’s work and reminding them to keep trying it in future writings.