Expert Writing

Hello! It's Allison from Stuckey in Second! I'm excited to share our most recent writing project with you today.



We have been working on informational/expert writing this month. The kids are loving it. My basis for this writing is that the students write about something they already know a lot about (hence expert writing). The students aren't necessarily researching the topics they choose, they are just practicing informational writing about something they already know about. That way, they are focusing more on actually how to write information at this point and not necessarily worrying on researching. I did have a few kids that wanted to look up more about their topic and of course, I did not deny them that opportunity, but it wasn't. required. I told them they could read more to become an expert on their topic.

We started by creating a shared anchor chart with a list of possible topics that we are experts on. Then, each student created their own personal lists in their writing journals. After narrowing down a topic to start with, students started writing everything they knew about that topic. They saved the lists because the goal of this writing unit is to write multiple expert books.

We are lucky enough to have iPads in our classroom. We have one iPad per two students. I decided to publish the students' pieces by using Keynote on the iPads. This app is very easy for my students and is basically the same as PowerPoint. So, if you don't have iPads, but do have access to PowerPoint, that would be fun for the kids too! They love it!!

To get students ready for creating their Keynotes, I created slides on paper that they could fill in as their rough draft. Students picked which slides would go well in their projects, wrote their information, and created a small book. I didn't require them to write about an animal, but I noticed that a lot were, so I made many of the slides with titles to go along with their popular topics of animals.

Good news, here are the templates I used for them. FREE in my store!

After I conferenced with them to proofread and edit, they were able to start their Keynote. In the end, I was able to print their keynote as a PDF and make into little booklets.

My students love, love, love this and I definitely plan to do this unit every year now!

Here are some pictures to show you the steps we took and our finished, published projects on display! 

Persuasive Writing

Hello! I'm Allison from Stuckey in Second.

I teach second grade in Indiana. I'm so excited to be part of this collaborative blog and today I'm going to share a recent persuasive writing unit that we worked on in my classroom. It was my first time teaching it and it turned out to be a lot of fun for the kids. It was one of those units/lessons that just kind of emerged as we went. I had a "plan" of teaching them how to write persuasively, but it turned out much better and more fun than I had planned!

To start out, I had found this concept of using OREO to teaching opinion/persuasive writing and I found a free graphic organizer already created on Teachers Pay Teachers. (Score!) Thank you Michelle Thom! The organizer works by having students list their opinion first, then three "re"asons, then the opinion again at the end.

This graphic organizer really helped me plan what I wanted to look for (and what I wanted to tune my students into looking for) in the persuasive read alouds that I shared with my students.

We read a few read alouds together that had been suggested to me for good persuasion examples. I'd suggest these as well!

After reading Dear Mrs. LaRue, we worked together to complete an anchor chart that listed all of the ways that Ike persuaded Mrs. LaRue into bringing him home from obedience school. This was a pretty basic activity, recalling events from the story, but we were still working on recognizing persuasion when we read it.

 

After reading I Wanna Iguana, we created a similar anchor chart and wrote down both sides for wanting/not wanting an iguana. (Note that my anchor charts are pretty authentic and the kids do help me create them. They are a work in progress before reading, during reading, and after reading.)

 

Not only did the kids love the books, but they led me into a good idea for their own persuasive writing.

We decided to first try to persuade the teacher to let us have a pet in our classroom as a shared writing. (Yes, I'm the teacher, but I worked with them as a shared writing, so I was more like one of them!) Then, after we pretended the teacher said YES, I had them write persuasive letters on their own that persuaded the rest of their class which kind of pet they should get in their classroom. We had so much fun!!!

Let me lay this out in more of a step by step manner. I'm going to label it in parts, which could be separate days for you, depending on how long you spend on writing in your classroom.

Part 1: Read aloud and discuss I Wanna Iguana. Create an anchor chart that lays out how the character persuaded his mother into adopting the iguana. 



Part 2: Complete OREO planning sheet to persuade the teacher into letting the class have a class pet.  (Again, very authentic, show the kids your thinking, work together and do this as a shared piece, let them know that it's okay to make mistakes, and go back and proofread and edit together! True planning!)

Part 3: Use the OREO planning sheet to assist in writing a letter to the teacher with all of the key points that you want to make.



Part 4: Explain that now that they have persuaded the teacher into letting them have a class pet (she said YES!), now they have to persuade a different audience! They now need to plan how to persuade their classmates into which type of pet they should get for their classroom. Here is where it can get really fun. Some of them had some funny reasons and some really funny ideas for pets!

             

Part 5: Let the students use the planning sheets that they have completed to write letters to persuade their classmates on which pet they should get. Here are some examples from my room. Honestly, we have trouble with writing sometimes and this was a very engaging lesson! The kids took the audience they were writing to so seriously and were so "into" the writing that I was hoping they didn't REALLY think we were going to get any of these class pets. (Komodo Dragon!?!?!)

Part 6: Create final product.

It's been wonderful sharing with all of you today! I hope that this can help you out in your classroom, regardless of the grade level! I always love when I find a lesson that is so much fun to teach. 

If you are more interested in what I do in my own classroom, please visit my store. I have created a lot of literacy and math centers and games for my students. I also have a lot of freebies in my store that may be helpful in your classroom!

Click below to go straight to my TpT Store!

 

Diary of a Second Grader - a class writing project

Hey everyone!  I'm Allie from Ms. Lilypad's Primary Pond.  I'm a first and second grade Dual Language teacher, and I've also taught Kindergarten and PreK.  I love the primary grades!  I'm also a reading specialist and just love teaching writing, so I think it's fitting that my first post on the blog will be about a writing project I did recently with my second graders!  

So for our first week back after winter break, I wanted an activity that would be fun, somewhat brief, and help get my little writers back into the groove of things.  So I came up with our "Diary of a Second Grader" project!  This was partially inspired by the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and movies (I'm not the biggest fan, but my kids do love them).  Diary-style books seem to be pretty popular now, so my kiddos immediately bought into the project.

The project really only took 3 days (or 3 writing workshop blocks, rather).  Here's the breakdown of what we did each day:

Day 1:  Brainstorming

I started off this lesson by introducing the project.  I explained that each student in the class would be writing just one diary entry.  They could write it as themselves, they could write it as someone else, it could be realistic or off-the-wall:  it was their choice.  I just asked that they each pretend to be a second grader writing the entry, because our book title was going to be "Diary of a Second Grader - A Day in the Life."  I told them that I was going to put all their entries together to make a compilation book, and bind it so that everyone in the class could read it.

Then, I asked my kiddos what books they'd read that were written in a diary format, and they named a few.  Then, I brought out this book:

This is Diary of a Spider, by Doreen Cronin.  There are some other similar books out there, like Diary of a Worm.  Anyway, I told my students that I was going to read them just a few entries from the book.  I asked them to think about what they noticed about the diary entries as they were listening to the story.  I also projected the book so that they could see it more clearly.

After I finished reading a few entries, we made this anchor chart:

You will have to forgive me; I am not one of those teachers who can make gorgeous anchor charts! :)  

After we made the chart, I wrote this on the board:

Who - 
What - 
When - 
Where -

I asked students to tell a partner about their plans for their own diary entries by explaining who was going to be the main character, what was going to happen in the entry, when it was going to happen, and where it was going to take place.  Then, I had them take out a sheet of paper and jot down their plans.  That's it for Day One!

Day 2:  Drafting

On the second day, the kids took out their plans from the previous day and began drafting.  I gave them lined writing paper that had a place for the date.  We also went over the anchor chart from the previous day.  As I conferred with the students, most of them got the idea, but some were writing their entries as fictional stories in the third person.  I took out one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and explained how it was different from a typical story, and then they caught on.

Here's one of my kiddos hard at work on her draft!  

Day 3:  Publishing

By the third day, quite a few students had already finished their first drafts.  I began the lesson by asking the kids, "If you know that your diary entry is going to be read by everyone in the class, what does that tell you about how your work should be?"  They pointed out that it needed to be written neatly, have good spelling/capitalization/punctuation, lots of details, etc.  I explained that everyone would be finishing their entries, proofreading them, and then copying them over onto a fresh sheet of paper.  I supported the kids in fixing up their work, and I also gave them extra writing time today so that everyone could finish.  A lot of my kids typically finish their writing quickly and tell me that there are absolutely no errors in their work.  But this day, I really felt that they were taking their time to make their writing look nice.  Just goes to show the importance of having a real audience, right?!

Here's the finished class book!

They were so excited to read it and take turns with it!  This definitely turned out to be a highly-motivating project for them.

By the way, I also allowed each child to draw a picture to go with their diary entry, if they wanted.  I laid out the book like this, so you can see both the diary entry and picture:

That's it for today!  Happy writing!

Allie