CNewman

More Craft Lessons to use in the K-3 classroom.  Lessons include cutting and pasting stories on pages and adding illustrations, using time transition with cue words such as the next day or later, using talk bubbles instead of quotation marks, finding new ways to write about old topics, describing the setting, staying on the topic, cause and effect, describing characters, writing through a mask, see-saw patterns, repeating a word or line and using surprise endings.  I am very interested in using these lessons in my classroom to put a new "spin" on writing.  I have already used some of the lessons with some success, however, with first graders it takes a lot of repetition to improve their writing skills.  We will keep working on it.

This section of the book gives Craft Lessons for teachers to use to teach writing.  The authors suggest teaching children to write using a beginning, middle and end.  I recently introduced this in my classroom.  As a group, we wrote a story with each part.  I gave examples of familiar stories out of order to show how important it is to have a beginning, middle and end. I am trying to encourage them to write more and give more thought and detail to their writing.  This book deals with how to help with this problem.  The lessons concentrate on matching words with pictures, nudging students to move beyond "list" stories, using specific details, using details to create "mind pictures", using illustrations to convey information, using your voice when you write, pacing your story and using a strong lead.  I plan on using some of their suggestions in upcoming weeks.  One suggestion I plan on trying this week is to give them three pieces of paper - one for their beginning, one for the middle and one for the end.  I hope this will encourage them to write more complete storie that are not limited to one page.

This book is an attempt by the authors to help teachers by offering lessons to teach writing.  They do not want teachers to depend on these lessons but use them to help explore what children can learn about writing and understand behaviors of certain grade levels.There are four beliefs about writing: time, response, responsibility and literature.  Writers need to write on a regular schedule, teachers need to respond to students about their writing, students need to feel ownership and they need challenging literature to show them a variety of styles.  The most important thing is to talk about literature and its elements. 

I am very interested in reading more and deciding if these lessons will be appropriate for my classroom.  I agree with the authors about how children learn to write and already incorporate a lot of these ideas in my teaching of writing.  However, I am at this time, trying to teach my class how to write a story that has a beginning, middle and end and flows from sentence to sentence.  I can use some new ideas or new ways of teaching these skills.