Narrative Writing

I really need to do a better job of blogging while we are working on these things and not as an afterthought. :) But here is what we worked on during first quarter in writing! We worked really hard on learning what a narrative is and how writers write them.

In the beginning, students had a difficult time generating a narrative story. You can think of people, times [first, last, aha moments], places, and feelings of small moment stories. We also learned that writers live differently, by making observations, jotting down quotes or song lyrics that really make them think, or reading stories from authors as mentor texts and figuring out what they did to make their stories captivate us.

Once students got writing, we made an anchor chart to help us raise the level of our narrative writing. Some suggestions that were provided to students were: 

We also had to review the structure of a story, which will come in handy in our next reading unit!

Sometimes, students got stuck even before the story took off! We had to review how we might start our pieces without stressing out too much.

As we began revising and editing our pieces, we had to reorganize our sentences or thoughts so that it flowed and the audience would be able to completely follow the storyline.

AND, our stories would not have been revised without the help of a writing partner. They were the ones who listened to our drafts and provided feedback so that we could continue to grow as a writer. But before we could work with a partner, we had to make sure we had some strategies to help us be an effective partner!

Christmas in September

Yes, I know it's October. Yes, I know my post will be about what happened in my classroom in September. But trust me, it's been a crazy few weeks, and...honestly, I kind of forgot about this one.

But yes, we had Christmas in September in Room 201! Let me catch you up on the details...

In fifth grade, our team of teachers learned what it means to be a writer. (I am actually not a writer. Our team member, Mrs. Bearden, is a fabulous writer...so I am learning from her!) We handed out practice notebooks at the beginning of the school year. These were to help us learn more about what it meant to keep a writer's notebook and practice before we got our official composition notebooks. We learned how to make observations just by watching people. Seriously, it sounds creepy, but we are not at all trying to be! We even went outside during first grade's recess and just watched and wrote what we saw and heard on the playground. We learned how to look through magazines to find catchy titles or interesting captions or thought-provoking pictures to help us think about our own story ideas. We also brought in our own photographs from home to remind ourselves of small moments with family members and/or friends. Students also learned that quotes can be a great way to spark a thought or a story idea. These are only some of the ways that writers keep a notebook! And they have their writer's notebooks with them because we often forget what we see or what we hear. So we jot it as soon as a thought enters our mind! We even live differently now that we're writers!

I went for a long run while training for my half-marathon and could not believe my eyes when I saw:

I made my husband stop so that I could take this picture with my phone. I just had to take a picture so that I could put it in my writer's notebook and write about the experience! Ew, gross!

Now, we had been practicing in our small notebooks for quite some time. The question would be asked, "When are we getting our real notebooks?" And the answer would be given, "Not until you EARN them!" Well, the time came in September...

On an unsuspecting day, students arrived at school and found 25 gifts wrapped in wrapping paper sitting on my desk. "What's inside?!?!" Lo and behold! When they unwrapped their gifts, they found their composition notebooks! Such excitement and joy entered the hearts of these writers. We were now official writers with our new writer's notebooks!

Students have since been collecting ideas in their notebooks. They have been writing their narrative stories, whether based on true small moments or made-up ones. We've published our stories and will be finishing up this fabulous unit this week. We can't wait for what's in store for us and our writer's notebook this year!