I love this quote about writing from Maya Angelou.
Third grade is an exciting year to teach writing. Kids are just starting to get a sense of how powerful their writing can be. If we allow them the opportunity, their deepest thoughts, feelings, dreams and fears will come spilling out onto the paper. I remember standing behind a student writer whose mother had died a few years earlier. Students were given the task of writing about their most prized possessions. Kids around him were writing about stuffed animals, video games and footballs. This little boy wrote about a box his mother had given him before she died. Oh my goodness, I still hurt for him and the tears still well up in my eyes today. Powerful stuff for the writer and the reader. I don't think there is any part of our school day that allows students to be as expressive and as creative as time devoted to writing.
If we set up the right atmosphere for writing, students will very willingly write VOLUMES.
So early in the first weeks of school we set up and go over how to use our writing office.
We create a special folder to store our writing.
We go through the traits of writing and what a writing rubric is.
We also go over the writing cross check. We do many shared writing pieces during the early weeks of school. After each one I will model the cross check and we will analyze the writing together using this approach. I want to get them to the point where I will just say or ask....Cross Check and they will know what that entails. I wanted to add this to my writing folder so I made up a document and am offering it free at my TPT store.
Click the link below if you are interested in a free download:
How do you foster independence in the writing process? I would love to hear! Please share!
youngdor8@gmail.com
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