WRITING 101

Here are a few of the basics that I have to help the students with their writing.

I have this sentence strip up to help the kids write "good" sentences. The poster is the minimum things the kids have to check before they pass in any writing.

This is the RUBRIC we use in 5th grade. We use the 6-trait writing method. The six areas we focus on are: IDEAS, ORGANIZATION, VOICE, WORD CHOICE, SENTENCE FLUENCY AND CONVENTIONS. We work on conventions every morning and word choice is a weekly lesson from our vocabulary book. Most of my time in writing is spent on developing ideas, organization and sentence fluency. Voice is the hardest one to explain and to finally see them use.

These are the transition words, that the kids came up with, to use in their writing. We have other posters like this for feeling words, colors, sensory words, action verbs and lively adjectives.

We also have lists of JUICY WORDS. You can't tell, but there are multiple papers tacked up here to give them ideas to use in place of words that are overused. We also have a few tombstones erected for the boring words we have retired like: said, happy, mad, stuff and weird.

I am redoing my writing curriculum for next year. I want it to be more invigorated, inspiring and creative! I'd love to hear all your ideas and inspirations on this topic.