The Writing Process in 1st Grade - Room 222

We have taken our first piece of writing through the entire writing process. Our outcome is 23 truly amazing published pieces of writing.

Here is a glimpse at what the writing process looks like in 1st grade:

Prewriting - Gathering our ideas and talking them through with a buddy. We also call this "turn and talk".

Drafting - This stage is our favorite. We simply start writing our ideas down in our little books.

Revising - When Revising, the students were looking for ways to improve the content of the story for their readers. This was, by far, the most impressive part of the writing process for this group of kiddos. They worked in groups of 4 and took turns sharing suggestions with each other. I was blown away by the level of maturity during this hour.  Check out the videos. You will see what I mean. 

Revising from LBright on Vimeo.

My Movie 13 from LBright on Vimeo.

Editing: With the content of our stories finished, the editing stage was a quick check for capitals, punctuation marks, finger spaces and correctly spelled word wall words.

Publishing: Wait and see how they decided to publish their books! 

More to come after Thanksgiving Break.

Week in Review and The Writing Process

I do not have a lot of pictures from this week. However, this photograph says a thousand words.

What you see...
In this photograph, you see an excited group of kiddos eager to share their thoughts about learning.

What you don't see...
A proud author sharing his brand new story on the big screen. 
This excited group of kiddos is eager to share their thoughts and compliments on his writing.

This picture warms my heart because the story being read was truly worthy of this kind of excitement.

This amazing little book, written by an amazing 1st grade author was inspired by an entertaining new picture book...

Check out this book preview!



Due to the quality of student writing from this week and their level of commitment to their current projects, we will take this week to start the official writing process.

The writing process consists of 6 parts.
1. Prewriting - Thinking and gathering thoughts.
2. Drafting - It's writing time!
3. Revising  - Independently or with a buddy. 
4. Editing  - With a buddy and teacher.
5. Publishing - Fancy it up! Make it ready for the world.
6. Teacher Conferencing will go on throughout the entire process

Keep an eye on our Twitter page this week. We will keep you updated on our progress. We might not finish before Thanksgiving Break but that's ok... great writing takes time.

Once each student has a published book, we will have a celebration! I can't wait!

KidBlog

We have been blogging again!

Please visit our KidBlog site and see what we have been up to. 

Kidblog.com/room222-5

Feel free to comment on your child's blog. You may also comment on a few more. 

Please keep our commenting guidelines in mind.

Here are some rules for our blog. 

1. Right now, blogging only happens at school.

2. All comments must be positive and productive.

3. Refer to the blogger by initials not full names.

4. All comments go through Mrs. Bright before they are published. Any comments that do not follow these rules will not be published.

Week in Review - Oct 28th- Nov 1st

Check out our accomplishments from this week:

We concluded our Jane Goodall Studies this week. We have enjoyed reading about her in our new favorite books.

The students illustrated their facts and thoughts about Dr. Goodall.

We even wrote letters to her! It would be really great if we heard back from her or her organization. 

Here is great video we watched about Jane:

We also heard a lovely story by our first Reader's Theater group.

We are working hard on our KidBlogs. Thank you so much for all of the comments that you left on their KidBlog pages. We will be reading them tomorrow!

Call us sneaky... we have something up our sleeve this week and we planned and practiced all last week. Check out these pictures and see if you can guess what we are up to.  :)

To add to all of the fun... all of the 1st grade classes participated in a Pumpkin Inquiry Lesson. (Check out Miss G's Blog for a sample of what the kiddos did.)

We counted the seeds in our class pumpkin and grouped them by 10's. Then each class helped collect data on our pumpkins in 4 different areas. Look for these charts at conferences.

And let's not forget the party!

Add another great week to our list!