First Week of School - Journals, High interest literature

I like to have a friendly, nonthreatening atmosphere at the start of school. My main emphasis is on journal writing. Later in the week I also do two structured writing assignments. In the first activity the students produce a poster about themselves. In the second activity they write a poem about themselves using a template.

Daily journal writing throughout the year is extremely important. It exercises the writing muscle, and keeps up the momentum. My students learn from Day 1 that the first thing they do when they enter the classroom is to get out their journals. There's a topic on the board with some directions to guide their writing. (I usually discuss the topic as well when everyone has settled in.) Each day I select a topic of a different genre. I think it's incredibly important to vary writing tasks to keep up the enthusiasm. These are the types of journal writing I assign:

1. Personal narrative

2. Fantasy, such as What If You Could Fly?

3.  Expository, such as Describe How to Play Basketball

4. Persuasive, where they write their opinions on an issue

In the first week of school I have a pretty low key attitude toward journal writing. I want the kids to feel relaxed about the activity. The first week is also a learning experience for me. I want to see what my students can do without much guidance.

Two years ago, I recorded how I taught my lessons in my third grade classroom, and what I observed. Each week I will describe those past lessons and add more ideas and advice from this year's experiences.

On Day 1, Monday, my students wrote down their feelings about the first day of school.

Describe how you feel about being a third grader. What are you looking forward to doing this year?

They seemed eager to put brand new pencil to clean white paper. A silence fell as 29 kids thought about how they were feeling and recorded it on paper. One student seemed confused. When I asked her if she knew what to do she shook her head. After a few exchanges with her I realized she was a struggling writer. So I placed a lined Post-it note on her desk and had her do an oral response to the topic. I wrote it down on the Post-it note and she copied it into her journal.

As I walked around the classroom I realized I had a very wide range of abilities. Some kids were churning out sentences and others were stuttering through their first sentence. I allow ten minutes for journal writing. A student wrote two sentences and then claimed to be done about five minutes later. I announced to the class that they were not allowed to be done until I asked them to stop writing.

After ten minutes I asked if anyone would like to share. More than half the class raised their hands. This made me happy. Clearly, they were an enthusiastic bunch.

Typically, journal time in my class lasts about 15 minutes. Two minutes to explain the topic, eight minutes of writing, and five minutes (or less) of discussion and sharing.

The rest of the week, I kept the topics pretty simple and limited them to narratives where they got to describe themselves, their families, friends, interests, etc. These entries tapped out important content that became useful in the structured writing activities on Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday the students created an “About Me” poster. On white paper divided up into 4 sections they described different aspects of themselves.

Section 1: Details – age, family, grade level, etc.

Section 2: Description – This includes both physical traits and personality

We had a brainstorming session to generate vocabulary. I used this opportunity to teach kids the importance of using adjectives that give information (eg. shy, athletic, creative, energetic, funny). Vague adjectives (good, nice, great) are like empty calories. For students who aren't native English speakers you can get a list of qualities that describe people from some online resource and ask kids to choose the ones that apply to them.

Section 3: Rules I live by – eg. I read daily, I help with chores, I recycle, I try to help people in need

Section 4: Dreams – wishes, desires
They can write about places they would like to travel to, things they would like to own (eg. iPad), what they want to do when they grow up, skills they want to learn (playing guitar, foreign language), people they'd like to meet

After writing their phrases they decorated the poster and I put them up on a bulletin board.

This information can be used to write a personal narrative.

On Friday they wrote what I call the “I Am … “ poem. The template that they used guided them into producing an informative three dimensional desciption of themselves.

Sample Template:

I am (two special characteristics)   I wonder (something you are actually curious about)   I hear (an imaginary sound)   I see (an imaginary sight)   I want (an actual desire)   I am (the first line of the poem restated)   I pretend (something you pretend to do)   I feel (a feeling about something imaginary)   I touch (an imaginary touch)   I worry (something that really bothers you)   I cry (something that makes you very sad)   I am (the first line of the poem repeated)   I understand (something you know is true)   I say (something you believe in)   I dream (something you actually dream about)   I try (something you make an effort to do)   I hope (something you actually hope for)   I am (the first line of the poem repeated)

 As you guide students through the writing, encourage them to come up with different ideas for each line. We want as full a picture of them as possible. If they love playing basketball, one line expressing this is sufficient. On the other hand, you might want them to stick to a specific interest and write all their lines expressing various aspects of this interest.

Finally, a word about reading. I get right into high quality, high interest literature in the first week. Lots of exposure to great stories has a two fold purpose. First, it's a way to get kids excited about being back at school. And second, it forms the basis for teaching writing in future months.

Every day of the first three weeks I read a story about the Greek heroes from Greek mythology. The kids find these stories utterly captivating. Every detail intrigues them. But the best part about these stories is that the characters are strong and complex and the plots follow a perfect arc. After I read the story, we discuss and analyze the plot elements together. What a smooth way to get into character growth and change, setting descriptions, and plot development. The kids have absolutely no trouble describing the problem in the story and then summarizing the beginning, middle, and end. 

If you want your students to become strong writers, you have to expose them to the best stories and writing that you can get your hands on.

I hope you found this entry helpful. Do visit again next week for more ideas.