Writing
When writing memoirs or fiction stories, the children first draw pictures for their stories, then write a rough draft. After writing and rereading their stories, they create an interesting title. When they have finished 5 stories, they pick one to edit with me. We conference and discuss the great things about their stories, and decide whether it needs anything to make it better. We edit together for punctuation, spelling, and clarity. Finally, the students type their stories and publish them!
Our Rubric
We made a writing rubric as a class to help us see where our stories need improvement. First, we made a list of good traits of writing. Then, the children thought of 3 different kinds of ice cream: an ice cream sundae, a cone, and a scoop. We decided a super-duper sundae would be the best, followed by the cone, and finally a scoop, so we labeled our rubric in that order (see below).
We have been using the rubric to rate stories, and fix the stories where needed! See examples below.
Here's an example of a story that needs much work.
Here's an example of a pretty good story that just needs a little work.
Finally, here's one that deserves a super-duper ice cream sundae!!!!
Currently, we are working on expository writing. The children first make a topic web, then use it to write a non-fiction report.
