writing workshop
In Writing Workshop, the students are busy learning to become authors! Each Writing Workshop begins with a mini-lesson that focuses on a specific writing skill or strategy for improving their writing. Students then have independent writing time to practice applying these new skills or strategies to their own writing.
Throughout the year, the students engage in four different types of writing:
Throughout the year, the students engage in four different types of writing:
- Personal Narrative: Students begin the year learning to write a true story about themselves. They learn to focus their writing on one small, yet important, moment in their lives.
- Realistic Fiction: As the students learn about the elements of a story in Reading Workshop, their Writing Workshop time focuses on writing their own fictional stories. They learn that stories have pretend characters that face some sort of problem they must solve before the end of the book.
- Nonfiction: Students write books that teach their reader about a topic. They learn to include various features of nonfiction in their writing, such as a table of contents, headings, diagrams, and index.
- Opinion: Students learn to write persuasively to share their opinion and provide reasons to support their opinion.
How you can support your child in writing at home
- Have lots of paper, pencils, pens, and markers available for your child to use every day.
- Encourage drawing as well as writing.
- Don't worry about perfection in spelling; begin by encouraging independence.
- After your child has finished writing, feel free to help him or her correct any misspelled words if he or she asks for help.
- Tell stories out loud to each other.