Mrs. Meyer and I are using the Being a Writer curriculum in 1st grade for the first time this year. The curriculum is set up for a four day week using a workshop model. We have found it is easy to modify the week's plan to fit our student's needs. I wanted to share a few ideas we have used so far.
As we begin the week we use the book to introduce the week's theme or topic. We use the starter sentence for students to begin their story. Instead of having children write only this beginning sentence we encourage them to take this idea and write a story adding details.
This week's big idea was to see how Little Critter can do many things all by himself based on the text by Mercer Mayer, All by Myself. After reading the text & modeling a story we write, the children are sent off to write a story about something he/she could do alone. We encouraged students to write a story about one idea but expanding to this idea by adding details. Each day the students were taught to add to their stories and illustrations along with the lesson goal each day. This allows students to go further than the one topic sentence but it also allows struggling readers an anchor to at least get something on paper.
Day 4 is sharing day but we modified just a bit. We moved sharing to Day 5... Mrs Meyer began having the students sit in a circle with their "I can" story sitting in front of them. We have 2 or 3 students model how to read their story aloud. The other students practice active listening and then share something they learned about the writer. Students then go off and read their stories with their writing partner around the room. Once the sharing partners are finished they have 2 options: hand in their finished story & begin a new story for free writing or they must finish the "I can" story.
We collect all "I can..." stories at the end of the week so Mrs. Meyer & I can read their awesome ideas. This has motivated our struggling writers to get busy and get the story finished! They want us to read the story and they seem to love free writing time.
The stories we collect become our formative assessment. We read each story and look at the data. For the " I can..." week the assessment was listed in the manual and in the assessment resource book. It was my week to do the assessing and reading. I tweaked the assessment and made my own grid quickly. I used a simple 1-2-3-4 system to match our assessment system. I now can glance at the info and see who needs differentiation lessons. I decided 2- is needs more work, 3-right on target, 4-working above grade level and 1-not there yet. This is what my chart looked like.
For example...all of our students show they cannot consistently or successfully use a capital letter at the beginning of sentences or include periods in appropriate places. Time for a mini-lesson. Some students struggle greatly with phonics and how to use stretchy snake when sounding out words...time for a mini-lesson on stretchy snake or possibly how to use the word wall for sight words.
I used the grid above to share the way I used the student work as formative assessment. As I read each child's story I actually just jotted the info on a piece of notebook paper. I did not need to make the above grid but it definitely helps my planning & organization time.
An effective teacher looks at the student data and plans lessons to meet the student's needs and/or strengths. The total activity took me about 30 minutes. I did NOT spend too much time dwelling on if they were a 2 or 3 but only as a quick snapshot to know what is needed next in regards to my teaching. Now I can decide to add mini-lessons to the weekly plans or differentiate by pulling over small groups during writing time for about 5-10 minutes or while 1:1 conferring.
Here is a sample of a student's writing during the "I can.." week.
Happy Reading & Writing- Mrs. Speake
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