Week 1 Writing

Now that we've got the first week of school behind us, we're starting to get some serious learning in! I still have another week until I start my small groups and guided reading so we have a lot of time to teach explicit expectations!

This week in writing is one of my very favorite! On the first day of school I always have my students draw a self portrait...just to see where we are! I got a lot of illustrations like this (I love these...adorable!!) This shows me exactly where my students are developmentally and where I need to go with them. I. adore. this. stage!

This week in writing we are doing a LOT of guided writing! I'm teaching clear expectations about what I want from my students in their writing...with LOTS of modeling! Click HERE to get the printable plan for writing this week.

This morning we talked about nouns {read this post about how I teach nouns and snag up the interactive freebie page}and explicitly about people that are nouns. We brainstormed ideas and added our ideas to our anchor chart.

After talking about people, I reminded them how we drew a picture of ourselves last week. I told them that they all did a fabulous job, but we are going to learn to be great writers this year and great writers need great illustrations! So we all got our pencils, a piece of paper, and clip boards and moved down to the carpet. I like my students to all be sitting on the carpet when we do guided writing so I can see exactly what we're all doing and help where I need to.

I found this step by step guide a few years ago and have been using it since! I draw mine under the document camera while my students follow along. I made this anchor chart to tack up by the writing station because...well, they seem to forget sometimes! ;)

The results were some AWESOME little people like this: {I love how much thought they put in the details!} I specifically said to not draw or color outside of the person. We will be using this paper all week to add to!  {this little guy has a brace on his leg. Do you see it?! LOVE!!}

{look at the details in her necklace! LOVE!}

I know it sounds tedious...but if you spend this time at the beginning of the year then your results by the end will be well worth it! Happy writing!!