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.

A few more tips ...

Summer vacation has come to an end and it’s time to receive a new class of kids. Planning curriculum is likely foremost on your mind. My belief is that the writing component of the teaching day is a close second to reading fluency in its importance to a child’s education. It follows that a lot of thought and planning should go into teaching writing in order to create a strong program in the elementary classroom.  

A first thought that comes to my mind is the importance of a stress free environment when you are teaching writing. To mine that astonishing creativity with which kids are endowed, do everything in your power to make writing a joyful process.

• Think of topics that will excite them. Throw out some bold ideas on the topic to serve as catalysts for “outside the box” thinking. Encourage others to share ideas. We learn from others, after all.

• Break up the assignment into multiple lessons. Don’t overwhelm students by asking them to show you the “Six Traits of Writing” in the first lesson! In my personal writing I find it difficult to produce the first draft of a new assignment. I want my amazing ideas to appear on my paper, but concerns about sentence structure, organization, word choice, etc. impede my performance. Thank heavens for Anne Lamott’s advice in her handy book on writing called Bird by Bird. Write a “shitty” first draft she advises. This has been one of thé most invaluable pieces of advice I have ever obtained. It is so liberating to know that it’s perfectly okay to let those thoughts flow. There will be plenty of time later to express those thoughts in beautiful prose.

I have more to say on this subject, but I’ll save it for later blog entries.

• Teachers often worry that assigning creative writing in the classroom is frivolous. In the real world most people use expository writing, they point out. So in the classroom we need to emphasize non-fiction writing skills. I have a lot to say about this, but I’ll try to be brief. As a writer myself, I have found that creative writing (specifically, writing novels) has been crucial to the development of my own writing skills. Ultimately, good writing is the art of stringing together words to create coherent sentences, and organizing these sentences into a readable sequence. Why not use a fun, nonthreatening platform to teach these skills? Of course, I am not saying that all writing in the classroom should be fiction. During the teaching day students ought to be constantly producing expository writing in the content areas.

• Good literature and the teaching of writing are inextricably linked. Teach kids to read with a writer's eye. As you expose them to great books like Bridge to Terabithia and Charlotte's Web, spend time appreciating the prose, the imagery, character details, etc. Whenever you work on a specific writing skill, such as describing a setting, seek out examples from literature.

In my next entry I will discuss journal writing during the first week of school.

Stay tuned!