Dear families,

I think I have been confusing some of you lately when I post about my writing classes, which are on two separate tracks. For now, to ease confusion, I’ll put all my writing classes’ updates into one post. I hope this helps!

TAG Writing (4th and 5th grade, 2nd block): students are finishing their first published stories – realistic fiction. These final drafts are going to be hand-written, and I will score them using the attached rubric. Once all students’ Google Drive accounts are set up, a lot more of their writing will be done within their Drive accounts and final drafts will be typed and printed. Today (Friday) is their last day to finish their stories in class. A few students have received extensions to turn their stories in on Monday, but everyone else is turning theirs in today. From here, we are going to move on to writing personal and then persuasive essays.

In spelling, this class has a list of words with prefixes each week. They have in-class warm-ups and homework Monday through Thursday with these words (please see previous post for more information).

Writing (5th grade only, 4th block): students are in the revising process of their first published story, a realistic fiction story. We are revising by getting rid of boring words (like “said” and “mad”) and replacing them with more literary words; stretching out the detail in the most important parts of the story by showing, not telling; and by finding the theme (lesson) in our stories and making them end so that our character learns the lesson we want to teach readers.  We will be finishing and writing final drafts of these stories next week. I will be using the attached rubric to score each student’s story.  These stories will be written by hand, but once students’ Google Drive accounts are set up, more of the entire writing process will be completed on the computers through their accounts, for future units. Our next unit up is essays – personal and persuasive.

In word study, we started this week and will have tests every two weeks. Most students are in a group that has a word study list including three sections: commonly misspelled words, strong fifth grade vocabulary, and word pattern words.  We are working through each part of the list together in class. I will keep the same three sections all year with different words each two weeks.Students should expect to have word study homework on Tuesdays and Thursdays; tests will be every other Friday. Our first test will be on Friday, October 16. Tests will require students not only to spell words correctly, but also to know their meanings and how to use them in sentences. Please email me if you have any questions!

Writing Unit 1 Realistic Fiction I Can statements